get out. The young
brother proposed that they should help it out, but the elder brother
objected saying that they might be accused of theft: the younger
brother persisted and so they pulled the cow out of the mud. The cow
followed them home and shortly afterwards produced a calf. In a few
years the cow and her descendants multiplied in a marvellous manner
so that the brothers became rich by selling the milk and _ghi_. They
became so rich that the elder brother was able to marry; he lived
at home with his wife and the younger brother lived in the jungle
grazing the cattle. The elder brother's son used every day to take out
his uncle's dinner to the jungle. This was not really necessary for
the cow used to supply her master with all sorts of dainties to eat,
so the younger brother, when his nephew brought out the rice used to
give the boy some of the sweetmeats with which the cow supplied him,
but he charged him not to tell his parents about this nor to take any
home. But one day the boy hid some of the sweetmeats in his cloth and
took them home and showed them to his mother. His mother had never
seen such sweetmeats before and was convinced that her brother-in-law
wished to poison her son. So she took the sweetmeats away and the
next day she herself took out the dinner to her brother-in-law and
after he had eaten it she said that she would comb his hair and pick
out the lice from it; so he put his head on her lap and as she combed
his hair in a soothing way he went off to sleep. When he was asleep
the woman took out a knife and cut off his head. Then she got up and
leaving the head and body lying at the place went home. But the cow
had seen what occurred and with her horns she pushed the head along
until it joined the neck: whereupon the man immediately came to life
again and learned what had happened to him. So he drove off all the
cattle to a distant part of the jungle and began to live there.

Every day he milked his large herd of cows and got a great quantity
of milk; he asked his friend the cow what he was to do with it and
she told him to pour it into a hole in the ground at the foot of a
pipal tree Every day he poured the milk into the hole and one day as
he was doing so out of the hole came a large snake and thanked him
for his kindness in supplying the milk and asked him what reward he
would wish to receive in return. Acting on a hint from the cow the
man said that he would like to have all the milk back again.