The Treacherous Vizier

Bahadur Khan, King of Kashmir, was taking the air one evening in the. garden set apart for the ladies of his harem. This was his private domain, where none might trespass. There was consternation, therefore, when a servant ran into the royal presence and, trembling, announced that a Faqir had strayed into this forbidden ground.

"Bring him before me," the King ordered his guards. Was he wrathful? His tone disclosed nothing. Only a faint smile played about his lips.

It was a saintly old man they dragged before Bahadur Khan. "What harm have I done, Your Majesty?" he asked in a voice full of gentleness.

Before the King could answer the holy man dropped down, apparently dead. Even as the King and his courtiers were gasping with horror, a dead parrot lying in a flower-bed nearby stirred to life. It fluttered its wings for a moment and then flew away into the sky, chirping merrily. They had hardly recovered from their stupefaction at these wondrous happenings when the parrot flew back into the garden and dropped dead at their feet. A tremor seemed to pass through the Faqir's lifeless spine, and in a second he was up on his feet, smiling as if nothing at all had happened.

Bahadur Khan and his Vizier threw themselves at the Faqir's feet, for they understood he was truly a saint endowed with miraculous power. The Faqir, pleased with their submission and moved by their entreaty, instructed them in the secret of this miracle.

Time passed by. One day while the King and his Vizier were out hunting together in the forests, they saw, lying dead in their path, a parrot with the liveliest plumage one could ever hope to see. A great longing came upon Bahadur Khan to see this magnificent bird on the wing. Here was the moment, too, to try the skill they had been taught "Do enter the parrot's body;" he begged of his Vizier. But the Vizier, for once, would not, obey the royal behest. The more the King urged and pleaded the more adamant did the Vizier become. Was there just a suspicion of defiance on his countenance, the King wondered? But in his burning eagerness to watch the bird come to life, he dismissed the thought with a shrug. "Well, let me do it myself," he muttered. It was a moment's work. Bahadur Khan lay dead on the ground! His spirit had wandered into the body of the parrot and the bird was beating its wings in the open spaces of the sky.

The Vizier's eyes glittered and his thin lips twisted in a wicked grin of satisfaction. Here was the very moment for which he had long lain in wait. No sooner was the bird out of slight than he cast off his own body and entered the King's. He was now Bahadur Khan King of the fair realm of Kashmir. Lest the real King should ever seek to return to court, he summoned his guards and ordered the Vizier's corpse to be chopped to little bits and scattered to the winds. He issued a royal command too that all parrots found in the kingdom be killed forthwith. His subjects would receive a handsome reward for every bird they destroyed.

As the Vizier-King (as we must now call him) rode back to the capital in triumph, the King-parrot, discovering the cruel trick played upon him, flew to the Faqir's hermitage for refuge. "Do not be impatient, my son," the holy man stroked the bird and comforted him. "Allah is All-Seeing and deals out justice to all creatures."

Time rolled on. The Vizier-King was out a-hunting in the forest one day, when a hind of exceeding beauty streaked past in a flash, colour. He spurred his steed and set out in chase. Never yet had he ridden so fast, so relentlessly - but not an inch did he gain on his quarry. "What a shame to let the hind escape!" he exclaimed bitterly as he felt his horse stumble under him

On a sudden his eyes fell on the carcass of a Panther laying in his path. "A panther is fleeter than the nimblest hind," he muttered. Quick as lightning he cast off his body and entered the panther's to track the animal down.

Haven't you guessed it was all the wise Faqir's doing? The King-parrot was, you may be sure, close by, waiting to dart upon this opportunity. It was done in the twinkling of an eye. The parrot dropped dead, and Bahadur Khan had entered his own body that the Vizier had thoughtlessly abandoned in a moment of madness. Little did his courtiers realize that here was the true Bahadur Khan restored to his former state.

The King now sent out hunters to capture the panther alive and rode back to his palace.

Next morning the Vizier-panther was wheeled in a wooden cage into the King's presence. "Is that my Vizier?" Bahadur Khan inquired mockingly. "Surely, I could not allow a denizen of the jungle to sit in office and offer counsel. No, that would not do at all!" And with a loud guffaw, he ordered his guards to roast the beast alive. That was the end of the treacherous Vizier.

Bahadur Khan lived happily ever after. And, I am sure, he never again attempted the miracle of spirit transference! "Much too risky to try," he might have argued. "And besides I am too old now to go gadding about. To live as King of this fair Valley in security is by far a more pleasant business altogether."