When he came they begged him to save them; he pretended to be much surprised and puzzled and at last undertook to get them out of their difficulty, if they paid him one hundred rupees; they gladly paid him the money, and then he took up the corpse and carried it off and laid it down on the verandah of the house of a mahajan who lived near.

The great god, i.e. Siva. Mahajan.

One day he went to a mahajan's shop and the Mahajan instead of serving him promptly kept him waiting.

One day he went to a mahajan's shop and the Mahajan instead of serving him promptly kept him waiting.

In order to earn a living the barber opened a school and the prince took service with a mahajan.

After a short time the prince who had been brought up in luxury found the work so hard and the food so scanty that he resolved to leave the mahajan: but before he went he had to submit to a piece of skin being cut off, in terms of the agreement.

So he went and offered himself as a servant to the mahajan: he was engaged and it was agreed that whichever party first proposed to terminate the contract should lose a piece of skin a span long.

The barber worked so badly and ate so much that one day the mahajan in a fit of rage ordered him to leave the place and in consequence forfeited a piece of his skin.

Having repaid the mahajan in his own coin the prince and the barber left those parts and journeyed to the land of the king of the jackals.

Then the prince succeeded to the kingdom of the jackals, and not only so, but replaced the piece of skin which he had forfeited to the mahajan by a piece of the skin of the dead jackal.