~ A HINDUSTANI FEMALE FIEND. ~
FULL TEXT: In the days of Sultan
Ibrahim [reigned 1517-1526], when there was abundance in the land of Hind
[synonym of “India”], a tradesman of the town of Samana chanced to be summoned
from his house on pressing business, and when he departed he gave charge of his
house to a trusty friend and neighbour who used frequently to visit the
dwelling in order to advise and assist the wife of the absentee in her household
concerns.
Becoming aware that a young and good-looking youth was
frequently a visitor there, and reflecting that he could be no relation of the
owner of the house, the neighbour’s mind became filled with suspicion that
something wrong was going on, and in order to satisfy his doubts, he secretly
pierced a hole through the partition wall which divided his friend’s dwelling
from his own, and kept a close watch.
One night he saw a youth dressed in white and much scented
with perfumes, enter and seat himself on a carpet near the merchant’s wife,
with whom he revelled on sweetmeats, wine, and betel-nut, and at length, broke
the law of Islam in most criminal fashion.
Now this female had a child, which slept in another room,
and as it worried her with its wailing, she strangled the
unhappy brat with her own hands, and then returned serenely to the embraces of
her lover.
When interrogated by the adulterer why the child had not
made itself heard for such a length of time, she coolly informed him that she had
taken steps to prevent it from crying altogether.
This disturbed the young man greatly, and he said to this female fiend, “O creature, without fear of God, for the
sake of a moment’s pleasure you have destroyed the fruit of your own womb; how,
then, can I rely on you?”
So saying, he began to dress himself with the intention of
leaving the place, but she seized his skirt, saying,” For you I have done this,
and now you would cease to love me. For God’s sake aid me to conceal my shame,
by digging a hole in the room wherein to bury the murdered child.”
Reluctantly did he consent, and when he had dug a grave with
a mattock which she provided, she brought the child and handed it to him, and
as he bent down unsuspectingly for the purpose of placing it in the hole, she
raised the mattock and dealt him such a stroke from behind that his skull was
split in two, and he fell dead into the grave.
Hastily covering up both corpses and carefully smashing down
the earth, she began to wail and lament, exclaiming, “A wolf has devoured my
child.”
Now, such a statement might have passed current, especially in the wilder parts of Hind, where it is of no
unfrequent occurrence to hear of children being snatched away by prowling
wolves, even in these days of Anglo-Indian rule; but, unfortunately for the
scheme of this she-devil, the neighbour had been a shocked witness of the whole
horrible affair from his observatory.
Still, he kept his counsel until the return of his friend,
the husband, from his journey, and having invited him privately to his own
house, he revealed the history of the slaughter of both the child and the
youth. “Then,” he continued, “in order to prove the truth of what I relate, do
you pretend that you had in former days buried some gold within your apartment,
and procure a mattock to dig it up with.”
When the unfaithful woman saw that he immediately began to
dig in the spot which the neighbour had pointed out to him, and knew that her
dreadful secret was on the eve of being laid bare, she fastened the door of the
room in which her husband was delving, and set fire to the thatch of the roof;
then, with combined cunning and hypocrisy, exclaiming “Come to my assistance,
for the house is in flames, and my husband in peril of his life,” she hied to
the neighbours, who came all too late, for the unhappy victim of conjugal
perfidy and cruelty had already been burnt to death.
The neighbour who had witnessed this fresh atrocity went
with others to the Kotwal, or chief police magistrate, and told all he knew, so
that search was made, and the bodies of the youth and child were brought to the
light of day.
Upon this the wrathful citizens proceeded to wreak their
vengeance upon “this bloody-minded woman,” whom they buried in the “bazar” up
to her waist, and then goaded with arrows till she died.
And this tragedy is still known in Samana as “The
threefold murder, by one woman, in one house.”
[Il Musaniff (Charles Francis Mackenzie),
Ch. X. “A Female Firend,” from: The Romantic Land of Hind, London: W. H. Allen
& Co., 1882, pp. 226-9]
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[1218-1/10/21]
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