But I think the fact that the conquering races that invaded India from the north were fair and ruddier than the aborigines, and that their descendants, the high-caste natives, are to this day fairer than the aborigines, though it explains the phrases, “he is only a black man,” and “your cheeks are red,” does not account for the golden hair and fair skin of so many of our princes and princesses. I believe that they all owe their characteristics to the fact that such are the characteristics of the solar hero, although they cannot all lay claim to a solar origin for themselves. For this golden hair and white skin, at first the property of the shining sun-hero alone, would naturally in the course of time be given to other Indian folk-lore heroes on whose beauty and brightness it was necessary to lay a stress. Prince Majnún, for instance, certainly has nothing solar about him, yet his hair is described as red. Dunkní, in answer to a half incredulous, half inquiring exclamation of mine when I heard this, asserted, “Red! yes, it was red: red like gold.”

The black-haired Maoris give their sea-nymphs yellow hair (Old New Zealand, p. 19); and Sir George Grey in his Polynesian Mythology, p. 295, writes thus of the Maori fairies: “Their appearance is that of human beings, nearly resembling an European’s; their hair being very fair, and so is their skin. They are very different from the Maoris, and do not resemble them at all.” But as the Maoris do not seem to have any myths of golden-haired solar heroes, these peculiarities of hair and complexion cannot be referred to the same cause as those of my little daughter’s Indian princes and princesses.

I.—PHÚLMATI RÁNÍ.

To story1. Phúlmati is a garden rose, not a wild rose. It must be a local name for the flower. I can find it in no dictionary. Dunkní says her heroine was named after a pink rose.

2. She has hair of pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess Jahúran, p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, Sonahrí Rání, p. 54, Jahúr Rání, p. 93, Prince Dímá-ahmad and Princess Atása, Notes, p. 253. Also, Híra Bai, the cobra’s daughter in Old Deccan Days, p. 35. So many princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them, Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs rings if it falls to the ground—see Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 100. And devils being fallen heroes or angels, the following references may be made to them. In Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 171, in “Die beiden Fleischhauer in der Hoelle,” the devil’s grandmother gives the good brother a hair that had fallen from the devil’s head while he slept. The man carries it home and the hair suddenly becomes as big as a “Heubaum” and is “of pure gold.” Also in one of Grimm’s stories the hero is sent to fetch three golden hairs from the devil’s head—see Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 175, “Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren.”

3. Her beauty lights up a dark room. In this shining quality she resembles many Asiatic and European fairy-tale heroes and heroines. See in this book Hírálí, whose face shone like a diamond, p. 69; and the Princess Labám, who shone like the moon, and her beauty made night day, p. 158. In Old Deccan Days, p. 156, the prince’s dead body on the hedge of spears dazzles those who look at it till they can hardly see. Pánch Phúl Rání, p. 140, shines in the dark jungle like a star. So does the princess in Chundun Rájá’s dark tomb, p. 229. In a Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54, the dream-nymph, Tillottama, whenever she appears, lights up the whole place with her beauty. “At every breath she drew when she slept, a flame like a flower issued from her nostril, and when she drew in her breath the flower of flame was again withdrawn.” Her beauty lit up her house “as if by lightning.” See Appendix A. In Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 96, is the Bohemian tale quoted above of Princess Golden-Hair. “Every morning at break of day she [the princess] combs her golden locks; its brightness is reflected in the sea, and up among the clouds,” p. 102. When she let it down “it was bright as the rising sun,” and almost blinded Irik with its radiance, p. 107. The golden children (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen, p. 125) shine in the darkened room “like the morning sun in May.” Gubernatis in the 2nd vol. of his Zoological Mythology, mentions at p. 31 a golden boy who figures in one of Afanassieff’s stories; when this child’s body is uncovered on his restoration to his father, “all the room shines with light.” And at p. 57 of the same volume he quotes another of Afanassieff’s stories, in which the persecuted princess has three sons “who light up whatever is near them with their splendour.” Of Gerd in Jötunheim, the beautiful giant maiden with the bright shining arms, Thorpe says (Northern Mythology, vol. I. p. 47), when she raised “her arms to open the door, both air and water gave such a reflection that the whole world was illumined.” The boar Trwyth (who was once a king, but because of his sons was turned into a boar) after his fall preserves some of his old kingly splendour; for “his bristles were like silver wire, and whether he went through the wood or through the plain he was to be traced by the glittering of his bristles” (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 310). In the same work (vol. III. p. 279), in “The Dream of Maxen Wledig,” is a maiden, of whom it is told: “Not more easy than to gaze upon the sun when brightest was it to look upon her by reason of her beauty.” And in “Goldhaar” (Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 61) when the hero’s cap fell off he stood there “in all splendour and his golden locks fell round his head, and he shone like the sun.”

In a Santhali tale published by the Rev. F. T. Cole in the Indian Antiquary for January 1875, p. 10, called “Toria the Goatherd and the Daughter of the Sun,” a beggar’s eyes are as dazzled by the Sun’s daughter’s beauty “as if he had stared at the sun.”

4. Phúlmati Rání has on her head the sun, on her hands moons, and her face is covered with stars. Compare in these stories “The Indrásan Rájá,” p. 1, “The boy who had a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin,” p. 119, and “Prince Dímá-ahmad and Princess Atása,” Notes, p. 253. In Fräulein Gonzenbach’s Sicilian Fairy Tales, No. 5 (vol. I. p. 21), the king’s son’s children are born, the boy with a golden apple in his hand, the girl with a star on her forehead. In the Notes to this story (vol. II. p. 207) Herr Köhler mentions a Tyrolean fairy tale, “Zingerle, II. p. 112,” where the king’s son’s daughter has a golden apple in her hand, and her brother a golden star on his forehead. In Milenowsky’s Bohemian Fairy Tales, p. 1, is the story “Von den Sternprinzen” in which the king’s son by the queen has a gold star on his forehead, and his son by the old woman has a silver star, p. 2. These princes’ children also are born with gold and silver stars on their foreheads, p. 30. In a Hungarian tale, “Die verwandelten Kinder,” the old man’s youngest daughter promises, and keeps her promise, to give the king, if he marries her, twin sons, who will be most beautiful, will have golden hair, and each a golden ring on his arm; further, one is to have a planet, the other a sun on his forehead—Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 57. Also in the same author’s Ungarische Sagen und Maerchen in “Die beiden juengsten Koenigskinder,” the hero wins a bride (p. 77) who has a sun on her forehead, a moon on her right, and three stars on her left, breast. In “Eisenlaci” in the same collection the snake-king’s daughter has a star on her forehead (p. 109). Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 412) says, “In the seventh story of the third book of Afanassieff, the queen bears two sons; one has a moon on his forehead and the other a star on the nape of his neck. Her wicked sister buries them; a golden and a silver sprout spring up which a sheep eats and then has two lambs, one with a moon on its head, the other with a star on its neck. The wicked sister who has married the king orders them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown into the road. The good, lawful queen eats them and again gives birth to her sons.” Gubernatis in the 2nd volume of the same work, p. 31, quotes another of Afanassieff’s stories, the thirteenth of the third book, in which a merchant’s wife has a son “whose body is all of gold, effigies of stars, moon, and sun covered it.” This is the gold boy mentioned in the preceding paragraph as lighting up the room when his body was uncovered. In “Das Schwarze Lamm,” the empress bears a son with a golden star on his forehead (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 177).

