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Updated: August 18, 2024
There was once a cowherd named Sona who saved a few rupees and he decided to buy a calf so as to have something to show for his labours; and he went to a distant village and bought a bull calf and on the way home he was benighted. So he turned into a Hindu village and went to an oilman's house and asked to be allowed to sleep there.
Okkasan no O-nak ni Oru toku ni, BiWa no ha, Sasa no ha, Tabeta sona; Sore de O-mimi ga Nagai e sona. The air was singularly sweet and plaintive, quite different from that to which the same words are sung in Izumo, and in other parts of Japan.
These quitandas are attended by people living a dozen miles off, and they give names to the days, which consequently everywhere vary. Thus at Boma Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are respectively called "Nkenge," "Sona," "Kandu," and "Konzo."
Then Sona called the villagers to come and decide the matter: but they said that they had seen him bring no calf to the village and he had not called any of them to witness it, but they had seen the bullock licking the calf; why should the bullock lick any but its own calf? No one ever saw a bullock lick a strange bullock or cow and so they awarded the calf to the oilman.
When the oilman saw such a fine calf he coveted it and he told Sona to put it in the stable along with his own bullock and he gave him some supper and let him sleep in the verandah.
Often, in the still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb to the very crest of the pass to watch the red day walking along the peaks of the snows, he would find Sona shuffling and grunting at his heels, thrusting, a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing it away with a WHOOF of impatience; or his early steps would wake Sona where he lay curled up, and the great brute, rising erect, would think to fight, till he heard the Bhagat's voice and knew his best friend.
They saw the barasingh standing over him, who fled when they came near, and they heard the langurs wailing in the branches, and Sona moaning up the hill; but their Bhagat was dead, sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the north-east.
Some of the children, too, had heard Sona singing to himself, bear-fashion, behind the fallen rocks, and the Bhagat's reputation as miracle-worker stood firm. Yet nothing was farther from his mind than miracles. He believed that all things were one big Miracle, and when a man knows that much he knows something to go upon.
So Sona brought all the villagers to the jungle and the night-jar and jackal sat side by side on a stone. Then Sona asked the villagers whether they would let him take away the calf or no, and they persisted in their previous opinion. At last one man said, "What are your advocates doing? it seems to me that they are asleep."
"It is our Bhagat," said the blacksmith's wife. "He stands among his beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call." It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow way, surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently.
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