A version of the tale, titled Khastakhumār and Bībīnagār, was collected by professor Hafizullah Baghban in 1967, from a fifty-year-old farmer named Yar Muhammad.[1] In this tale, an old kharkash ('thorn-seller', 'thorn-gatherer'), while gathering thorn bushes to sell, meets a black snake who asks for the man's youngest daughter's hand in marriage. He marries the maiden as a snake, but takes off his snake skin (his jild, a cover or disguise) and appears as a man in their bridal bed. The wife's two stepsisters, seeing the man and becoming jealous, convince her to ask about burning his jild skin. He questions his wife's interest in the matter, but answers her: it can be burned with garlic and onion skins. The stepsisters burn the jild, the man becomes a green pigeon and tells his wife she must wear down seven pairs of iron clothes, seven pairs of iron shoes and seven canes, all the way to the west, then she'll find him, and vanishes.
She begins her wanderings, and passes by a caravan of camels, a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, and a herd of donkeys - all belonging to her husband Khastakhumar. She arrives at a spring and asks for a drink of water, but a woman (concubine) says she is in a hurry and refuses her plight. Bibinagar curses the water the other is carrying to become pus and blood, which she gives to her master. The third time, the servant returns to fetch water, gives it to Bibinagar, and returns to her master. When the concubine pours down the water on her master's hands, a ring drops out of the jug that the master recognizes as Bibinagar's. Khastakhumar takes her in as a servant in his mother's house. His mother tries to get rid of her, by setting her to go to her sister to ask for khamirturush (a sourdough ball used to prepare bread).
Before she goes, Khastakhumar intercepts her and teaches her to reach his aunt: she is to compliment a river of pus by saying it contains butter; compliment a river of blood by saying it contains juice; compiment a crooked tree; open his aunt's shut gate and shut her open one; anf give the correct fodder to animals (bone to a dog and a straw to a donkey). The woman visits the witch, gets the khamirturush and escapes. The aunt commands the dog, the donkey, the gates, the tree and the rivers of pus and blood to stop Bibinegar, but the human woman leaves unscathed.
Next, Khastakhumar's mother forces Bibinagar to hold candles during Khastakhumar's marriage to his aunt's daughter: Khastakhumar's mother wraps cotton aro
Caption this Meme
