SOME CURRENT PUSHTU FOLK STORIES. 
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VIII. The King’s Son, — An Allegory. 
There was once a King, who had no son, and upon a certain day there came to 
him a Faqir. 
“Wherefor grieve you?” he asked the King. 
The monarch unfolded to him his sorrow; then said the Faqir, "A son shall 
even be born to you : yet on no account suffer him to go from out (your doors).” 
Now, it so came to pass that a son was born to the King ; and the king com- 
manded that he should be kept close in the women’s apartments, and should not be 
allowed forth. And the child grew up. 
One day, through the skylight, shone the rays of the Princely Eye (i.e. 
the sun) and when the child beheld them, he said in his heart. “ These 
are flowers.” He tried to seize them, but they eluded his grasp ; and at this moment 
approached a slave-girl of the King, and she said to him, “Kittle one ! Were you to 
fare forth you would see many flowers. What are these that you should fret for 
them ! ’ ’ 
On this the child cried out to his father, saying, “Take me forth ; for if you 
refuse me, then will I kill myself ! ” 
His father was very unwilling, yet (at length) from very helplessness he brought 
the child out from the women’s apartments. 
Now when the child came forth, he straightway went towards the market ; and 
it chanced that at that very time a man had just died there. 
“ Why has this man died ?” questioned the child. 
“ Fie was ill,” said the men who were there. 
“ Who made him ill ? ” continued the child. 
Folk began to laugh, “God made him ill; there is none other who has power 
thus to make people ill,” said they. 
“ Will God make me ill, too ? ” queried the child. 
“ You, also, are one of mankind : so you, too, will God make ill,” replied they. 
When the child heard this, he turned his steps from that instant towards the 
jungle; and he continued on his way (thither), weeping bitterly. 
Now in that jungle lived Faqirs. “Wherefore are you crying?” they asked 
the child. 
The child recounted what had happened to him ; then from amongst the 
Faqirs, one of them spoke, saying, “ Sit you down : for there is something I would 
say unto you.” 
So the child sat down there, and the Faqir said, “ O child ! There was a certain 
man who went out to hunt, and he came to a place where there was game, and the 
name of that place was the World. And when he arrived in that spot, a blood- 
thirsty rogue-elephant was there, who, as soon as he set eyes upon the man, com- 
menced to pursue him. The man fled from the elephant ; and hard by was a well. 
Down this the man took refuge. And the elephant whose name was Death, took its 
stand over the brink of the well. 
