20 HIKAYAT SERI RAMA. 
Through them Kéra Kéchil learnt the reason why they came 
daily to fetch so much water. They told him that after 
Maharaja Duwana had brought Princess Sa-kuntum Bunga to 
his own country, he had looked up the genealogy of his house 
and had discovered that the Princess stood to him in the 
relation of daughter to father. He had thus been unable to 
marry her, and had given her a separate palace and establish- 
ment of her own. Here she remained secluded, shutting 
herself out from the light of day and bathing constantly 
in a brass vessel in the middle of her palace. It was for her 
bath that the slave-girls were constantly fetching water. On 
learning all this, the monkey took an opportunity of slipping 
a ring into one of the water-jars and then followed the girls 
up to the palace. The recognition of the ring by the captive 
Prinegss,* and an affectionate meeting between her and her 
son, of course, followed. In answer to her advice to come to 
a peaceful understanding with Maharaja Duwana, he replied 
with Séri Rama’s directions to overcome the enemy by sheer 
bravery without recourse to stratagem, and on learning that 
Duwana’s favourite trees were a particular cocoa-nut tree and 
a mango tree, he went and destroyed them both.t Maharaja 
Duwana was furious with the perpetrator of this mischief, but 
the monkey, by a rapid metamorphosis, faced him in the shape 
of a buffalo bull and declared his mission from Raja Séri Rama. 
Spears and krises were of no avail against him, and though 
seized and bound and cast into a huge fire, he emerged without 
a hair being singed. Maharaja Duwana then demanded a truce 
of seven days, at the expiration of which the monkey again 
presented himself at the balaz and roused Maharaja Duwana 
from slumber by beating a measure on the royal drums, just as 
Jack the Giant Killer in the English story, announces his 
presence by blowing on the horn hung at the castle gate. 
Again was the monkey, in the shape of a buffalo bull, seized 
In the Ramayana, Hanuman shows Sita a ring given to him by 
Rama for the purpose. 
tIn the Ramayana, Hanuman tears up the whole of an asoka 
grove in Lanka before returning to Rama. 
Jour. Straits Branch 
