You may be quite sure,'
concluded Sarimant, 'when you hear of a tiger without a tail, that it
is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root, and of all the
tigers he will be found the most mischievous.'
How my friend had satisfied himself of the truth of this story I know
not, but he religiously believes it, and so do all his attendants and
mine; and, out of a population of thirty thousand people in the town
of Sagar, not one would doubt the story of the washerman if he heard
it.
I was one day talking with my friend the Raja of Maihar.[6] on the
road between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore, on the subject of the number
of men who had been lately killed by tigers at the Katra Pass on that
road,[7] and the best means of removing the danger. 'Nothing', said
the Raja, 'could be more easy or more cheap than the destruction of
these tigers, if they were of the ordinary sort; but the tigers that
kill men by wholesale, as these do, are, you may be sure, men
themselves converted into tigers by the force of their science, and
such animals are of all the most unmanageable.'
'And how is it. Raja Sahib, that these men convert themselves into
tigers?'
'Nothing', said he, 'is more easy than this to persons who have once
acquired the science; but how they learn it, or what it is, we
unlettered men know not.
Pages:
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315