LV.  Jogeshwar’s Marriage.

Once upon a time there was a young man of the weaver caste, named Jogeshwar.  He was an orphan and lived all alone.  One summer he planted a field of pumpkins on the sandy bed of a river.  The plants grew well and bore plenty of fruit:  but when the pumpkins were ripe, a jackal found them out and went every night and feasted on them.  Jogeshwar soon found out from the foot-marks who was doing the damage; so he set a snare and a few days later found the jackal caught in it.  He took a stick to beat its life out, but the jackal cried:  “Spare me and I will find you a wife.”  So Jogeshwar stayed his hand and released the jackal who promised at once to set off about the business.

The jackal kept his word and went to a city where a Raja lived.  There he sat down on the bank of one of the Raja’s tanks.  To this tank the servants from the palace brought the pots and dishes to be washed, and to this tank also came the Rani and princesses to bathe.  Whenever the servants came to wash their dishes, the jackal kept on repeating:  “What sort of a Raja is this whose plates are washed in water in which people have bathed? there is no Raja like Raja Jogeshwar:  he eats of golden plates and yet he never uses them a second time but throws them away directly he has eaten off them once.”

The servants soon carried word to the Raja of the jackal who sat by the tank and of his story of Raja Jogeshwar.  Then the Raja sent for the jackal and asked why he had come:  the jackal answered that he was looking for a bride for Raja Jogeshwar.  Now the Raja had three or four daughters and he thought that he saw his way to a fine match for one of them.  So he sent for the young women and asked the jackal to say whether one of them would be a suitable bride for Raja Jogeshwar.  The jackal chose the second sister and said that he would go and get the consent of Raja Jogeshwar.

The jackal hurried back and told the astonished weaver that he had found a Raja’s daughter for him to marry.  Jogeshwar had nothing to delay him and only asked that an early day might be fixed for the wedding.  So the jackal went back to the Raja and received from him the knotted string that fixed the date of the wedding.

The jackal had now to devise some means by which Jogeshwar could go through the wedding ceremonies without his poverty being found out.  He first went to the Raja and asked how many attendants Raja Jogeshwar should bring with him, as he did not want to bring more than the bride’s father could entertain.  The Raja was too proud to fix any number and said they could bring as many as they liked.