Continuation of the adventures of Bhímaparákrama.
So, having received useful admonition, I left that forest and went to the city of Ujjayiní, for which I knew you were making, to find you. When I did not find you there, I entered the house of a certain woman to lodge, as I was worn out, and gave her money for food. She gave me a bed, and being tired I slept for some time, but then I woke up, and out of curiosity I remained quiet, and watched her, and while I was watching, the woman took a handful of barley, and sowed it all about inside the house, her lip trembling all the time with muttering spells. Those grains of barley immediately sprang up, and produced ears, and ripened, and she cut them down, and parched them, and ground them, and made them into barley-meal. And she sprinkled the barley-meal with water, and put it in a brass pot, and, after arranging her house as it was before, she went out quickly to bathe.
Then, as I saw that she was a witch, I took the liberty of rising up quickly; and taking that meal out of the brass pot, I transferred it to the meal-bin, and I took as much barley-meal out of the meal-bin, and placed it in the brass vessel, taking care not to mix the two kinds. Then I went back again to bed, and the woman came in, and roused me up, and gave me that meal from the brass pot to eat, and she ate some herself, taking what she ate from the meal-bin, and so she ate the charmed meal, not knowing that I had exchanged the two kinds. The moment she had eaten that barley-meal, she became a she-goat; then I took her and sold her by way of revenge to a butcher.[15]
Then the butcher’s wife came up to me and said angrily, “You have deceived this friend of mine—you shall reap the fruit of this.” When I had been thus threatened by her, I went secretly out of the town, and being weary I lay down under a banyan-tree, and went to sleep. And while I was in that state, that wicked witch, the butcher’s wife, came and fastened a thread on my neck. Then the wicked woman departed, and immediately I woke up, and when I began to examine myself, lo! I had turned into a peacock, though I still retained my intelligence.[16]
Then I wandered about for some days much distressed, and one day I was caught alive by a certain fowler. He brought me here and gave me to this Chaṇḍaketu, the principal warder of the king of the Bhillas, by way of a complimentary present. The warder, for his part, immediately made me over to his wife, and she put me in this house as a pet bird. And to-day, my prince, you have been guided here by fate, and have loosened the thread round my neck, and so I have recovered my human shape.
“So let us leave this place quickly, for this warder always murders next morning[17] the companions of his midnight rambles, for fear his secrets should be disclosed. And to-day he has brought you here, after you have been a witness of his nightly adventures, so fasten, my prince, on your neck this thread prepared by the witch, and turn yourself into a peacock, and go out by this small window; then I will stretch out my hand and loosen the thread from your neck, which you must put up to me, and I will fasten it on my own neck and go out quickly in the same way. Then you must loosen the thread round my neck, and we shall both recover our former condition. But it is impossible to go out by the door which is fastened from outside.”
When the sagacious Bhímaparákrama had said this, Mṛigánkadatta agreed to his proposal and so escaped from the house with him; and he returned to his lodging where his other two friends were; there he and his friends all spent the night pleasantly in describing to one another all their adventures.
And in the morning Máyávaṭu, the Bhilla king, the head of that town, came to Mṛigánkadatta, and after asking him whether he had spent the night pleasantly, he said to amuse him, “Come, let us play dice.” Then Mṛigánkadatta’s friend Śrutadhi, observing that the Bhilla had come with his warder, said to him, “Why should you play dice? Have you forgotten? To-day we are to see the dance of the warder’s peacock, which was talked about yesterday.” When the Śavara king heard that, he remembered, and out of curiosity sent the warder to fetch the peacock. And the warder remembered the wounds he had inflicted, and thought to himself, “Why did I in my carelessness forget to put to death that thief, who witnessed my secret nightly expedition, though I placed him in the peacock’s house? So I will go quickly, and do both the businesses.” And thereupon he went quickly home.
But when he reached his own palace and looked into the house where the peacock was, he could not find either the thief or the peacock. Then terrified and despondent he returned and said to his sovereign; “My lord, that peacock has been taken away in the night by a thief.” Then Śrutadhi said smiling, “The man who took away your peacock is renowned as a clever thief.” And when Máyávaṭu saw them all smiling, and looking at one another, he asked with the utmost eagerness what it all meant. Then Mṛigánkadatta told the Śavara king all his adventures with the warder; how he met him in the night, and how the warder entered the queen’s apartment as a paramour, and how he drew his knife in a quarrel; how he himself went to the house of the warder, and how he set Bhímaparákrama free from his peacock transformation, and how he escaped thence.
