To story1. Majnún is a celebrated lover, whose love for Lailí or Lailá is the subject of many Eastern poems. In this story he does not play a brilliant part.
2. Lailí’s knife is like the sun-hero’s weapon (the sun’s ray), which lengthens at its owner’s pleasure (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 147).
3. She cuts her little finger. See “the Bél Princess,” p. 141, and paragraph 2 of the note to “Shekh Faríd.” “The little finger, though the smallest, is the most privileged of the five. It is the one that knows everything.” A Piedmontese mother says, “My little finger tells me everything” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 166). We have a somewhat similar saying in England. In a Russian story quoted by the same author in the same work (vol. II. p. 151), an old woman while baking a cake, cuts off her little finger and throws it into the fire. From the little finger in the fire is born a strong dwarf who afterwards does many wonderful things. In the tale of the five fingers (“Die Maehr von den fuenf Fingern,” Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 325), where each finger decides what it will do, the little one says, “I will help with wise counsel.” In consequence of this assistance, to this day, “when any one has a wise idea (Einfall), he says ‘that his little finger told him that’” (p. 327). In Finnish mythology we again find the little finger. “The Para, also originated in the Swedish Bjaeren or Bare, a magical three-legged being, manufactured in various ways, and which, says Castrén, attained life and motion when its possessor, cutting the little finger of his left hand, let three drops of blood fall on it, at the same time pronouncing the proper spell.” (“The Mythology of Finnland,” Fraser’s Magazine for May 1857, p. 532.)
In Rink’s Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 441, there is an account of Kanak’s visit to the man of the moon, where he meets a woman who, he is warned, will take out his entrails if she can only make him laugh. He follows the moon-man’s advice, which is to rub his leg with the nail of his little finger when he can no longer keep from smiling, and so saves himself from the old hag. Rishya Śriñga (to return to the land of our fairy tales) threw a drop of water from the nail of his little finger on a Rakshas who, in the form of a tiger, was rushing to devour him. The demon instantly quitted the tiger’s body, and asked the Rishi what he should do. He followed the holy man’s instructions and obtained môksha (salvation)—see Indian Antiquary for May 1873, p. 142, “The Legend of Rishya Śriñga,” told by V. N. Narasimmiyengar of Bangalor.
To story1. The Fakír strikes the dead antelope with his wand (chábuk), as in “Shekh Faríd,” p. 98. In both cases Dunkní says the wand used was a long, slender piece of bamboo. I do not know whether the bamboo is a lightning-plant. Possibly it is, being a grass (some grasses are lightning-plants, see Fiske’s Myths and Mythmakers, pp. 56, 61), and also because its long slender stems are lance-shaped. If it does belong to this class, naturally a blow from a bamboo (or lightning) wand would give life, for, says Fiske (ib. p. 60), “the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summer has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god.”
2. The king tries to hide the ball in his hair. The wonderful power and strength of hair appears in tales from all lands: Signor de Gubernatis suggests that, in the case of solar heroes, their hair is the sun’s rays (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 117, vol. II. p. 154); and it seems to me possible that, just as the colour of the solar hero’s hair has been appropriated by Indian fairy-tale princes who are not solar, the qualities of his hair may have been attributed to that of folk-lore heroes who are not solar, and may also have been the origin of some of the strange superstitions prevalent about human hair. This theory, if correct, would account for most of the strange things that I have hitherto met about hair. It must be remembered that the sun’s rays are also his weapons; they turn to thunderbolts when the sun is hidden in the rain-clouds (Gubernatis, ib. vol. I. pp. 9, 17), and also to lightning (see ib. vol. II. p. 10, where the sun under the form of a bull is spoken of as the fire which sends forth lightning).
First there is Samson, whose name, according to Gesenius, means “solar,” “like the sun.” Of the hero Firud, it is told “that a single hair of his head has more strength in it than many warriors” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 117). Conan was the weakest man of the Féinn, because they used to keep him cropped. “He had but the strength of a man; but if the hair should get leave to grow, there was the strength of a man in him for every hair that was in his head; but he was so cross that if the hair should grow he would kill them all” (Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. III. p. 396). At p. 91 of Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, is the story of a king, “Der Capitän Dreizehn,” who is “the strongest of his time,” and who has three long hairs, so long that they could be twisted twice round the hand on his breast. When these are cut off he becomes the weakest of men. When these grow again he regains his strength. The sun’s rays have most power when they are longest, i.e. when the sun is in apogee.
Possibly from this old forgotten myth about the solar hero’s hair came some superstition to which was due the Merovingian decree that only princes of the blood-royal should wear their hair long; cutting their long hair made them incapable of becoming kings. Their slaves were shaved. The barbarians ruled that only their free men should wear long hair, and that the slaves should be shaved. Professor Monier Williams, in the Contemporary Review for January 1879, p. 265, says that Govind, the 10th Guru and founder of the Sikh nationality, ordered the Sikhs to wear their hair long to distinguish themselves from other nations.
In the Slavonic story, “Leben, Abenteuer und Schwaenke des kleinen Kerza,” is a dwarf magician with a long white beard. With a hair from this beard Kerza binds the magician’s wicked wife, who has taken the form of a wooden pillar the better to carry out her evil ends. From that moment it was impossible for her to take again her own shape or to use her former magic powers (Vogl’s Volksmaerchen, p. 227). One of the tasks set by Yspaddaden Penkawr to Kilhwch before he will give him his daughter Olwen to wife, is to get him “a leash made from the beard of Dissull Varvawc, for that is the only one that can hold the two cubs. And the leash will be of no avail unless it be plucked from his beard while he is alive, and twitched out with wooden tweezers ... and the leash will be of no use should he be dead because it will be brittle,”—that is, when the sun is set (dead) his rays have no power (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 288). The same idea lies at the bottom of the English superstition that “if a person’s hair burn brightly when thrown into the fire, it is a sign of longevity; the brighter the flame, the longer the life. On the other hand, if it smoulder away, and refuse to burn, it is a sign of approaching death” (Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 84).