5. Phúlmati Rání weighs but one flower: compare Pánch Phúl Rání in Old Deccan Days, p. 133.

6. Indrásan (= Indra + Ásana, Indra’s throne or home), says Dunkní, is the name of the underground fairy country. Its inhabitants, the fairies (parí) are called the Indrásan people; they delight in all lovely things; everything about them is beautiful; they play exquisitely on all kinds of musical instruments; they dance and sing a great deal; they have wings and can fly. They taught the little Monkey Prince (p. 42), and King Burtal’s eldest son was taken to them as a pupil by the fakír Goraknáth, p. 93. In Indrásan grows a tree of which no man can ever see the flowers or fruit, as the fairies gather them in the night and take them away. The Irish “good people” who live in clefts of rocks, caves, and mounds, and the Irish fairies who live in the beautiful land of youth under the sea, have many points in common with the Indian fairies. They, too, dance beautifully, are wonderful musicians, and have everything about them lovely and splendid. The “good people” also sometimes impart their knowledge to mortals. See pp. x, xii, and xviii of the Introduction to the Irische Elfenmaerchen translated into German by the brothers Grimm. Some of the Cornish fairies, the Small People, like the Indrásan people, live underground (Hunt’s Romances and Drolls of the West of England, pp. 116, 118, 125), aid those to whom they take a fancy and are very playful among themselves (ib. p. 81); they have the most ravishing music (ib. pp. 86, 98); their singing is clear and delicate as silver bells (ib. p. 100); everything about them is joyous and beautiful (ib. pp. 86, 99, 100); they are a tiny race (ib. p. 81), but can at pleasure take the size of human beings (ib. pp. 115, 122, 123); and their queen has hair “like gold threads” (ib. p. 102). The fair-haired New Zealand fairies are, too, a kindly happy race. See Grey’s Polynesian Mythology, pp. 287 to 295. Nothing is said about their dancing, but they are described as “merry, cheerful, and always singing like a cricket” (ib. p. 295), and from one of their fishing-nets left on the sea shore, when its fairy owners were surprised by the rising of the sun, the Maoris learnt the stitch for netting a net. Like the Indian fairies they appear to be as big as human beings.

7. Phúlmati Rání is drowned in a tank and becomes a flower; she is killed and brought to life several times: compare in this collection the story of the “Pomegranate Children” and note to that story. In one of Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, “The Fiend,” p. 15, the heroine is killed through witchcraft: from her grave springs a flower which is herself transformed: she afterwards regains her human shape.

8. With Phúlmati’s last transformation compare the last that the Bél-Princess goes through (p. 148 of this collection), and that of a woman, who figures in a Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary of April 5th, 1872, vol. I. p. 115. She, though living in the Rakshas country, is not a Rakshas, but does not appear to be an ordinary mortal, and when cut to bits by a certain magic knife becomes a tree. “Her feet became a silver stem, her two hands golden branches, her head ornaments were diamond leaves, all her bracelets and bangles were pearly fruits, and her head was a peacock dancing and playing in the branches.” As soon as the magic knife is thrown to the ground she regains her human form.

Eisenlaci in Stier’s Ungarische Sagen und Maerchen (pp. 107-109) comes in the form of a horse to the twelve-headed dragon’s house. He is killed; the first two drops of his blood are thrown into the garden and from them springs a tree with golden apples: the tree is cut down, but the first two chips (which are flung into the pond) become a gold fish: the gold fish turns into Eisenlaci himself in human form.

9. Winning a wife by seizing her dress while she bathes is an incident common to fairy tales of many countries.

II.—THE POMEGRANATE KING.

To story1. Such is the story as told by Dunkní in 1876; at that time, when it was read over to her, she said it was correct. On my asking her in 1878, when the story was going through the press, to explain some points in it, such as why the children said they had been brought to life three times, the boy having only died twice, and the girl once, she told me the following variation: After the attempt to get rid of the boy by making him into a curry had failed, the Rání Sunkásí sent for a sepoy and bade him carry the two children to the jungle and there kill them; and as a proof of their death he was to bring her their livers. Once in the jungle with the children, the sepoy had not the heart to kill them; so he left them in it, and brought the livers of two goats to Sunkásí Rání. She buried the livers in the garden and was content; but some months later as she was walking (literally “eating the air”) in the jungle she saw her step-children playing about; she returned to the palace, sent for the sepoy, and asked him why he had not killed the children. “I did kill them,” said the sepoy, “and brought you their livers.” “Those livers were not the children’s livers,” answered the Rání; “I have just seen the children alive and playing in the jungle.” “They must have been other people’s children that you saw,” said the sepoy, “yours I killed.” “Do not tell me lies,” said the Rání. “Now you must at once go to the jungle, kill the children, and bring me their eyes.” The sepoy went to find the children, but when he found them he could not kill them, so he took them to some people who lived in a hut, and said to these people, “Take great care of the two children. Be very kind to them.” He then killed two goats and took their eyes to the Rání, who was now satisfied for some time. But one day another of the Pomegranate Rájá’s sepoys passed near the hut, and saw the children playing about. So he went to Sunkásí Rání and told her the children were alive and well. At this the Rání was very angry, and she thought, “It is of no use my sending the first sepoy again to kill them. I will send this man.” She said, therefore, to the second sepoy, “If you will kill these children for me, you shall have a great reward.” The sepoy agreed, went to the little hut, and seized the children. The poor people who took care of the children begged and prayed him to have pity on them; but the sepoy said, “No.” He had the Rání’s orders to kill them, and they must and should be killed. And so he killed them and brought their livers to the Rání as she had bidden him. Sunkásí Rání was very happy when she saw the livers, and she buried them close to a large tank that was in her garden.

