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‘..there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers and hunting knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never sees the light of day…there were belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies…’ |
This is from “The King’s Ankus” (1895) in The Second Jungle Book. Kaa, the great python, has taken Mowgli to Cold Lairs, the old deserted city in the Jungle, where he climbs into an underground vault, and finds a treasure-house, guarded by a giant and aged cobra. They climb out of the vault, taking a jewelled ‘ankus’, an elephant-goad, but soon Mowgli, finding it heavy, throws it away, and it is stolen while he sleeps. They follow the trail of the thief, and come upon his body after a Gond tribesman has killed him for it. Tracking on, they find the body of the Gond killed by four villagers, then the body of one of the killers, and then those of the other three, who have been poisoned by their companion. Mowgli returns the ankus to the treasury in Cold Lairs. It is indeed Death. |
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