Chapter 24

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.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] An intoxicating preparation of the hemp-plant (_Cannabis sativa_ or _C. indica_).

XIX.--THE FAKÍR NÁNAKSÁ SAVES THE MERCHANT'S LIFE.

1. 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.

XX.--THE BOY WHO HAD A MOON ON HIS FOREHEAD AND A STAR ON HIS CHIN.

1. 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. _Ka[t.]ar_ (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 Ka[t.]ar 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 Ka[t.]ar. 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 Ka[t.]ar. 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 Ka[t.]ar. 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.

XXI.--THE BÉL-PRINCESS.

1. 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.