Some three months later her servants came to her and told her a beautiful large bél-fruit was floating on the water of the tank. Sunkásí Rání went at once with them to the tank, and when she saw the fruit she was seized with a great longing to have it. So she sent all her servants, one after the other, into the tank to fetch it; but all to no purpose, for as soon as any one of them got close to the fruit it floated away from him. Then the Rání herself went into the tank. She, however, was not a whit more able to get it: when she thought she had only to put out her hand to take it, the fruit rose up into the air, and fell into the water again as soon as she had come up out of the tank. She went to the Mahárájá and told him of this lovely bél-fruit, and then went to her room while he came down to the tank. He said, “I should like to catch the fruit: I wonder if I can do so. What a lovely fruit!” As soon as he put his hand into the water the fruit came floating towards him, and floated into it. “I think this fruit is quite ripe,” said the Mahárájá. “Quite ripe,” said the servants, and they struck it with a stone to break it open. “Oh, you hurt us! you hurt us!” cried little voices from inside the bél-fruit. “Gently, gently; don’t hurt us.” The Mahárájá and all the servants were greatly surprised, and the Mahárájá went to Sunkásí Rání, and told her all about the little voices. She at once guessed her step-children were in the fruit, so she said to the Mahárájá, “You had better take the fruit to the jungle and there break it open with a big stone, so that anything inside it may be crushed to bits.” “I will not do that,” said the Mahárájá. Then he went back to his servants and made them cut the fruit’s rind very carefully cross-ways and the fruit broke into halves: in one half sat his little son, in the other his little daughter. As soon as the halves were laid on the ground the children stepped out, and at once grew to their natural size. Their father was very angry when he saw them. “Why, I thought you were at school,” said he. “The Mahárání told me you were at school. Why are you not there? What funny (Dunkní’s own word) children you are to get into this bél-fruit! What made you like to live in a fruit?” But to all his questionings and scoldings the children said not one word. At last he sent them up to the palace, and there they stayed with him for some three months. But the Mahárání said to him, “These are not your children. Yours are at school.” “They are my children,” he answered.

All this time the Mahárání hated them more and more, and at last she went to them and said, “Now I really will kill you.” “Just as you please,” answered the children; “we don’t mind being killed. You may kill us three times, four times, as often as you like: it does not matter in the least; for God will always bring us to life again.”

At this Sunkásí Rání flew into a rage and she called her servants and said, “Kill these children, cut them into mince-meat and throw them to the crows and kites. When the crows and kites have eaten them, they cannot come to life any more.” So the servants killed the children, and chopped them up very fine and fed the crows and kites with their flesh; and now the Mahárání was very happy.

Some months later, as she was walking in her garden, she saw two beautiful flower-buds on a large bél-tree that grew in it. She showed them to the gardener, and asked if he had seen them before. “Never,” said the man. “On this tree there have never been either flowers or fruit till now.” “Gather the flowers for me,” said the Rání, “I do so wish to have them.” The gardener said to her, “Wait till the buds are fully blown and then I will gather them for you.” At the end of three or four days the Rání Sunkásí asked if the buds had grown into large flowers, and the gardener said, “Yes, to-day I will gather them for you.” He got a long, long bamboo cane, and tied a piece of wood cross-ways on one of its ends so as to make a sort of hook wherewith to catch hold of and break off the flowers. He tried and tried to get them, but all in vain. Then he made all the servants try. It was of no use, no one could make the hook touch the flowers. They always bent themselves just out of its reach. Then Sunkásí Rání tried, but with no better success. She told the Mahárájá, who said, “I will try to-morrow to gather these wonderful flowers.”

That night as the Rání lay in her bed she suddenly thought, “Those children are in the flowers,” and she determined to be with her husband when he gathered them, to get them into her own hands some way or other.

The next morning Anárbásá Mahárájá and his wife went to the bél-tree, and as soon as he held out his hand towards the flowers, they dropped into it. “What lovely flowers! What beautiful flowers! Do give them to me,” said Sunkásí Rání. “No,” said the Mahárájá, “I will keep them myself.” Then he carried them to his room and laid them on the table while he shut the door and the venetians. Then he came and sat down before them: he took them in his hand, and looked at them and laid them again on the table; then he took them and smelt them, and they smelt, oh! so sweet. This he did many times. At last he held them to his ears, for the adventure of the bél-fruit had made him wise (hushyár), and he heard little tiny voices, saying, “Papa” (Dunkní’s own word), “we want to stay with you; we should like to be with you.” The Mahárájá looked very carefully at the flowers, and at last, in one of them he saw a little splinter of wood like a thorn sticking: he pulled this out, and his own little son stood before him. Then he looked at the other flower, and in that, too, was a little splinter of wood sticking. When he pulled it out his little girl stood there.

The Mahárájá was vexed with his children, and asked them why they were so naughty, and why they liked to live in fruits and flowers instead of staying in the palace or going to school. The children answered, “We go to school sometimes, and then we come back and live in our flowers, and then we return to school, and then we come back to our flower-homes again.” “This is a lie you are telling me,” said their father. “You know quite well you have not been at school at all.” The Mahárání came in to hear what all this talking meant, and when she saw the children she said to Anárbásá Mahárájá, “These are not your children, yours are at school.” “They are my children,” he answered, “and they have never been at school at all, and they are very naughty.” He then sent them away to play, and the Rání returned to her room. But he sat alone in his room, for he was angry and cross. As he sat there one of his chaprásís came to him and said, “Maháráj, you do not know how ill the Mahárání treats your children, or you would not be angry with them. She has killed them several times, and sent them away into the jungle; and after they came out of the bél-fruit she killed them and chopped them into small pieces, and fed the kites and crows with their flesh.” When the Mahárájá heard all this, he said to the chaprásí, “You must have a beautiful little house built for me; you must take care that it is chiefly made of wood; the flooring must be very thin and of wood; and the hollow place under the flooring must be filled with dry wood. Then you must put plenty of flowers inside the house, and plenty outside so as to make it very pretty.”