The Malays have a story of a woman, called Utahigi, in whose head grew a single white hair endowed with magic power. When her husband pulled it out a great storm arose and Utahigi went up to heaven. She was a bird (or cloud) maiden, and this hair must have been the lightning drawn from the cloud. The Servian Atalanta, when nearly overtaken by her lover, takes a hair from the top of her head and throws it behind her. It becomes a mighty wood (clouds are the forests and mountains of the sky, Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 11), Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 25, in the story “von dem Maedchen das behender als das Pferd ist.” In Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 79, the king’s daughter as she flies with her lover from the Lamnissa throws some of her own hairs behind her, and they become a great lake (thunderbolts and lightning bring rain). At p. 98 of the same work is the story “Der Riese vom Berge.” When this giant wishes to enter his great high mountain, he takes a hair from his head and touches the mountain with it. The mountain at once splits in two (p. 101). The king’s daughter in her encounter with the Efreet, “plucked a hair from her head and muttered with her lips, whereupon the hair became converted into a piercing sword with which she struck the lion [the Efreet], and he was cleft in twain by her blow; but his head became changed into a scorpion” (Lane’s Arabian Nights, vol. I. p. 156). A Baba Yaga, in Ralston’s Russian Folk Tales, p. 147, plucks one of her hairs, ties three knots in it, and blows, and thus petrifies her victims. She is a personification of the spirit of the storm, ib. p. 164. In Old Deccan Days, at p. 62, the old Rakshas says to Ramchundra, “You must not touch my hair;” “the least fragment of my hair thrown in the direction of the jungle would instantly set it in a blaze.” Ramchundra steals two or three of the hairs, and when escaping from the Rakshas, flings them to the winds and fires the jungle. Chandra (p. 266 of the same book) avenges the death of her husband by tearing her hair, which burns and instantly sets fire to the land; all the people in it but herself and a few who had been kind to her and are therefore saved, were burnt in this great fire.
In these tales a single hair from the head of the Princess Labám (the lunar ray can pierce the cloud as well as a solar ray) cuts a thick tree-trunk in two, p. 163.
Hair has another property; it can tell things to its owners. See the three hairs the Queen gives Coachman Toms, saying, “They will always tell you the truth when you question them.” (Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 176), and which, later in the story (p. 186) adjudge the king worthy of death. (See Grimm’s story Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 174, “The clear sun brings day.”) Also “Das wunderbare Haar” (Karadschitsch Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 180), which is blood-red, and in which when split open were found written a multitude of noteworthy events from the beginning of the world. (The sun’s rays have existed since the early ages of the world.) The girl from whose head the hair is taken threads a needle with the sun’s rays and embroiders a net made of the hair of heroes.
See, too, the Eskimo account of the removal of Disco Island in Rink’s Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 464, where one old man vainly tries to keep back the island by means of a seal-skin thong which snaps, while two other old men haul it away triumphantly by the hair from the head of a little child, chanting their spells all the time. Their success was, perhaps, due to the spells, not to the hair. In the notes to Der Capitän Dreizehn in Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, there are some instances of the strength given by hair to those on whom it grows.
2. The líchí is Nephelium Litchi.
3. King Burtal’s eldest son’s name Sazádá is perhaps the boy’s title Shahzádá (born of a king), prince. Dunkní says it is his name.
To story1. Kheláparí means “playful fairy:” Gulábsá, “like a rose.”
2. In another version told to me this year by Dunkní, when Gursan Rájá wakes and learns how long his wife has stood by him, he is horrified, and refuses the water, saying he does not want it. He tells her that as a reward for her patience and goodness, she shall know of herself everything that happens in other countries—floods, fires, and other troubles; that she shall be able to bring help; and should any one die from having his throat cut she shall be able to restore him to life, by smearing the wound with some blood taken from an incision in her little finger. Kheláparí’s acquaintance with Shekh Faríd begins in this version as follows:—She was standing at the door of her house looking down the road, when she saw coming towards her Shekh Faríd, the cartman, and the bullock-cart laden with what once was sugar, but now, thanks to the fakír, is ashes. Through her gift Kheláparí knows all that has happened, though the miracle was not performed in her sight; and Shekh Faríd being a fakír, though his all-knowing talent does not equal hers, knows that she knows. The cartman is in despair when he discovers the ashes, and implores Shekh Faríd to help him. The fakír sends him to Kheláparí, saying he must appeal to her as her power of doing good excels his (the fakír’s); that though he could turn sugar to ashes, he could not turn the ashes to sugar. Kheláparí at the cartman’s prayer performs this miracle. Their next encounter is by a tank in the jungle by which the holy man is resting. She is hurrying along to put out the fire at her father’s palace. The Shekh cannot understand how it is possible for any woman to know of herself what is happening twenty miles off, when he, a fakír, can only know what passes at a short distance, so he follows the Rání to test her truthfulness, and arrives in time to see her helping to put out the fire. The rest of the story is the same as the version printed in this collection.
3. This Shekh Faríd was a famous Súfí saint. He was a contemporary of Nának, and many of his sayings are embodied in the Granth. In Central India, there is a holy hill of his called Girur. The Gazetteer of the Central Provinces edited by C. Grant, 2nd edition, Nágpur, 1870, says that articles of merchandise belonging to two travelling traders who mocked the saint passed before him, on which he turned the whole stock-in-trade into stones as a punishment. They implored his pardon, and he created a fresh stock for them from dry leaves, on which they were so struck by his power that they attached themselves permanently to his service, and two graves on the hill are said to be theirs. In the Pioneer for 5th August 1878, Pekin has a poem on a similar legend about the saint. Standing on his holy hill, one day Shekh Faríd saw a packman pass and he begged for alms. The packman mocked him. Then the saint asked what his sacks contained. “Stones,” was the answer. The Shekh said, “Sooth—they are but worthless stones.” Whereupon all the sacks burst, and the contents, at one time different kinds of spices, fell stones to the ground. The owner implored the saint’s mercy. Shekh Faríd told him to fill his sacks with leaves from the trees, which was done, and then the leaves became gold mohurs. The packman turned saint too and left his bones on Girur. A similar miracle is told of the Irish Saint, Brigit. “Once upon a time Brigit beheld a man with salt on his back. ‘What is that on thy back?’ saith Brigit; ‘Stones,’ saith the man. ‘They shall be stones then,’ saith Brigit, and of the salt stones were made. The same man again cometh to (or past) Brigit. ‘What is that on thy back?’ saith Brigit. ‘Salt,’ saith the man. ‘It shall be salt then,’ saith Brigit. Salt was made again thereof through Brigit’s word.” (Three Middle Irish Homilies, p. 81.)
