My mother’s version of the story was same as to the one we have read in the class except she didn’t knew what bhand was because she never heard of that word. So when I told her about the story, she had recall the word “bahurupiya” which means the same as bhand. But as the author define in the text that bhand can do more than bahurupiya can. So, according to my mother, bahurupiya does a lot of characters too because it is consider as art since ancient time and in order for someone to be called bahurupiya, they have to get into the character so much that one person can’t tell the difference from what that person was before or what they going to be after just like the story. There are many more stories just like this in india not only the scary one like this but some nice ones too which are use for religion purposes. As not only coming from indian background but the minority religion group too(jainism) have bunch of stories like this one to tell to the children about the past history about the religion.
Three years ago, I have read a story from a book which has many stories about my religion. This is how I remember the story which took place in india long long time ago. There was a king and he like to turn (bahurupiya) himself into a animal to go in the forest. Everyday, he would be something different, one day a lion the other snake but one day he saw a jain muni (philospher) and he told himself that he would become a jain muni. The day he turned himself into a muni, he liked it and he stayed like that ever since. In order for him to do that he had to leave everything behind from his kingdom to his wealth to meditate in the forest and that was the biggest sacrificed he had made in his entire life just to become a muni and to reach nirvana.
Even though true calling was little scary and sad at the end, parents wouldn’t tell their children this story. But in my religion usually all of the stories are to be told to children since they are being told generation to generation for religion purposes.