As soon as the house was ready the Mahárájá went to his wife and asked her if she would go out with him to eat the air. “I should like to show you a new house I have had built for you,” he said. So she went with him and thought her new house lovely. While she was inside looking at the pretty flowers in the rooms, the Mahárájá slipped out, and bolted the door so that she could not escape, and he told his servants to set fire to the wood under the flooring. When the flames began to rise the Rání got very frightened. She rushed to the window and called to the Mahárájá and his servants, who were standing there looking on, to save her. No one said anything to her. “Save me,” she cried, “or I shall be burnt to death.” “If you are burnt, what does it matter?” said the Mahárájá. “You ill-treated my children; you killed them; so, now burn.”

As soon as she was burnt to death the Mahárájá had all her bones collected and put into four dishes, and he gave them to one of his servants to take to Sunkásí Rání’s mother. When her mother uncovered dish after dish and found nothing but bones, she asked the servant, “Of what use are bones?” “These are your daughter’s bones,” said he: “therefore Anárbásá Mahárájá sent them to you. Sunkásí Rání ill-treated and killed his children, and so he burnt her.”

The rest of the story she pronounced exact (thík).

2. The bél-tree is the Ægle Marmelos of botanists.

3. With the different deaths and transformations of the children compare in this book: Phúlmati Rání, pp. 3 and 4: the Kite’s Children, p. 22: the Bél-Princess, pp. 144, 145, 148: and in Old Deccan Days Surya Bai, pp. 85, 86. In “Die goldenen Kinder” (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen) the golden children are killed and buried (p. 122). From their hearts spring two apple-trees having golden leaves and apples. The trees are destroyed; but a sheep has eaten an apple and then has two golden lambs. The step-mother kills them at once and sends the maid to wash the entrails in the stream, intending to cook them for her husband to eat (compare the curry in the “Pomegranate King,” p. 8; the broth (Suhr) in Grimm’s “von dem Machandelboom,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 271; and the stew in the Devonshire story, “The Rose-Tree,” told in Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 314). A piece of the entrail escapes, and as it floats away it swells and swells. On reaching the opposite bank it bursts, and out of it step the golden children. In a Hungarian story the children, one with a planet and one with a sun on his forehead, and each with a ring on his arm, are killed by a wicked woman who wants her daughter to take their mother’s place as queen. They turn first into two golden pear-trees. These are destroyed by fire, but one glowing coal from the fire is eaten by an old she-goat. The old goat then has two little golden-fleeced kids. They are killed, an old crow swallows a piece of the entrails as they are being washed in the brook; she flies to the seventy-seventh island in the ocean, builds a nest and lays two golden eggs. Out of the eggs come the golden-haired children with their planet, sun and golden rings. The old crow sends them for seven years to school to a hermit (here is the holy man again, see p. 283 of these notes), and then flies home with them to their father. The pillar of salt, into which their mother was changed, answers all the king’s questions. It is not said that she regained her human form (“Die verwandelten Kinder,” Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 58). In a Siebenburg story, “Die beiden goldenen Kinder,” the children are killed by an envious woman who becomes queen in their mother’s place. From their remains spring two golden pine-trees which are burnt; a sheep eats two of the sparks and has two golden lambs that are killed; from two pieces of the entrails step forth the golden-haired children (Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 2, 3). In this tale the children are restored to their father, the king, by the intervention of God himself (p. 4), who in these Siebenbuergische Maerchen plays a part just as often as “Khudá” does in the Indian tales, taking for the purpose the form of a “good old man,” and often wearing a grey mantle that reminds one of Odin. In the Netherlandish story of “The knight with the swan” (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. III. p. 302), King Oriant’s mother persuades the king his wife gave him seven puppies instead of seven children (each born with a silver chain round its neck in “proof of their mother’s nobility”). She sends the children to the forest to be destroyed. They are left there alive, and are fostered by an old man. When the queen-mother learns this, she sends servants to kill them. These are content with depriving six of the children of their silver chains, on which the children instantly become swans. (The seventh child is absent and so is saved.) A goldsmith makes two beakers out of one of the chains, and keeps the others intact. When the chains are hung again round the five swans’ necks, and the beaker shown to the sixth, they regain their human forms. See also paragraph 8 of the notes to Phúlmati Rání.

4. With the children in the fruit and flowers compare in these stories, Phúlmati Rání, p. 3: Loving Lailí, p. 81: the Bél-Princess, p. 146, and paragraph 5 of the notes to that story, p. 283: and in Old Deccan Days, “Surya Bai,” p. 86: and “Anár Rání and her two maids,” p. 95. With these may be compared the Polish Madey (Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 220). Madey is a robber who commits fearful crimes; he repents, and sticks his “murderous club” upright in the ground, swearing to kneel before it till the boy who has caused his repentance returns as a bishop. Years go by: the boy, now a bishop, passes through Madey’s forest. The club has become an apple-tree full of apples and he discovers Madey through their sweet odour. At Madey’s request the bishop confesses him; and as Madey confesses his crimes, the apples on the tree, one after another, become white doves and fly to heaven. They were the souls of those he had murdered.

