The Shepherd and the Jamala
Description
One day Mr. Riaz-ul-Haq's grandfather learned that his cattle did not come back from daily pasture. After a man sent to bring the cattle back did not return, Riaz-ul Haq's grandfather sent his son to bring the man back. As he went at night he shouted the man's name loudly again and again but there was no response. All of a sudden, he heard a sharp brutal sound in the night, which he believed came from a mob of witches called locally jamala. The son stopped and tried to determine the origin of the sound. There were three main water ways and he tried to determine from which one the sounds were coming. Again, he heard the same sharp brutal sound that this time was closer to him. As he was at the top of a large rock, he heard the sharp brutal sound again [and it appeared to come from] the bottom of the rock. As he remained quiet and tried to analyze the voice, he found out that there were multiple voices of old people, laughing and talking. He was scared and decided to return but before he left, he threw a large stone in the direction of the voices at the bottom of the rock, but he missed the voices. Subse-quently, he shot at the spot where he noticed lighting, but all the people seemed to run away whereby one of the people was injured and screamed.
At the time people believed that if anything was sacrificed for God's sake Allah would protect them, therefore Raiz-ul-Haq's father thought he would sacrifice one of the sheep at home when he suddenly heard the sound of this sheep. He was frightened and then he felt a woman near to him communicate with another women at a distance. He ran away from them and found his family who came to search for him. He told his family that he injured a witch so he ran quickly and at last, they reached home. Many days went but Raiz-ul-Haq's father could not sacrifice the sheep.
One day he took all his cattle to the pasture and thereafter he stayed in a place called Plain Lush Green Surface (jut) where there were barns. When he heard the sound of a gun shoot he felt somebody mistakenly shoot him while hunting a bird. Suddenly, he fell to the ground and when he put his hand on the back there was no blood. When he saw that a tree near to him was shaking, he understood that the shot did not come from a hunter but from a jamala. He asked loudly why the unknown being had shot at him and asked the same to the local religious scholar ulama. Thereafter, he ran away as he felt three or four more shots which luckily were all missing.
When [sometime later] he was in the local flour mill called jori, he heard the voices again but this time he was not afraid and realized that the strange sound was from jamala and he went outside to stop the water running from the steam through the jori. He had a pinewood spill in his hand which was burning from one end locally called lai, it was used for lighting as on that time there were no lamps or torches. Due to the huge storm, the fire was quenched and he heard the whispering sounds. After some time when the storm and whispering stopped, the wood fire burned again. Until today Mr. Riaz-ull-Haq has no idea whether the thunder and lightning were real or not.
not here
2.3.9.1
Files
Document
Type
Size
License
Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA