From the folklore of the Agaria
In Pampapur lived a Raja with seven wives. Each of them had one son. The Raja married a new young wife and from her was born a son with a face of a mongoose. The Raja was very angry and made the girl dress in tattered clothes and sent her to the fields to drive away the crows.
One night the Raja had a dream of a silver pillar covered with golden flowers. He called his seven sons and sent them to find it. The mongoose boy also went with them, but they beat him and drove him away. But he followed them. Riding on his horse Hansraj. When they came to a cross-roads the seven brothers went to the left and the youngest boy to the right.
When he reached the Madhuban forest he came to the spot where Koeli Nag used to come up from the Under World for food. The mongoose boy killed the snake and, turning Hansraj into a stone, left it above while he himself went down by the cobra’s passage to Jhalalpur in the Under World. Here lived, each in a separate palace, the three daughters of Koeli Nag – Mainabai, Karanbai, Salhobai. The mongoose boy enchanted each of them in turn with his love-charms and married them.
One day the three girls gave the boy a sword and a stick and then they danced before him naked as cows. When they tired the boy killed them. From the dirt of his body he made two sparrows and sent them to drink the blood. As their beaks touched the blood the girls’ bones turned into a silver pillar and their livers turned into golden flowers. The boy touched the pillar with his stick and the girls appeared again.
Then the boy went up the passage with his three wives and a great army. He brought Hansraj back to life and made a fine palace near Pampapur. His father came and took him home. They sent for the poor mother who was driving away the crows in the field and the boy made his three wives dance naked in the darbar. He killed them with his sword and again made the birds drink their blood. The bones turned once more into a silver pillar and the livers into golden flowers and a great shower of gold and silver filled the palace. The Raja gathered as much as he needed and then the boy touched the pillar with his stick and the girls appeared again. The boy ruled with his three wives in Pampapur and since that date there has been gold and silver in the world.
Source:
Chapter 5, Myths of Middle India, Verrier Elwin, 1949
Kotharian Lightning 