In an unpublished story told by Dunkní, the incidents of the children being in the fruit, and the fruit not letting itself be gathered by any but the rightful owner of its contents (as is the case also with the Bél-Princess), again occur. In this story there is a prince called Aisab, who, as he wished very much to have children, married. At the same time he took an oath that if his child, when he had one, cried, he would kill it, and then if his wife cried he would kill her too. His first wife gave him a child who died; she cried and was killed by her husband. The same thing happened to the second wife. He then married a third wife, called Gulíanár. She had a little son, Dímá-ahmad, and two or three years later another son, called Karámat. The first boy died, but Gulíanár did not cry—she only grieved for him in her heart. Karámat was unhappy from seeing other children playing with their brothers and sisters, and asked his mother “why he had no brother or sister to play with?” She said, “Once you had a little brother and he died.” Then Karámat began to cry, and his father killed him immediately with his sword because of his oath, though he loved Karámat dearly. The “mother was still sadder than before, but she never wept.” Then God took pity on her and sent down into Prince Aisab’s garden a big bél-tree, and on this bél-tree was a fruit. Every one tried to gather this fruit, even Prince Aisab tried, but each time their hands approached it the fruit rose into the air and returned again when the hands were withdrawn. Then Gulíanár stretched out her hand “and the fruit fell into it.” She took it into the house and tried to break it open with a stone, and a voice called out, “Mother, mother, not so hard; you hurt us.” She was very much frightened, thinking a Rakshas or a demon was in the fruit. Prince Aisab was equally alarmed, but his wazír, Mamatsa, broke the fruit open gently in obedience to the little voice that called out, “Don’t knock so hard, Mamatsa; you hurt us;” and out of it stepped the two little children Dímá-ahmad and Karámat. Dímá-ahmad was very beautiful. On his head was the sun, on his face the moon, and on his hands stars, and he had long golden hair. He married a princess, Atása, who also had the sun on her head, the moon on her face, stars on her hands, and “her hair was of pure gold and reached down to the ground.” The idea that none but the rightful owner can catch the child is found too in Grey’s Polynesian Mythology at pp. 116, 117, in the story of Whakatau, who was fashioned in the sea from his mother Apakura’s apron by the god Rongota-kawiu. This child lived at the bottom of the sea; but one day he came on shore after his kite, and all who saw him tried in vain to catch him. Then said Whakatau, “You had better go and bring Apakura here; she is the only person who can catch me and hold me fast.” His mother then comes and catches him.

5. Sunkásí’s bones are sent to her mother. In the Sicilianische Maerchen collected by Laura Gonzenbach, it is a common practice for husbands to punish their second wives’ treachery with death, and then to send their remains to their mothers, who feast on them, thinking they are eating tunny-fish, and die of grief on learning what they have really swallowed.

6. With Gulíanár’s change into a bird compare Laura Gonzenbach’s 13th Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 82, where the real bride is transformed into a dove by a black-headed pin being driven into her head, and regains her human form when the pin is pulled out. Schott has a similar incident in his Wallachische Maerchen, p. 251. So has Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 242) in a story from near Leghorn, where the woman is changed into a swallow (in all these stories it is the husband who pulls out the pin); and he says similar stories with a transformation into a dove are told in Piedmont, in other parts of Tuscany, in Calabria, and are to be found in the Tutiname. Ralston’s Princess Mariya (Russian Folk Tales, p. 183), and Thorpe’s second story of “The Princess that came out of the water” (Yule Tide Stories, p. 41), may also be compared.

7. The golden bird in the Siebenburg story drops pearls from its beak whenever it sings (“Der goldne Vogel,” Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 31, 35). The princess, its mistress, wears (p. 39) a golden mantle “adorned with carbuncles and pearls from the golden bird.”

III.—THE CAT AND THE DOG.

To story1. The Tiger promises not to eat the man who helps him and then tries to break his promise. Compare “The Brahman, the Tiger, and the six Judges,” Old Deccan Days, p. 159; and “Ananzi and the Lion” in Dasent’s Ananzi Stories, p. 490.

2. In a Slavonic story mentioned by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 111), a bear is about to kill a peasant in revenge. A fox appears, “shakes its tail and says to the peasant, ‘Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy head and a stick in thy hand.’ The peasant immediately understands the stratagem,” and persuades the bear to get into a sack he has with him that he may carry the bear three times round the field instead of doing penance, after which the bear is to do what he likes with him. The bear gets into the sack, the man “binds it strongly” together, and then beats the bear to death with his stick. Gubernatis at p. 132 of the same volume tells a similar story from Russia in which a wolf plays the part of the bear and of our tiger.

IV.—THE CAT THAT COULD NOT BE KILLED.

To story1. In an unpublished story told us by Gangiyá, a hill-man from near Simla, a cat saves herself from being eaten by a jackal very much in the same way that this cat saved herself from the leopard. The jackal (in Gangiyá’s story) ate anything it came across, whether it were dead or alive. One day he met a tiger and said to him, “I will eat you. I will not let you go.” “Very good,” said the tiger, “eat me.” So the jackal ate him up. He went a little further and met a leopard; he said to the leopard, “I will eat you.” “Very good,” said the leopard. So he ate the leopard. He went a little further and met a tiny mouse. “Mouse,” he said, “I have eaten a tiger and a leopard, and now I will eat you.” “Very good,” said the mouse. He ate the mouse. He went a little further and met a cat. “I will eat you,” said the jackal. The cat answered, “What will it profit you to eat me, who am so small? A little further on you will see a dead buffalo: eat that.” So the jackal left the cat and went to eat the buffalo. He walked on and on, but could find no buffalo; and the cat, meanwhile ran away. The jackal was very angry, and set off to seek the cat, but could not find her. He was furious.

VI.—THE RAT AND THE FROG.

To storyCompare the Bohemian “Long-desired child,” Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 226. This child is carved out of a tree-root by a woodman, who brings him home to his wife. They delight in having a child at last. The child eats all the food in the house; his father and mother; a girl with a wheelbarrow full of clover; a peasant, his hay-laden cart, and his cart-horses; a man and his pigs; a shepherd, his flock and dog; lastly, cabbages belonging to an old woman who cuts him in two with her mattock just as he tries to eat her. Out of him jump unhurt every thing and every one he has swallowed. In a story from the south of Siberia (Gubernatis’ Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 140) the hero vanquishes a demon, who tells him that in his stomach he will find a silver casket. He cuts the monster open and out of him come “innumerable animals, men, treasures, and other objects. Some of the men say, ‘What noble youth has delivered us from the black night?’” In two of the caskets the hero finds the eyes of an old woman who has befriended him, and money, “and from the last casket came forth more men, animals, and valuables of every kind.” In a Russian story quoted by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. pp. 406, 407) the wolf eats the kids all but one. The mother goat persuades him to jump over a fire. The fire splits his belly open, out tumble all the little kids, lively as ever. There is a very similar story with fox, goat, and kid for actors in Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. III. p. 93; and Grimm has one also, “Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geislein,” in his Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 29. In the notes to this story, vol. III. p. 15, Grimm says, “In Pomerania this is told of a child who when his mother had gone out was swallowed by the child-spectre, resembling the varlet Ruprecht. But the stones which he swallows with the child make the spectre so heavy that he falls to the earth, and the child unhurt springs out of him.” See, too, the demons at p. 99 of these stories, who swallow the Princess Champákálí’s suitors.

