he
became rich, but after he married he saw the _bonga_ girl no more.

The adventures of the other young man of the same village were much
the same. He made the acquaintance of a _bonga_ girl thinking that
she was some girl of the village, but she really inhabited a spring,
on the margin of which grew many _ahar_ flowers. One day she asked
him to pick her some of the _ahar_ flowers and while he was doing
so she cast some sort of spell upon him and spirited him away into
the pool. Under the water he found dry land and many habitations;
they went on till they came to the _bonga_ girl's house and there he
too saw the snake seats and tigers and leopards.

He was hospitably entertained and stayed there about six months;
one of his wife's brothers was assigned to him as his particular
companion and they used to go out hunting together. They used tigers
for hunting-dogs and their prey was men and women, whom the tigers
killed, while the _bonga_ took their flesh home and cooked it. One
day when they were hunting the _bonga_ pointed out to the young
man a wood cutter in the jungle and told him to set the tiger on to
"yonder peacock"; but he could not bring himself to commit murder;
so he first shouted to attract the wood cutter's attention and then
let the tiger loose; the wood cutter saw the animal coming and killed
it with his axe as it sprang upon him.

His _bonga_ father-in-law was so angry with him for having caused
the death of the tiger, that he made his daughter take her husband
back to the upper world again.

In spite of all he had seen the young man did not give up his _bonga_
wife and every two or three months she used to spirit him away under
the water: and now that man is a _jan guru_.

CXLIX. The Bonga Headman.

Sarjomghutu is a village about four miles from Barhait Bazar on
the banks of the Badi river. On the river bank grows a large banyan
tree. This village has no headman or _paranic_; any headman who is
appointed invariably dies; so they have made a _bonga_ who lives in
the banyan tree their headman.

When any matter has to be decided, the villagers all meet at the banyan
tree, where they have made their _manjhi than_; they take out a stool
to the tree and invite the invisible headman to sit on it. Then they
discuss the matter and themselves speak the answers which the headman
is supposed to give. This goes on to the present day and there is no
doubt that these same villagers sometimes offer huma