Chapter 25
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.
XXII.--HOW THE RÁJÁ'S SON WON THE PRINCESS LABÁM.
1. 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.
XXIII.--THE PRINCESS WHO LOVED HER FATHER LIKE SALT.
1. 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.
XXIV.--THE DEMON IS AT LAST CONQUERED BY THE KING'S SON.
1. 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 Garu[d.]a (the sovran of the feathered race and vehicle of Vish[n.]u, 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 pharmacopoeias. 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).
XXV.--THE FAN PRINCE.
1. 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.
XXVI.--THE BED.
The 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.
XXVII.--PÁNWPATTÍ RÁNÍ.
See another version of this tale in the Baital Pachísi, No. 1. There the heroine is called Padmávatí, and her father King Dantavát.
XXVIII.--THE CLEVER WIFE.
1. 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.]
XXIX.--RÁJÁ HARICHAND'S PUNISHMENT.
1. This king is probably the same as "The Upright King," Harchand Rájá, p. 68 of this collection.
2. The Kop Shástra. Múniyá says _kop_ is a Hindústání, not a Bengáli word, and has nothing whatever to do with demons. This is what Mr. Tawney writes on the subject: "It might mean _kapi_, or _kapila_ if the woman is a Bengáli. _Kapi_ is a name of Vish[n.]u, possibly it might be the Rámáyana as treating of monkeys, but I really do not know. I see Monier Williams says that there are certain demons called _kapa_. But of course _kópa_ is anger. I suppose you know that the natives of Bengal pronounce the short _a_ as _o_ in the English word _hop_." Múniyá pronounces _kop_ like the English word _cope_. This Shástra seems as hopelessly mythical as the _Rát-vashá-ke-dhán_.
XXX.--THE KING'S SON AND THE WAZÍR'S DAUGHTER.
In a Servian story, "Des Vaters letzter Wille," pp. 134, 135, 136, of the _Volksmaerchen der Serben_ collected by Karadschitsch, the youngest brother has to take his brother-in-law's horse over a bridge under which he sees an immense kettle full of boiling water in which men's heads are cooking while eagles peck at them. He then passes through a village where all is song and joyfulness because, so the inhabitants tell him, each year is fruitful with them and they live, therefore, in the midst of plenty. Then he sees two dogs quarrelling which he cannot succeed in separating. He next passes through a village where all is sorrow and tears because each year comes hail, so the inhabitants "have nothing." Next he sees two boars fighting together and cannot separate them any more than he could part the dogs. Lastly, he reaches a beautiful meadow. In the evening his brother-in-law expounds the meaning of all he has seen. The heads in the boiling vessel represent the everlasting torment in the next world. The happy villagers are good, charitable men, with whom God is well pleased. The dogs are his elder brothers' wives. The sorrowing villagers are men who know neither righteousness, concord, nor God. The boars are his two wicked elder brothers. The meadow is paradise.
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GLOSSARY.
Bél, a fruit; _Ægle marmelos_.
Bulbul, a kind of nightingale.
Chaprásí, a messenger wearing a badge (_chaprás_).
Cooly (Tamil _kúli_), a labourer in the fields; also a porter.
Dál, a kind of pulse; _Phaseolus aureus_, according to Wilson; _Paspalum frumentaceum_, according to Forbes.
Dom (the d is lingual), a low-caste Hindú.
Fakír, a Muhammadan religious mendicant.
Ghee (_ghí_), butter boiled and then set to cool.
Kází, a Muhammadan Judge.
Kotwál, the chief police officer in a town.
Líchí, a fruit; _Scytalia litchi_, Roxb.
Mahárájá (properly Maháráj), literally great king.
Mahárání, literally great queen.
Mainá, a kind of starling.
Maund (_man_), a measure of weight, about 87 lb.
Mohur (_muhar_), a gold coin worth 16 rupees.
Nautch (_nátya_), a union of song, dance, and instrumental music.
Pálkí, a palanquin.
Pice (_paisa_), a small copper coin.
Pilau, a dish made of either chicken or mutton, and rice.
Rájá, a king.
Rakshas, a kind of demon that eats men and beasts.
Rání, a queen.