Tylor in his Primitive Culture, vol. I. p. 341, classes Little Red Riding Hood among these Day and Night myths. It is, he says, “mutilated in the English Nursery version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, but they both came out safe and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast.” He also quotes among these myths (ib. p. 338) a story of the Ojibwas in which the hero is swallowed by a great fish and cut out again by his sister; and another belonging to the Basutos in which all mankind save the hero and his mother were devoured by a monster. The hero “attacked the creature and was swallowed whole, but cutting his way out he set free all the inhabitants of the world.” At the same page is the story of the Zulu Princess Untombinde who was carried off by a dreadful beast. “The king gathered his army and attacked it, but it swallowed up men, and dogs, and cattle, all but one warrior; he slew the monster, and there came out cattle, and horses, and men, and last of all the princess herself.” Mr. Tylor quotes, too (ib. p. 336), in connexion with this class of myths, the story of the death of the New Zealand sun-hero, Maui, which he tells more fully than does Sir George Grey in his Polynesian Mythology; and he goes on at pp. 338, 339, 340, to connect these myths with those of Perseus and Andromeda; Heracles and Hesione; the story of Jonah and his fish; the Greenland angakok swallowed by bear and walrus and thrown up again; and the legend of Hades.

Besides the angakok mentioned by Mr. Tylor, Dr. Rink, in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, has two other stories of escapes from the stomach of a dead animal when it is cut open. In the first, at p. 260, the boy is devoured by a gull; his sister kills the bird, takes her brother’s bones from its pouch and carries them home: on the way the boy comes to life again. The other tale, p. 438, tells how Nakasungnak jumped out of the hole his friends had made in the dead “ice-covered” bear’s side; but his hair as well as the skin of his face had come off, and he shivered from cold and ague. And in Ralston’s Songs of the Russian People, p. 177, is a story of a snake who steals “the luminaries of the night. A hero cuts off his head, and out of the slain monster issue the Bright Moon and the Morning Star.”

VII.—FOOLISH SACHÚLÍ.

To story1. Foolish Sachúlí lives in many lands. In his Russian dress he figures in “The Fool and the Birch-tree,” Ralston’s Russian Folk Tales, p. 52. In the Sicilian “Giufá” we find him again (Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 249). In England he appears in an out-of-the-way village in the south (see Pall Mall Budget, July 12, 1878, p. 11, Wild Life in a Southern Country, No. XIV.) with, to use his mother’s words, “no more sense than God had given him.” She wishing to have his testimony discredited when he bears witness against her, as she knows he will, goes upstairs and rains raisins on him from the window. So when asked to specify the time he speaks of, he says, “When it rained raisins,” and is of course disbelieved.

Note by Mr. J. F. Campbell: “This story of a stupid boy has a parallel in a Gaelic tale in my collection, where the boy dated an event which was true by a fall of pancakes or something of the kind which was not true, and was not believed though he told the truth.” [At p. 385, vol. II. of the Tales of the West Highlands a “half booby” is inveigled by his mother into dating his theft of some planks by a “shower of milk-porridge.”]

2. The magic gifts given by the fairies are a common incident in fairy tales: so is the adventure with the jar of ghee.

VIII.—BARBER HÍM AND THE TIGERS.

To story1. Forbes in his Hindústání Dictionary says Kans or Kansa was the name of a wicked tyrant whom Krishṇa was born to destroy, and that the word now means a wicked tyrant. But Rájá Káns is an historical character. All that is known of him is told by the late Professor Blochmann in the Bengal Asiatic Society’s Journal for 1873, Pt. I. p. 264.

2. In the note (p. 380) to the XIXth Tale in the Sagas from the Far East, is a story in which Barber Hím’s part is played by a he-goat, and that of his tigers by a lion. See, too, “How the three clever men outwitted the demons” in Old Deccan Days, pp. 273-278. In a Santálí tale, “Kanran and Guja,” sent by the Rev. F. T. Cole to the Indian Antiquary, vol. IV. September 1875, p. 257, two brothers, Kanran and Guja, climb into a tál tree. Here they are discovered by a tiger whom they have deprived of his tail, and who has brought a number of his friends to help him revenge himself on the brothers. The tailless tiger proposes they shall all stand one the top of the other, to reach the men in the tree. His friends agree provided he takes his stand at the bottom, and they climb as proposed till they almost reach the brothers. Then Kanran calls out to Guja, “Give me your axe. I will kill the tailless tiger.” The tigers in terror all tumble to the ground, crushing their tailless friend in their fall, and flee to their homes. In “The Leopard and the Ram” (Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 24) the ram and the leopard play the parts of the barber and his tigers. See, too, “The Lion and the Bushman,” p. 59 of the same collection.

Note by Mr. J. F. Campbell: “Compare the Irish story of two hunchbacks in Keightley. A version is in Mitford’s Japanese book; and far better versions are common in Japan.”

IX.—THE BULBUL AND THE COTTON-TREE.

To story1. Cotton-tree, in Hindústání Semal.

2. Koel, Indian cuckoo.

X.—THE MONKEY PRINCE.

To story1. Bandarsá means like a monkey; Dunkní in telling this husk-story just as often called the monkey-skin a husk (chhilka) as she called it a skin (chamrá).

2. Princess Jahúran throws mattresses to her drowning husband. In a Manípúrí tale published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, vol. IV. September 1875, p. 260, Basanta’s wife throws him a pillow that he may save himself when the envious merchant, on board whose boat they are, pitches the prince into the river that he may secure the princess for himself.

XI.—BRAVE HÍRÁLÁLBÁSÁ.

To story1. With this story all through compare “The Demon is at last conquered by the King’s Son,” p. 173 of this collection.

