born it proved to be a monkey.

The villagers and relations advised the mother to make away with it,
but she refused saying "Chando knows why he has given me such a child,
but as he has done so I will rear it."

All her relations said that if she chose to rear a monkey they would
turn her out of the family. However she persisted that she would do
so at all costs. So they sent her to live with her child in a hut
outside the village, and the monkey boy grew up and learned to talk
like a human being.

One day his elder brothers began to clear the jungle for cultivation
and the monkey boy took a hatchet and went with them; he asked where
he could clear land for himself and in fun they showed him the place
where the jungle was thickest. So he went there and drove his hatchet
into the trunk of a tree and then returned and watched his brothers
working hard clearing the scrub, and when they had finished their work
he went and fetched his hatchet and returned home with them. Every
day he did the same--and one day his brothers asked why he spent all
his time with them, but he said that he only came to them when he was
tired of cutting down trees; they laughed at this and said that they
would like to see his clearing, so he took them to the place and to
their astonishment they saw a large clearing, bigger than they had
been able to make for themselves. Then the brothers burnt the jungle
they had cut down and began to plough the land.

But the monkey boy's mother had no plough or cattle nor any seed rice;
the only thing in the house was a pumpkin, so he took the seed out
of the pumpkin and sowed it in his clearing. His brothers asked what
he had sown and he told them--Rice.

The brothers ploughed and sowed and used to go daily to watch the
growing crop, and one day they went to have a look at the monkey boy's
crop and they saw that it was pumpkins and not rice and they laughed
at him. When their crop was ripe the brothers prepared to offer the
first fruits and the monkey boy watched them that he might observe the
same ceremonies as they. One day they brought home the first fruits
and offered them to the _bongas_, and they invited the monkey boy
and his mother to come to the feast which followed the offering.

They both went and enjoyed themselves; and two or three days later
the monkey boy said that he would also have a feast of first fruits,
so he told his mother to clear the courtyard and invited his brothers
and he purif