Rohú, a kind of big fish.
Rupee (_rúpíya_), a silver coin, now worth about twenty pence.
Ryot (_ràíyat_), a cultivator.
Sarai, a walled enclosure containing small houses for the use of travellers.
Sárí, a long piece of stuff which Hindú women wind round the body as a petticoat, passing one end over the head.
Sepoy (_sipáhí_), a soldier.
Wazír, prime minister.
Yogí, a Hindú religious mendicant.
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LIST OF BOOKS REFERRED TO.
Bleek. _Hottentot Fables and Tales_, London, 1864.
Campbell, J. F. _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1860.
Dasent, G. _Norse Tales_, Edinburgh, 1859.
Dietrich, Anton. _Russische Volksmaerchen_, Leipzig, 1831.
Fiske. _Myth and Mythmakers_, London, 1873.
Frere, Miss. _Old Deccan Days_, 2nd edition, London, 1870.
Gonzenbach, Laura. _Sicilianische Maerchen_, Leipzig, 1870.
Grant, C. _Gazetteer of India for the Central Provinces_, edited by, 2nd edition, Nágpur, 1870.
Grey. _Polynesian Mythology_, London, 1855.
Grimm. _Kinder und Hausmaerchen_, 3 vols., Goettingen, first 2 vols. 1850, 3rd vol. 1856.
Grimm. _Irische Elfenmaerchen, uebersetzt von den Bruedern Grimm_, Leipzig, 1826.
Gubernatis, Angelo de. _Zoological Mythology_, 2 vols., London, 1870.
Guest, Lady Charlotte. _The Mabinogion_, translated by, 3 vols. Llandovery, 1849.
Haltrich, Joseph. _Deutsche Volksmaerchen aus dem Sachsenlande in Siebenbuergen_, Berlin, 1856.
Henderson. _Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Border_, London, 1866.
Hunt. _Romances and Drolls of the West of England_, 2nd edition, London, 1871.
_Indian Antiquary_, vols. I. (1872), II. (1873), and IV. (1875), Bombay.
Karadschitsch, W. S. _Volksmaerchen der Serben_, Berlin, 1854.
Lane. _Arabian Nights_, 3 vols., London, 1859.
_Lebar na Huidre._ Lithographic facsimile, Dublin, 1870.
Milenowsky. _Maerchen aus Boehmen_, Breslau, 1853.
Naake. _Slavonic Fairy Tales_, London, 1874.
_Old New Zealand_, 1876.
Ralston. _Songs of the Russian People_, London, 1872. _Russian Folk Tales_, London, 1873.
Rink. _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, Edinburgh and London, 1875.
_Sagas from the Far East_, London, 1873.
Schmidt, G. _Griechische Volksmaerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder_, Leipzig, 1877.
Schott. _Wallachische Maerchen_, Stuttgart und Tuebingen, 1845.
Stier, G. _Ungarische Maerchen und Sagen_, Berlin, 1850. _Ungarische Volksmaerchen_, Pesth (preface is dated 1857).
Taylor, Meadows. _Confessions of a Thug_, London, 1873.
Thorpe. _Yule Tide Stories_, London, 1853.
_Three Middle Irish Homilies_, Calcutta, 1877.
Tylor. _Primitive Culture_, 2nd edition, London, 1873.
Vogl, Johann, N. _Volksmaerchen_ [Slavonic], Wien, 1837.
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INDEX.
Adam and Eve, blackened after the Fall, 239
Alligator, 63 King of the Fishes, 66, 71
Angels, 77, 88, 116, 225
Antelopes, 85
Ants, grateful, 155, 161
Apsarases, 262
Ashes, Lailí becomes, 77 sugar turned into, 96
"Aunt," used to propitiate, 157, 262
Avatár, 265
Bádsháh, 237
Bag, magic, 156
Bamboo wand, 86, 98, 268
Barber outwits tigers, 35
Bear, 254 tries to kill cat, 19
Beauty, effects of, 62, 93, 142 radiance of, 1, 240, 241, 242
Bed, 201 magic, 156
Bees, Rakshases keeping their souls in, 261
Bél Princess, 138, 282
Bhágírathí river, 75