2. Rakshas means protector, and is, probably, an euphemistic term. The chapter on Mystic Animals in Swedish traditions (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. II. p. 83) gives a list of certain creatures that are not to be mentioned by their own but by euphemistic names for fear of incurring their wrath. This belief, Thorpe in the same chapter, p. 84, says, extends to certain inanimate things: water used for brewing, for instance, must not be called vatn (water) or the beer will not be so good; and fire occasionally is to be spoken of as hetta (heat). The girl in an Esthonian tale quoted by Gubernatis at p. 151 of the 1st vol. of his Zoological Mythology addresses a crow whose help she needs as “Bird of light.” Fiske says (Myths and Mythmakers, p. 223), “A Dayak will not allude by name to the small-pox, but will call it ‘The chief’ or ‘Jungle leaves;’ the Laplander speaks of the bear as ‘the old man with the fur coat;’ in Annam the tiger is called ‘Grandfather,’ or ‘Lord.’ The Finnish hunters called the bear ‘the Apple of the Forest, the beautiful Honey-claw, the Pride of the thicket’” (“The Mythology of Finnland,” Fraser’s Magazine, May 1857). The Furies, as every one knows, were called the Eumenides, or the gracious ones.

The Rakshases are a kind of huge demons who delight in devouring men and beasts. They can take any shape they please. The female Rakshas often assumes that of a beautiful woman. Compare the demon Mara as described by Fiske at p. 93 of his book above quoted.

The Rakshases do not travel in the way mortals do. See a Dinájpur story told by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary (February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54), where the hero, who has married both the Rakshas-king’s daughter and his niece, asks his father-in-law’s leave to return home with his Rakshas-wives. The King consents (p. 58), but says, “We Rakshases do not travel in pálkís (palanquins), but in the air.” Accordingly the prince, his two Rakshas wives and his mortal wife, all travel towards his father’s country through the air “along the sky.” One kind of jinn travel in the same way (Lane’s Arabian Nights, vol. I., “Notes to Introduction,” p. 29). So do the drakes and kobolds in Northern Germany. The drake is as big as a cauldron, “a person may sit in him,” and travel with him to any spot he pleases. Both drakes and kobolds look like fiery stripes. The kobolds appear sometimes as a blue, sometimes as a red, stripe passing through the air (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. III. pp. 155, 156).

3. Dunkní says, “All Rakshases keep their souls in birds.” Those that do so resemble in this respect some of the Indian demons, and the giants, trolls, and such like noxious actors in the Norse, Scotch, and other popular tales.

Tylor (Primitive Culture, vol. II. pp. 152, 153) mentions the Tatar story of the giant who could not be killed till the twelve-headed snake in which he kept his soul was destroyed. This tale, he says, “illustrates the idea of soul-embodiment,” and “very likely” indicates the sense of the myths where giants, &c., keep their souls out of their own bodies. The civilized notion of soul-embodiment, he adds (quoting from “Grose’s bantering description of the art of laying ghosts in the last century,”) is that of conjuring ghosts into different objects: “one of the many good instances of articles of savage belief serving as jests among civilized men.” Possibly these giants, trolls, rakshases, demons, once belonged to that class of spirits who could, in popular belief, enter at pleasure into stocks and stones and other objects of idolatrous veneration.

But all Rakshases do not keep their souls in birds. Some have their souls in bees (see a Dinájpur tale published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for April 6, 1872, p. 115): and in another Dinájpur story printed by Mr. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for June 7, 1872, p. 120, a whole tribe of Rakshases dwelling in Ceylon kept theirs in one and the same lemon.

4. In the first quoted of these stories collected by Mr. Damant, that where the Rakshases keep their life in bees, the hero is a prince who starts in search of the wonderful tree mentioned in paragraph 8 of the note to Phúlmati Rání (p. 244). In his wanderings he finds himself in the Rakshas country. There he meets with the woman who when cut up turns into the tree he seeks. When he first sees her she lies dead on a bed with a golden wand on one side of her, and a silver wand on the other. He accidentally touches her with the golden wand and she wakes. She tells him the Rakshases, every morning when they go out in search of food, make her dead by touching her with the silver wand, and wake her with the golden wand when they return at night. Mr. Damant has another story in the Indian Antiquary (July 5, 1872, vol. I. p. 219), from Dinájpur, in which there is a prince Dalim who dies and is laid in a tomb above ground, not buried. Daily the Apsarases, the dancing-girls in the court of Indra, wake him from death by touching his face with a golden wand, and make him dead again by touching him with a silver wand. These wands they always leave lying beside him. His wife comes one day to mourn over him and accidentally discovers the secret of bringing him to life. He is, finally, restored to her by the Apsarases.

5. According to Gubernatis, “three and seven are sacred numbers in Aryan faith” (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 6).

6. Hírálálbásá addresses the Rakshas as “uncle.” The two brothers Kanran and Guja (in a Santálí fairy tale bearing their name printed by the Rev. F. T. Cole in the Indian Antiquary, September 1875, vol. IV. p. 257), address a tiger by the same propitiatory title. The tiger in return addresses them as nephews, and gives them the fire they want.

“Uncle” and “aunt” are used in a propitiatory sense over a great part of the world. Hunt at p. 6 of his introduction to the Romances and Drolls of the West of England says, “Uncle is a term of respect, which was very commonly applied to aged men by their juniors in Cornwall. Aunt ... was used in the same manner when addressing aged women.” “Mon oncle” and “ma tante” are sometimes used in the same way in France. Fiske in his Myths and Mythmakers, pp. 166, 167, tells how the Zulu solar hero Uthlakanyana outwits a cannibal: in this story the hero addresses the cannibal as “uncle,” and the cannibal in return calls him “child of my sister.” Fiske, quoting from Dr. Callaway, at p. 166, says, “It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends are not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; they are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors.” In the Hottentot story of the “Lion who took a woman’s shape,” the lion and the woman address each other as “my aunt,” and “my uncle” (Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, pp. 51, 52). In Siberia the Yakuts worship the bear under the name of their “beloved uncle” (Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. II. p. 231); and when the Russian peasant calls on the dreaded Lyeshy to appear he cries, “Uncle Lyeshy” (Ralston’s Songs of the Russian people, p. 159).

“Grannie” is the word used by Dunkní herself.

7. The Rakshas queen is tricked to her death in the same way as the wicked step-mother in the “Pomegranate King,” p. 12 of this collection.

XII.—THE MAN WHO WENT TO SEEK HIS FATE.