Then Máyávaṭu, after hearing that, and seeing that the maid in the harem had a knife-wound in the hand, and that when that thread was replaced for a moment on the neck of Bhímaparákrama, he again became a peacock, put his warder to death at once as a violator of his harem. But he spared the life of that unchaste queen, on the intercession of Mṛigánkadatta, and renouncing her society, banished her to a distance from his court. And Mṛigánkadatta, though eager to win Śaśánkavatí, remained some more days in the Pulinda’s town, treated with great consideration by him, looking for the arrival of the rest of his friends and his re-union with them.
[1] Literally, “water-men.” Perhaps they were of the same race as Grendel the terrible nicor. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, p. 185 and ff., Grimm’s Irische Märchen, p. cv, Kuhn’s Westfälische Märchen, Vol. II, p. 35, Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 187 and ff., and the 6th and 20th Játakas. See also Grohmann’s account of the “Wassermann,” Sagen aus Böhmen, p. 148.
[2] The MS. in the Sanskrit College seems to me to read púrṇośya.
[3] I read ’nyuveśustham, which is the reading of the Sanskrit College MS.
[4] The silk-cotton tree.
[5] Or Hansávalí.
[6] Or Kamalákara.
[7] It may also mean a host of Bráhmans or many birds and bees. It is an elaborate pun.
[8] Another pun! It may mean “by obtaining good fortune in the form of wealth.”
[9] For vátáyanoddeśát the Sanskrit College MS. reads cháyatanoddeśát; perhaps it means “entering to visit the temple.”
[10] Cp. Die Gänsemagd, Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, No. 89. See also Indian Fairy Tales, by Miss Stokes, No. 1; and Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, p. 100. In the 1st Tale of Basile’s Pentamerone, Liebrecht’s translation, a Moorish slave-girl supplants the princess Zoza. See also the 49th tale of the same collection. In Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, Nos. 33 and 34, we have tales of “A substituted Bride;” see Dr. Köhler’s notes.
[11] i. e., Vishṇu.
[12] The sword seems to be essential in these rites: compare the VIth book of the Æthiopica of Heliodorus, where the witch Cybele raises her son to life, in order that he may prophesy; see also the story of Kálarátri, Chapter 20 of this work.
[13] The debased form of Buddhism found throughout this work is no doubt the Tantra system introduced by Asanga in the sixth century of our era (Rhys Davids’ Manual of Buddhism, pp. 207, 208, 209.) To borrow Dr. Rajendralála Mitra’s words, who is speaking of even worse corruptions, (Introduction to the Lalita Vistara, p. 12) it is a wonder “that a system of religion so pure and lofty in its aspirations as Buddhism could be made to ally itself with such pestilent dogmas and practices.” The whole incantation closely resembles similar practices in the West. See Brand’s Popular Antiquities, Vol. III, pp. 56 and ff. especially the extract from Mason’s Anatomie of Sorcerie, 1612, p. 86—“Inchanters and charmers, they which by using of certaine conceited words, characters, circles, amulets, and such like wicked trumpery (by God’s permission) doo worke great marvailes: as namely in causing of sicknesse, as also in curing diseases in men’s bodies.
[14] Here there is a pun, as Kamalákara means a bed of lotuses, the word paksha meaning wing and also “side.” She was of good lineage by her father’s and mother’s side. Manorathasiddhi means “the attainment of desire.”
[15] Compare the Soldier’s Midnight Watch in Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 274.
[16] In the Golden Ass of Apuleius, Pamphile turns herself into an owl; when Apuleius asks to be turned into an owl, in order to follow her, Fotis turns him by mistake into an ass. See also the Ass of Lucian. The story of Circe will occur to every one in connection with these transformations. See also Baring Gould’s Myths of the Middle Ages, 1st Series, p. 143.
[17] I read prátaḥ for práyaḥ.