e heard tigers
roaring near the _jahir than_ he was frightened and had stayed in the
jungle. They told him that when the tigers began to roar the calf
had come running home by itself and this was good news to the herd
boy. Then he found that all the children in the village were crying for
their mothers and the men were asking what had become of their wives;
then the herdboy said that in the night he had seen some women going in
the direction of the _jahir than_ but he had not seen them come back
and they had better go and look there. So the villagers went off and
found their wives lying dead by the _jahir than_ and the two tigers
also dead; and they knew that the women must have been witches to go
there at night; so they wept over them and burned the bodies. And a
long time afterwards the boy told them all that he had seen and done;
and they admitted that he had done right in destroying the witches
and that it would be well if all witches met the same fate.

This story whether true or not is told to this day.

CLXXXV. The Man-Tiger.

There was once a young man who when a boy had learnt witchcraft from
some girl friends; he was married but his wife knew nothing about
this. They lived happily together and were in the habit of paying
frequent visits to the wife's parents. One day they were on their
way together to pay such a visit and in passing through some jungle
they saw, grazing with a herd of cattle, a very fine and fat bull
calf. The man stopped and stripped himself to his waist cloth and
told his wife to hold his clothes for him while he went and ate the
calf that had stirred his appetite. His wife in astonishment asked
him how he was going to eat a living animal; he answered that he
was going to turn into a tiger and kill the animal and he impressed
on her that she must on no account be frightened or run away and he
handed her a piece of root and told her that she must give it him to
smell when he came back and he would at once regain his human shape.

So saying he retired into a thicket and took off his waist cloth and
at once became a tiger; then he swallowed the waist cloth and thereby
grew a fine long tail. Then he sprang upon the calf and knocked it over
and began to suck its blood. At this sight his wife was overwhelmed
with terror and forgetting everything in her fear ran right off to
her father's house taking with her her husband's clothes and the
magic root. She arrived breathless and told her pa