To story1. Compare a Servian story, “Das Schicksal” (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 106), in which a man sets out to seek his fate, and on the road is commissioned by a rich householder to ask the fate why, though he gives abundance of food to his servants, he can never satisfy their hunger, and why his aged, miserable father and mother do not die: by another man, to ask why his cattle diminish instead of thriving: and, thirdly, by a river whose waters bear him safely across it, to ask why no living thing lives in it. His fate answers all these questions, and instructs him how to thrive himself. In Fräulein Gonzenbach’s Sicilian Fairy Tales, “Die Geschichte von Caterina und ihrem Schicksal,” vol. I. p. 130, Caterina is persecuted by her fate, who wears the form of a lovely woman. At last she begs her mistress’s fate, to whom she daily carries a propitiatory offering, to intercede for her with her own fate. She is told in answer that her own fate is wrapped in seven veils and so cannot hear her prayer. Finally her mistress’s fate leads her to her own. In the same collection, in “Feledico und Epomata” (vol. I. p. 350), Feledico’s fate plays a personal part.

This Indian story looks like a relic of stock and stone worship (see Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. II. chapters XIV. and XV.). Compare the man’s beating his fate-stone with the treatment the Ostyak gives his puppet. If it is good to him he clothes and feeds it with broth; “if it brings him no sport he will try the effect of a good thrashing on it, after which he will clothe and feed it again” (ib. p. 170). Other examples are given at the same page. These spirits and gods, for whose dwelling-place stocks and stones and other objects had been supplied, were not supposed always to inhabit these abodes; but they did so at pleasure. Compare Elijah’s address to the priests of Baal, “Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth” (1 Kings xviii. 27), with Caterina’s seven-veiled fate, and the prostrate fate-stone in our story whose spirit-owner was evidently absent on some expedition. These fates may be compared with the patron or guardian spirits of whom Mr. Tylor speaks at pp. 199-203 of the same volume. He says (p. 202), “The Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young Octavius, ‘for thy demon,’ said he, ‘is in fear of his.’” If one man’s demon or genius were at enmity with that of another man, it would probably be friendly to that of a third man, and would therefore be acquainted with its secrets and with its motives of behaviour to the man it guarded. Hence the advice given by her mistress to Caterina to inquire of her own fate from her mistress’s fate, and the questions to be put to their fates when found given to the men in the Indian and Servian stories. These questions remind one of those entrusted to the youths in European tales as they journey to the dragon or devil to whom they are sent for destruction. Like the fates in the Indian and Servian stories, these dragons and devils live at the end of a long and difficult journey. Caterina has to climb a mountain to visit her mistress’s fate.

2. Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 22), speaking of the three Ribhavas, says, “During the twelve days (the twelve hours of the night or the twelve months in the year) in which they are the guests of Agohyas,” &c. So possibly the twelve years in this and other stories in this collection may be the twelve hours of the night. In an unpublished story told by Dunkní, “Prince Húsainsá’s journey,” the prince journeys for twelve years. When he returns home he finds his parents as he had left them—fast asleep in bed. To them the twelve years had only been as one night.

XIII.—THE UPRIGHT KING.

To story1. The Boar is an avatár of Vishṇu.

2. A ḍom (the d is lingual) is a Hindú of a very low caste.

3. Possibly this king is the same as the king Harichand in the last story but one in the collection, p. 224, and he may also be the Hariçchandra of the following letter from Mr. C. H. Tawney:—

“I have been looking up the story of ‘Hariçchandra.’ It is to be found in Muir, vol. I. He gives a summary of it from the Markaṇḍeya Puráṇa. It is also found in the ‘Chanda Kauçikam,’ and in Mutu Coomara Swamy’s ‘Martyr of Truth.’ The following is Muir’s summary summarized. Hariçchandra was a king who lived in the Tretá age, and was renowned for his virtue, and for the universal prosperity, moral and physical, which prevailed during his reign. One day he heard a sound of female lamentation which proceeded from the Sciences who were becoming mastered by the austere Sage, Viçvamitra, in a way they had never been before. He rushed to their assistance as a Kshatriya bound to succour the oppressed. By a haughty speech he provoked Viçvamitra, and in consequence of his wrath the Sciences instantly perished. (In the ‘Chanda Kauçikam,’ as far as I remember, we are told that the anger of Viçvamitra interfered with the success of his austerity.) The king says he had only done his duty as a king, which involves the bestowal of gifts on Bráhmans and the succour of the weak. Viçvamitra thereupon demands from the king as a gift the whole earth, everything but himself, his son, and his wife. The king gives it him. Then Viçvamitra demands his sacrificial fee; the king goes to Benares, followed by the relentless Sage, the ruler of Çiva, and is compelled to sell his wife. She is bought by a rich old Bráhman. The son cries and the Bráhman buys him too. But Hariçchandra has not enough, even now, to satisfy Viçvamitra, so he sells himself to a Cháṇḍála, who is really Dharma, the god of righteousness. The Cháṇḍála (man of the lowest caste), carries off the king, bound, beaten, and confused. The Cháṇḍála sends him to steal clothes in a cemetery. There he lives twelve months. His wife comes to the cemetery to perform the obsequies of her son, who had died from the bite of a serpent. The two determine to burn themselves with the corpse of their son. When Hariçchandra, after placing his son on the funeral pyre, is meditating on the Supreme Spirit, the lord Hari Náráyaṇa Krishṇa, all the gods arrive headed by Dharma (righteousness) and accompanied by Viçvamitra. Dharma entreats the king to desist from his rash enterprise, and Indra announces to him that he, his wife, and his son have gained heaven by their good works. Ambrosia and flowers are rained by the god from the sky, and the king’s son is restored to the bloom of youth. The king, adorned with celestial clothing and garments, and the queen, embrace their son. Hariçchandra, however, declares that he cannot go to heaven till he has received his master the Cháṇḍála’s permission, and paid him a ransom. Dharma, the god of righteousness, then says that he had miraculously assumed the form of a Cháṇḍála. The king requests that his subjects may accompany him to heaven, at least for one day. This request is granted by Indra; and after Viçvamitra has inaugurated the king’s son, Rohitaçva, as his successor, Hariçchandra, his friends and followers, all ascend to heaven.”