4. Fakírchand means the moon of fakírs. Mohandás, the servant of the Mohan (Krishṇa). Champákálí is a necklace made in imitation of the closed buds of the champa or champak flowers.
5. The demons, in Hindústání dew (pronounced deo), god, are something like the Rakshases. They have wings, and have exceedingly long lips, one of which sticks up in the air, while the other hangs down. One of King Arthur’s warriors, “Gwevyl, the son of Gwestad, on the day that he was sad, he would let one of his lips drop below his waist while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head” (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 266, “Kilhwch and Olwen”).
To story1. Unluckily, when Karím was with us, I neglected to write down the name of the grain that kills the mouse, and all the wonderful things he told us of the properties of this grain. His explanations were a kind of note given after he had finished the story.
2. The only parallel I can find to this story is one in Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 90, called “The unreasonable child to whom the dog gave its deserts; or a receipt for putting any one to sleep,” in which the child indulges in the uncalled for generosity and unreasonable rage of the mouse.
To story1. Ajít means unsubdued, invincible.
2. The wrestler’s mode of announcing his arrival at Ajít’s house is, probably, the solitary result of many efforts to induce Karím himself to knock at the nursery door before he marched into the nursery. I never heard of natives knocking at each other’s house-doors.
3. With these wrestlers compare Grimm’s “Der junge Riese,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 23, and “Eisenhans” in Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 77.
4. Ajít carries her house. Note by Mr. J. F. Campbell: “Compare an Irish story about Fionn and a giant who was told that the hero turned the house when the wind blew open the door.” [See, too, Campbell’s Tales of the Western Highlands, vol. III. p. 184]
5. When Karím was here I forgot to ask him how big were Ajít’s cakes, can, and mice. Mr. Campbell of Islay, who read this story in manuscript, wrote in the margin where the mice were mentioned: “The fleas in the island of Java are so big that they come out from under the bed and steal potatoes. They do many such things. Compare [with Ajít’s can] a Gaelic story about a man who found the Fenians in an island, and was offered a drink in a can so large that he could not move it.”
6. Mr. G. H. Damant, in the Indian Antiquary for September 1873, vol. II. p. 271, has a Dinájpur story called “Two gánja-eaters” which is very like our Wonderful Story. In it a gánja-eater who can eat six maunds of gánja[7] hears of another gánja-eater who can eat nine maunds; so he takes his six maunds of gánja, and sets off for his rival’s country with the intention of fighting him. On the road he is thirsty and drinks a whole pond dry, but this fails to quench his thirst. Arrived at the nine-maund gánja-eater’s house, he learns from the wife that her husband has gone to cut sugar-cane, and decides to go and meet him. He finds him in the jungle, and wishes to fight there and then; but his rival does not agree to this, saying he has eaten nothing for seven days. The other answers he has eaten nothing for nine; whereupon the nine-maund gánja-eater suggests they shall wait till they get back to his country, as in the jungle they will have no spectators. The six-maund gánja-eater consents. So the nine-maund gánja-eater takes up all the sugar-cane he has cut during the last seven days and sets off for his country with his rival. On the way they meet a fish-wife, and call her to stop and see them fight; she answers she must carry her fish without delay to market, being already late, and proposes they should stand on her arm and fight, and that then she could see them as they go along. While they are fighting on her arm, down sweeps a kite which carries off “the gánja-eaters; fish and all.” They are thrown by a storm in front of a Rájá’s daughter, who has them swept away thinking they are bits of straw.
[7] An intoxicating preparation of the hemp-plant (Cannabis sativa or C. indica).
To story1. Nánaksá, i.e. Nának Sháh, is doubtless the first guru of the Sikhs (about A.D. 1460-1530).
2. With the transmigration of the souls of the merchant’s father, grandmother, and sister into the goat, the old woman and his little daughter, compare a Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for June 7, 1872, vol. I. p. 172, in which a king threatens to kill a Bráhman if he does not explain what he means by saying to the king every day, “As thy liberality, so thy virtue.” By his new-born daughter’s advice the Bráhman tells the king this child would explain it to him. Accordingly the king comes to the Bráhman’s house and is received smilingly “by the two-and-a-half-days-old daughter. She sends the king for the desired information to a certain red ox, who in his turn” sends him to a clump of Shahara (Trophis aspera) trees. The trees tell him he has been made king in this state of existence, because in a former state of existence he was liberal and full of charity; that in this former state the child just born as the Bráhman’s daughter was his wife: that the red ox was then his son, and that this son’s wife, as a punishment for her hardness and uncharitableness, had “become the genius of this grove of trees.”
3. Jabrá’íl is the Archangel Gabriel.
To story1. For these marks see paragraph 4 of the notes to Phúlmati Rání. I think the silver chains with which King Oriant’s children are born (see the Netherlandish story, the Knight of the Swan, quoted in paragraph 3 of the notes to the Pomegranate King) are identical with the suns, moons, and stars that the hero in this and in many other tales possesses. They are his princely insignia and proofs of his royalty. When the boy in this tale twists his right ear his insignia are hidden, and so long as they remain concealed no one can guess he is a king’s son, unless he chooses to reveal himself, as he does, partially, through his sweet singing to the youngest princess. With this partial revelation compare the Sicilian “Stupid Peppe” revealing himself in part by means of the ring he gave to his youngest princess. This ring has the property of flashing brightly whenever he is near. (See the story “Von dem muthigen Königssohn, der viele Abenteuer erlebte” quoted in paragraph 6 of the notes to this story, p. 280.) The shape of the insignia may have been destroyed, as in the case of the sixth swan’s chain, in the Netherlandish story, but its substance remains, and as soon as it reappears the hero clothes himself with his own royal form. Chundun Rájá’s necklace (Old Deccan Days, p. 230) and Sodewa Bai’s necklace (ib. p. 236), in which lay their life, belong, perhaps, to these insignia. Their princely owners’ existence depends on their keeping these proofs of their royalty in their own possession, and is suspended whenever the proofs pass into the hands of others.
