146 
Bihar Legends and Ballads. 
[No. 2, 
Lurik is invited to fulfil his promise. When he reaches Kola- 
pur alone on horseback, the Rajah comes in the disguise of a 
barber and asks for permission to shave him. Seeing the coun¬ 
terfeit barber perform his work very clumsily, Lurik chides him, 
but is instantly bound with ropes, and then conveyed a prisoner 
to the palace, where he is treated and fed as a goat prepared for 
sacrifice to Durga. The goddess tells the Rajah to wait, and 
advises him to feed the goat well till the great Dasera day, when 
she would come to accept the sacrifice. The horse returns to 
Hard! without the rider, when Chanain becoming aware of the 
misfortune that has befallen her husband, raises her sword to 
strike off the head of her new born son as a sacrifice to the god¬ 
dess long ago promised. The blow is arrested by the goddess 
herself, who undertakes to deliver her husband, considering the 
sacrifice as having been actually made and accepted. She takes 
Chanain with her to Kolapur on the Dasera day, when the Rajah 
brings Lurik before her, and tells him to graze like a goat 
before the sacrifice is made. By Chanain’s advice, Lurik pleads 
his inability, through ignorance, and asks the Rajah to show him 
how to do it. As the Rajah bends down for the purpose, glances 
between the lovers are exchanged ; the goddess’s sword is 
snatched from her hand, and, wielded by Lurik’s powerful hand, 
descends like a thunderbolt; and the Rajah’s head, severed from his 
shoulders, rolls over the feet of the goddess as a sacrifice. 
The lovers depart, but in the midst of the way, Lurik com¬ 
plains of hunger, and Chanain, unwashed though she was after 
childbirth, sits down to cook the food. But Lurik’s wife, Manjur, 
at Gaur learns all these things from her astrological books, and 
knowing that her husband will lose his strength if he takes such 
polluted food, works miracles by her chastity, and creates three 
Larus on the corner of his cloth. When Lurik performs the 
morning ablutions, he discovers the Larus , with the half of which 
he satisfies his appetite. On returning to Chanain, he is congra¬ 
tulated by her on the extraordinary beauty imparted to his person 
by the Larus. Taking offence at what appears to him as an un¬ 
seasonable jest, he overturns the pot in which the food is being 
cooked, and thus unwittingly fulfils his chaste wife’s earnest wish. 