2. The gardener’s daughter promises to bear her husband a son with the moon on his forehead and a star on his chin. Compare “Die verstossene Königin und ihre beiden ausgesetzten Kinder,” Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 19, where the girl (p. 21) promises to give the king, if he marries her, a son with a golden apple in his hand, and a daughter with a silver star on her forehead. Also compare with our story “Truth’s Triumph” in Old Deccan Days, p. 50. In Indian stories, as in European tales, the gardener and his family often play an important part, the hero being frequently the son of the gardener’s daughter, or else protected by the gardener and his wife.
3. With the kettle-drum compare the golden bell given by the Rájá to Guzra Bai in “Truth’s Triumph” (Old Deccan Days, p. 53); and the flute given by the nymph Tillottama to her husband in the “Finding of the Dream,” a Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54. See also paragraph 7, p. 287, of notes to “How the Rájá’s son won the Princess Labám.”
4. Kaṭar (the t is lingual) means cruel, relentless. With this fairy-horse compare the Russian hero-horses in Dietrich’s collection of Russian tales, who remain shut up behind twelve iron doors, and often loaded with chains as well, till the advent of heroes great enough to ride them. They generally speak with human voices, are their masters’ devoted servants, fight for him, often slaughtering more of his enemies than he does himself, and when turned loose in the free fields, as Kaṭar was in his jungle, till they are needed, always staying in them and coming at once to their master when he calls. See in the collection by Dietrich (Russische Volksmaerchen) No. 1, “Von Ljubim Zarewitch,” &c., p. 3; No. 2, “Von der selbstspielenden Harfe,” p. 17; No. 4, “Von Ritter Iwan, dem Bauersohne,” p. 43; No. 10, “Von Bulat dem braven Burschen,” p. 133; Jeruslan Lasarewitsch in the story that bears his name (No. 17, p. 208) catches and tames a wonderful horse near which even lions and eagles do not dare to go, p. 214. And the Hungarian fairy horses (Zauberpferde) who, like the Servian hero-horses, become ugly and lame at pleasure, and speak with human voice, must also be compared to Kaṭar. One in particular plays a leading part in the story of “Weissnittle” (Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 61). He saves the king’s son twice from death and then flies with him to another land. He speaks with human voice, advises him in all his doings, and marries him to a king’s daughter; Weissnittle obeying his horse as implicitly as our hero does Kaṭar. The heroes’ horses in Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen also speak with human voice and give their masters good counsel. See p. 35 of “Der goldne Vogel;” p. 49 of “Der Zauberross;” p. 101 of “Der Knabe und der Schlange.” These last two horses have more than four legs: like Odin’s Sleipnir, they each have eight. See, too, the dragon’s horse and this horse’s brother in “Der goldne Apfelbaum und die neun Pfauinnen” (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, pp. 33-40). The “steed” in the “Rider of Grianaig,” pp. 14 and 15 of vol. III. of Campbell’s Tales of the Western Highlands, and the “Shaggy dun filly” in “The young king of Easaidh Ruadh,” at p. 4 of vol. I. of the same work, may also be compared; and, lastly, in a list of hero-horses Cúchulainn’s Gray of Macha deserves a place. On the morning of the day which was to see his last fight, Cúchulainn ordered his charioteer, Loeg, to harness the Gray to his chariot. “‘I swear to God what my people swears,’ said Loeg, ‘though the men of Conchobar’s fifth (Ulster) were around the Gray of Macha, they could not bring him to the chariot.... If thou wilt, come thou, and speak with the Gray himself.’ Cúchulainn went to him. And thrice did the horse turn his left side to his master.... Then Cúchulainn reproached his horse, saying that he was not wont to deal thus with his master. Thereat the Gray of Macha came and let his big round tears of blood fall on Cúchulainn’s feet.” The hero then leaps into his chariot, and goes to battle. At last the Gray is sore wounded, and he and Cúchulainn bid each other farewell. The Gray leaves his master; but when Cúchulainn, wounded to death, has tied himself to a stone pillar to die standing, “then came the Gray of Macha to Cúchulainn to protect him so long as his soul abode in him, and the ‘hero’s light’ out of his forehead remained. Then the Gray of Macha wrought the three red routs all around him. And fifty fell by his teeth and thirty by each of his hooves. This is what he slew of the host. And hence is (the saying) ‘Not keener were the victorious courses of the Gray of Macha after Cúchulainn’s slaughter.’” Then Lugaid and his men cut off the hero’s head and right hand and set off, driving the Gray before them. They met Conall the Victorious, who knew what had happened when he saw his friend’s horse. “And he and the Gray of Macha sought Cúchulainn’s body. They saw Cúchulainn at the pillar-stone. Then went the Gray of Macha and laid his head on Cúchulainn’s breast. And Conall said, ‘A heavy care to the Gray of Macha is that corpse.’” Conall himself, in the fight he has with Lugaid, to avenge his friend’s slaughter, is helped by his own horse, the Dewy-Red. “When Conall found that he prevailed not, he saw his steed, the Dewy-Red, by Lugaid. And the steed came to Lugaid and tore a piece out of his side.” (“Cúchulainn’s Death, abridged from the Book of Leinster,” Revue celtique, Juin 1877, pp. 175, 176, 180, 182, 183, 185.)
5. The prince makes his escape at five years old. Jeruslan Jeruslanowitsch at the same age sets out in search of his father, Jeruslan Lasarewitsch, equipped as a knight, at p. 250 of the 17th Russian Maerchen in the collection by Dietrich quoted above. He meets and fights bravely with his father, proving himself worthy of him (p. 251). Sohrab, Rustam’s famous son, gives proof of a lion’s courage at five, and at ten years old vanquishes all his companions (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 115).
6. The princess chooses the ugly common-looking man. In Old Deccan Days, p. 119, so does the Princess Buccoulee. In the episode of Nala and Damayantí we have the assemblage of suitors, and the public choice of a husband by a princess (svayamvara). Damayantí recognizes the mortal Nala among the gods, (each of whom has made himself resemble Nala) from the fact that the flowers of which Nala’s garlands were composed had faded while the garlands of the gods were blooming freshly. In a story from Manípúrí told by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, September 1875, vol. IV. p. 260, Prince Basanta, effectually disguised by misery, and travel-stained, arrives with the merchant at a certain place where the king’s daughter that day is to choose her husband. The merchant takes his seat among the princely suitors; Basanta a little way off. There is a general storm of scoffings when the princess hangs her garland of flowers round Basanta’s neck. In one of Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilian stories, “Von einem muthigen Königssohn, der viele Abenteuer erlebte,” vol. II. p. 21, we have three kings’ sons (brothers) and three princesses (sisters.) The two elder brothers marry the two elder sisters. At a tournament held on purpose that she may choose her husband, the youngest sister, to the general disgust, chooses the youngest prince (disguised as the dirty, ill-dressed servant of the court tailor), and who is not even present as a suitor. Her suitors, princes, have passed before her for three days. After the marriage the prince keeps up the disguise. His brothers by way of amusing themselves at his expense take “Stupid Peppe,” as they call him, to the wood to shoot birds; he shoots a great number, while they run here and there and cannot find one. They agree to let him brand them with black spots on their shoulders, on condition he gives them his birds. In the notes to this story, vol. II. p. 240. Herr Köhler gives Spanish, Russian, South Siberian, and others parallels. And in Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 61, in the story of “Weissnittle,” we have not only the hero-horse mentioned in paragraph 4 of these notes, but also the assemblage of suitors for the princess to choose her husband: her choice of a seemingly stupid gardener’s boy, who has partially revealed himself to her; the prince retaining his disguise, after his marriage, towards every one, even his wife: two brothers-in-law, who are kings’ sons and the wife’s elder sisters’ husbands; their hunting on three different days, each time meeting a handsome prince in whom they do not recognize their despised brother-in-law, Weissnittle, who sells them his game the first day for their wedding-rings, the second for leave to brand them with these rings on their foreheads, the third for permission to brand them with a gallows on their backs: lastly, we have Weissnittle, as a splendid young prince, publicly shaming his brothers-in-law by exposing their branding marks. In India this branding with red-hot pice was the punishment for stealing. Compare in Taylor’s Confessions of a Thug, p. 411, Amír Ali’s horror at being so branded by the Rájá of Jhalone. It was, he says years later, a punishment worse than death, as the world would think him a thief, and he would carry to his grave “a mark only set on the vile and the outcasts from society.”
7. Múniyá tells me that, in a variation of this story, the dog, cow, and horse each swallow the child three times, but for shorter periods, as he is only five years old when he escapes on Kaṭar. Then when the princess chooses her husband she rides three times round the assemblage of Rájá’s, who all sit on a great plain, and each time she chooses the pretended old man; for in this version the boy loses his youth as well as his good looks. Instead of taking service with the grain merchant, the boy is told by his horse to go boldly to the king’s palace and ask for service there. The shaming of the brothers-in-law happens thus. The boy invites these princes, the king, all the king’s servants, and all the people in the king’s country, to a grand entertainment in the king’s court-house. When they are all assembled he has the six princes stripped and every one mocks at the pice-marks on their backs. These are the only variations in the other version.
Sir George Grey, in his Polynesian Mythology, p. 73, tells how the hero Tawhaki when he climbed into heaven in search of his lost wife “disguised himself, and changed his handsome and noble appearance, and assumed the likeness of a very ugly old man.” If fact, he looks such a thoroughly common old man that in the heavens he is taken for a slave instead of a great chief, and treated as such.
To story1. Múniyá says that telling the prince he would marry a Bél-Princess was equivalent to saying he would not marry at all, for these brothers’ wives knew she lived in the fairy-country, and that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for the prince to find her, and take her from it.
2. With the fakír’s sleep compare that of the dragon who sleeps for a year at a time in the Transylvanian story “Das Rosenmaerchen” (Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 124, 126).
3. In a Greek story, “Das Schloss des Helios” (Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 106), the heroine is warned by a monk that as she approaches the magic castle voices like her brothers’ voices will call her; but if, consequently, she looks behind she will become stone. Her two elder brothers go to seek her, and, as they meet no monk to warn them, they become stone. The third brother meets the monk, obeys his warning, and thus, like his sister, escapes the evil fate. To save him from Helios, the sister turns him into a thimble till she has Helios’s promise to do him no harm. (Compare the Tiger and Tigress, p. 155 of this collection.) Helios gives him some water in a flask with which he sprinkles the stone brothers, whereupon they and all the other stone princes come to life. In these Indian tales the healing blood from the little finger plays the part of the waters of life and death, found in so many Russian and other European stories.
When reading of the fate of all these princes, it is impossible not to think of Lot’s wife.
The danger of looking back, when engaged on any dealings with supernatural powers, is insisted on in the tales and practices of the Russians, Eskimos, Zulus, and the Khonds of Orissa. In Russia the watcher for the golden fern-flower must seize it the instant it blossoms and run home, taking care not to look behind him: whether through fear of giving the demons, who also watch for it, power over him, or whether through a dread of the flower losing its magic powers if this precaution is neglected, Mr. Ralston does not say (Songs of the Russian People, p. 99). When “the Revived who came to the under-world people” (Dr. Rink tells us in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 299) took the old couple to visit the ingnersuit (supernatural beings “who have their abodes beneath the surface of the earth, in the cliffs along the sea-shore, where the ordinarily invisible entrances to them are found” ib. p. 46), he warned “them not to look back when they approached the rock which enclosed the abode of the ingnersuit, lest the entrance should remain shut for them.... When they had reached the cliff, and were rowing up to it, it forthwith opened; and inside was seen a beautiful country, with many houses, and a beach covered with pebbles and large heaps of fish and matak (edible skin). Perceiving this the old people for joy forgot the warning and turned round, and instantly all disappeared: the prow of the boat knocked right against the steep rock and was smashed in, so that they all were thrown down by the shock. The son [the revived] said, ‘Now we must remain apart for ever.’” Mr. Tylor, in the 2nd volume of his Primitive Culture, at p. 147 mentions a Zulu remedy for preventing a dead man from tormenting his widow in her dreams; the sorcerer goes with her to lay the ghost, and when this is done “charges her not to look back till she gets home:” and he says the Khonds of Orissa, when offering human sacrifices to the earth-goddess bury their portions of the offering in holes in the ground behind their backs without looking round (ib. p. 377).
4. In most of the stories of this kind the command is to open the fruit or casket only near water, for if the beautiful maiden inside cannot get water immediately she dies. Such is the case in the “Drei Pomeranzen” (Stier’s Ungarische Maerchen und Sagen, p. 83), in “Die Schoene mit dem sieben Schleier” (Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 73), and in “Die drei Citronen” (Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 71). “Die Ungeborene Niegesehene” (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen, p. 248) must be compared with these, though the beautiful maiden does not come out of the golden fairy-apple. She appears suddenly and the prince must give her water to drink and the apple to eat, before he can take her and keep her. In all these stories the hero has a long journey, and encounters many dangers, in seeking his bride. In the Sicilian story he is helped by hermits; in the Greek story, by a monk—monks in Greek and hermits in Sicilian and Servian stories playing the part of the fakírs in these Indian tales. In all these stories, too, the maiden is killed or transformed by a wicked woman who takes her place. In the Wallachian and Sicilian fairy tales the rightful bride becomes a dove only. But in the Hungarian tale she is drowned in a well and becomes a gold fish; the wicked gipsy has no rest till she has eaten the fish’s liver: from one of its scales springs a tree; she has the tree cut down and burnt. The wood-cutter who hews down the tree makes a cover for his wife’s milk-pot from a piece of the wood, and they find their house kept in beautiful order from this moment. So to discover the secret, they peep through the keyhole one day and see a lovely fairy come out of the milk-jar. Then they enter their house suddenly and the girl tells her story: the wood-cutter’s wife burns the wooden lid to force her to keep her own form, and goes to the king’s son to tell him where he will find his Pomegranate-bride again. In the Greek story a Lamnissa eats the citron-girl, but a tiny bone falls unnoticed into the water and becomes a gold-fish. The prince not only takes the Lamnissa home with him, but he takes the gold-fish too, and keeps it in his room, “for he loved it dearly.” The Lamnissa never rests till he gives her the fish to eat. Its bones are thrown into a garden and from them springs a rose bush on which blooms a rose which the king’s old washerwoman wishes to break off to sell it at the castle. From out of the bush springs the beautiful citron-maiden, and tells the old woman her story. She also gives her the rose for the king’s son, and in the basket with the rose she lays a ring he had given her, but charges the old woman to say nothing about her to him. The next day he comes to the old woman’s cottage and finds his real bride.
5. The youngest prince alone can gather the lotus-flower and bél-fruit. Compare the Pomegranate-king, pp. 10 and 11, and paragraphs 1 and 4, pp. 245, 252, of the notes to that story. In his Northern Mythology, vol. I., in the footnotes at p. 290, Thorpe mentions a maiden’s grave from which spring “three lilies which no one save her lover may gather.” I think he must quote from a Danish ballad.
6. The princess after drowning is first in a lotus-flower; then in a bél-fruit again; and, lastly, her body is changed to a garden and palace. Signor de Gubernatis at p. 152 of the 1st volume of his Zoological Mythology mentions an Esthonian story where a girl (she who addressed the crow as “bird of light”—see paragraph 2, p. 259 of the notes to “Brave Hírálálbásá”) while fleeing with her lover is thrown into the water by a magic ball sent after them by the old witch, and there becomes “a pond-rose (lotus-flower).” Her lover eats hogs’-flesh and thus learns the language of birds, and then sends swallows to a magician in Finnland to ask what he must do to free his bride. The answer is brought by an eagle; and the prince following the magician’s instructions helps the girl to recover her human form. And just as Surya Bai is born again in her mango (Old Deccan Days, p. 87) and the Bél-Princess in her bél-fruit, so is the girl in the Hottentot tale of “The Lion who took a woman’s shape” born from her heart in the calabash full of milk in which her mother has put it. The lion had eaten the girl; but her mother burns the lion and persuades the fire in which she burns him to give her her daughter’s heart (Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, pp. 55 and 56). With the change into the garden and palace compare the Russian story of a maiden whose servant-girl blinds her and takes her place as the king’s wife. After some time the false queen learns her mistress is still living; so she has her murdered and cut to pieces. “Where the maiden is buried a garden arises, and a boy shows himself. The boy goes to the palace and runs after the queen, making such a din that she is obliged, in order to silence him, to give him the girl’s heart which she had kept hidden. The boy then runs off contented, the king follows him, and finds himself before the resuscitated maiden” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. pp. 218, 219). See paragraphs 7 and 8 of the notes to “Phúlmati Rání,” p. 244, and 1, 3 and 4, pp. 245, 250, 252, of those to “The Pomegranate-king.”
7. The commonplace fate of the wonderful palace is deplorable.
To story1. The “four sides” in this story (p. 153), the “four directions” (p. 156) which ought to have been translated four sides and the four sides in “The Bed,” p. 202, are the four points of the compass. They appear in a Dinájpur story told by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, 5th April 1872, p. 115. In the first Russian fairy tale published by Dietrich, the hero’s parents give their elder sons permission “to go on the four sides” when they start on their journeys (Russische Volksmaerchen, p. 1). In another fairy tale in the same collection (No. 11, p. 144) the Prince Malandrach, when he has lost his way flying in the air and is over the sea, raises himself by a last effort and looks on all the “four sides” in search of a resting-place for his foot, p. 147. Of course, too, like orthodox Russians, the Russian heroes generally bow to all the “four sides,” before attempting their journeys and adventures.
2. Híráman is the name of a kind of parroquet. Irik in the Bohemian tale “Princess Golden-Hair” (Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 99) first hears of the princess’s existence from the chattering of birds.
3. “Aunty” was the word used in English by old Múniyá.
4. With the stone bowl compare the pot in Grimm’s “Der suesse Brei,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 104.
5. With the tigers’ coats compare the robes of honour wherewith the knights in the Mabinogion clothe themselves when they go to combat. “And he (Gwalchmai) went forth to meet the knight (Owain), having over himself and his horse a satin robe of honour sent him by the daughter of the Earl of Rhangyw; and in this dress he was not known by any of the host” (“The Lady of the Fountain,” Mabinogion, vol. I. p. 67). Peredur wears “a bright scarlet robe of honour over his armour” given him by the king’s daughter (ib. p. 363 of “Peredur the son of Evrawc”). And in “The Dream of Rhonabwy” a knight and his horse wear a robe of honour (ib. vol. II. p. 413).
6. With the tigers’ fight with the demons compare the combat of the grateful lion with the giant, in which the lion bears the brunt of the battle. On the giant’s saying, “Truly, I should find no difficulty in fighting with thee were it not for the animal that is with thee,” Owain shuts the lion up in the castle. “The lion in the castle roared very loud, for he heard that it went hard with Owain,” so he climbed to the top of the castle, sprang down and “joined Owain. And the lion gave the giant a stroke with his paw, which tore him from his shoulder to his hip, and his heart was laid bare. And the giant fell down dead” (“The Lady of the Fountain,” Mabinogion, vol. I. pp. 79, 80).
7. Gubernatis in vol. I. p. 160, of his Zoological Mythology, says, “The drum or kettle-drum thunder is a familiar image in Hindu poetry, and the gandharvas, the musician warriors of the Hindu Olympus, have no other instrument than the thunder.” “The magic flute is a variation of the same celestial instrument,” ib. p. 161.
8. For the hair, see note to “How King Burtal became a Fakír,” paragraph 2, p. 268.
To story1. With the task of pulling out the needles, the purchase of the maid-servant, the sleep of the princess, the usurping of her place by the maid who makes the prince believe the princess is her servant-girl, compare “Der böse Schulmeister und die wandernde Königstochter,” in Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 59. Here, too, the princess is driven forth from her home; she finds a prince lying dead with a tablet by him on which is written, “If a maiden will rub me seven years, seven months and seven days long with grass from Mount Calvary, I shall return to life, and she shall become my wife” (p. 61).
2. Sun-jewel box. The word thus translated is Rav-ratan-ke-pitárá. Raví, sun; ratan, jewel; pitárá, a kind of box.
3. In one of Grimm’s stories, “Die Gänsehirtin am Brunnen,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 419, a king asks his three daughters how much they love him (p. 425). The eldest loves him as much as the “sweetest sugar,” the second as much as her “finest dress,” and the third as much as salt. So her father in a rage has a sack of salt bound on her back, and makes two of his servants take her away to the forest. See also Auerbach’s Barfüssele, Stuttgart, 1873, ss. 236, 237.
To story1. The leading idea of this story is the same as that in “Brave Hírálálbásá.”
2. With this demon as a goat, compare the Rakshas in the Pig’s Head Soothsayer in Sagas from the Far East, p. 63, and the Rakshas in a Bengáli story printed by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, 7th June, 1872, p. 120. This last story opens with seven labourers, brothers, six of whom go down to the water to drink and never return. The seventh goes to see what has happened to them, and finds, instead of his brothers, a goat which is really a Rakshas. This goat then turns into a beautiful woman who marries the king, first making him give into her hands the eyes of his queen, who is sent blind into the forest, where she bears a little son. The Rakshas wife learns this, and when the boy later takes service with the king she sends him three times to her people in Ceylon, with orders to them to kill him. He has to bring her foam from the sea, a wonderful rice which is sown, ripens, and can be boiled in one day, and a singular cow. With the help of a Sannyásí (a Bráhman of the fourth order, a religious mendicant), he does these errands safely. The Rakshases in Ceylon receive him as their sister’s son, show him his own mother’s eyes and the clay with which they can be set again in any human sockets, a lemon which contains the life of the tribe, and a bird in which is that of the Rakshas-queen. The boy cuts up the lemon, and thereby kills them all, carries her eyes to his mother, and kills the Rakshas-queen by killing the bird. In this story, as in “Brave Hírálálbásá,” the Rakshas-queen takes her own fearful form on seeing her danger.
3. The Bargat, fig-tree, is the Ficus Bengalensis of Linnæus.
4. Múniyá sends her hero for a Garpank’s feather; Garpank I can find in no dictionary, but have ventured to translate it by eagle, as she says it is like a kite, only very much bigger; she sent us to see a statue of a garpank that stood over a gateway in a street in Calcutta, which might be that of an eagle or of a huge hawk. She said such birds did not exist in Bengal, and that it was not the Garuḍa (the sovran of the feathered race and vehicle of Vishṇu, Benfey). Gubernatis, in the 2nd volume of his Zoological Mythology, p. 189, tells a story from Monferrat where a king is blind, and can only be cured by “bathing his eyes in oil with a feather” of a griffin that lives on a high mountain. His third and youngest son catches and brings him one of the griffins and the king regains his sight.
5. Winning the gratitude of a bird by killing the snake or dragon that year after year devours its young birds is such a common incident in fairy tales, that I will only mention two instances. One occurs in a Dinájpur tale published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for 5th April, 1872, p. 145, where the hero saves the young birds from the snake. They tell the old birds. He lies under the tree and listens to the old birds relating how he will find the tree with the silver stem and golden branches he has come to seek. The other occurs at pp. 119, 110, of a story collected by Vogl (Volksmaerchen [Slavonic], p. 79) called Schön-Jela. In this tale the hero is sheltered in the dreadful underground wilderness by a hermit. Here there is the gigantic bird, Einja, who every third year has a brood of four young birds which a dragon as regularly devours. The hero, Prince Milan, watches by the nest for the dragon and kills him. The young birds, overjoyed, fly out of the nest and cover the hero with their wings till the old bird on her return asks who has saved them. Then they unfold their wings and she sees Prince Milan. In return she carries him to the upper world.
6. The word translated “night-growing rice” is Rát-vashá-ke-dhán; and the ayah’s description of this rice is given in the story. In this description she spoke of it as cháwal, the common word for uncooked rice, and said the Rakshas wished to drink its kánjí-pání (rice-water). As it is a fairy plant I am afraid it is hopeless trying to find its botanical name. Unluckily, Dr. George King says vashá is not rice at all. This is what he wrote to me on the subject: “Vashá is, I suppose, the same as vasaka, and in that case is Justitia Adhatoda, a straggling shrub common over the whole of India [very unlike the Rát-vashá-ke-dhán] and which was in the Sanscrit as it is in the native pharmacopœias. It is not a kind of rice, but belongs to the natural order of Acanthaceæ (the family to which Acanthus and Thunbergia belong).” This night-growing rice may be compared to the day-growing rice in paragraph 2, p. 288, of the notes to this story.
7. Compare with the paper boat the rolled-up burdock leaf given to the hero by the dwarf in the seventh Esthonian tale quoted by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 155): whenever this hero wishes to cross water he unrolls his burdock-leaf. Gubernatis compares this leaf to the lotus-leaf on which the Hindús represented their god as floating in the midst of the waters (ibid.).
8. With the great wind that comes from the demon, compare the following Swedish account of a giant in Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. II. p. 85. He asks his road of a lad, who directs him: then “he went off as in a whirlwind, and the lad now discovered, to his no small astonishment, that his forefinger with which he had pointed out the way had followed along with the giant.” In the old Scandinavian belief the Giant Hræsvelgr sat at the end of heaven in an eagle’s garb (arna ham). From the motion of his wings came the wind which passed over men (ib. vol. I. p. 8). It must be mentioned also that “in the German popular tales the devil is frequently made to step into the place of the giants” (ib. vol. I. p. 234), and that Stöpke or Stepke is in Lower Saxony an appellation of the devil or of the whirlwind, from which proceed the fogs which spread over the land (ib. p. 235). The devil sits in the whirlwind and rushes howling and raging through the air (Mark Sagen, ib. p. 377). The whirlwind is also ascribed to witches. If a knife be cast into it, the witch will be wounded and become visible (Schreiber’s Taschenbuch, 1839, p. 323; ib. vol. I. p. 235). Mr. Ralston, in his Songs of the Russian People, p. 382, says the Russian peasant attributes whirlwinds to the mad dances in which the devil celebrates his marriage with a witch, and at p. 155 of the same book tells us how the malicious demon Lyeshy not only makes use of the whirlwind as a travelling conveyance for himself and a means of turning intruders out of quarters he had selected for his own refuge, but sends home in it people to whom he is grateful. In Ireland we find a wind blowing from hell. King Loegaire tells Patrick, “I perceived the wind cold, icy, like a two-ridged spear, which almost took our hair from our heads and passed through us to the ground. I questioned Benén as to this wind. Said Benén to me, ‘This is the wind of hell which has opened before Cúchulainn.’” Lebar na huidre, p. 113 a. This “wind of hell” makes one think of the sweet-scented wind from the mid-day regions, and the evil-scented wind from the north, which in old Persian religious belief blew to meet pure and wicked souls after death (Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. II. pp. 98, 99). Mr. Tylor mentions also the Fanti negroes’ belief that the men and animals they sacrifice to the local fetish are carried away in a whirlwind imperceptibly to the worshippers (ib. p. 378).
8. Ábjhamjham-ke pání is what has been translated by “water from the glittering well.”
9. The king had a great pit dug in the jungle. This is how Kai and Bedwyr plucked out the beard of Dillus Varvawc, which had to be plucked out during life. They made him eat meat till he slept. “Then Kai made a pit under his feet, the largest in the world, and he struck him a violent blow, and squeezed him into the pit. And there they twitched out his beard completely with the wooden tweezers; and after that they slew him altogether” (“Kilhwch and Olwen,” Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 304).
To story1. The boat would not move because the king had forgotten to get the thing his youngest daughter had asked him to bring her. Signor de Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 382) mentions an unpublished story from near Leghorn in which a sailor promises to bring his youngest daughter a rose. The eldest daughter is to have a shawl, and the second a hat. “When the voyage is over, he is about to return, but having forgotten the rose, the ship refuses to move; he is compelled to go back to look for a rose in a garden; a magician hands the rose with a little box to the father to give it to one of his daughters, whom the magician is to marry. At midnight, the father, having returned home, relates to his third daughter all that had happened. The little box is opened; it carries off the third daughter to the magician, who happens to be King Pietraverde, and is now a handsome young man.”
2. The princess’s ring recalls Portia and Nerissa.
3. A yogí is a Hindú religious mendicant.
To storyThe merchant’s son possibly was afraid of incurring the wrath either of an original spirit residing in the tree, or of some human soul who had been born again as its genius (see paragraph 1, p. 276, of note to “The fakír Nánaksá saves the merchant’s life”). Múniyá could give no reason for his asking each tree’s permission to cut it down.
To storySee another version of this tale in the Baital Pachísi, No. 1. There the heroine is called Padmávatí, and her father King Dantavát.
To story1. The merchant’s wife tricks the four men into chests. Upakosá makes the like appointments, and plays a similar trick: compare her story translated from the Kathápítha by Dr. G. Bühler in the Indian Antiquary for 4th October, 1872, pp. 305, 306: and in “The Touchstone,” a Dinájpur legend told by Mr. G. H. Damant at p. 337 of the Indian Antiquary for December, 1873, the hero-prince’s second wife, Pránnásiní, in order to regain the touchstone for her husband (like Upakosá and the Clever Wife) makes appointments with, and then tricks, the kotwál, the king’s councillor, the prime minister, and lastly the king himself.
2. She plays cards (tás). Forbes in his Hindústání and English Dictionary p. 543, says tás is the word used for Indian playing cards. The Indian pack, he says, contains eight suits, each suit consisting of a king, wazír, and ten cards having various figures represented on them from one to ten in number.
[A close parallel to this tale is Adi’s Wife, a Bengáli legend from Dinagepore, told by the late Mr. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for January, 1880, p. 2.]