Note on Chapter XIII.
With regard to the incident of the bitch and the pepper in the story of Devasmitá see the note in the 1st volume of Wilson’s Essays on Sanskrit Literature. He says: “This incident with a very different and much less moral dénouement is one of the stories in the Disciplina Clericalis, a collection of stories professedly derived from the Arabian fabulists and compiled by Petrus Alfonsus a converted Jew, who flourished about 1106 and was godson to Alfonso I, king of Arragon. In the Analysis prepared by Mr. Douce, this story is the 12th, and is entitled “Stratagem of an old woman in favour of a young gallant.” She persuades his mistress who had rejected his addresses that her little dog was formerly a woman, and so transformed in consequence of her cruelty to her lover. (Ellis’s Metrical Romances, I, 130.) This story was introduced into Europe, therefore, much about the time at which it was enrolled among the contents of the Vṛihat Kathá in Cashmir. The metempsychosis is so much more obvious an explanation of the change of forms, that it renders it probable the story was originally Hindu. It was soon copied in Europe, and occurs in Le Grand as La vieille qui séduisit la jeune fille. III. 148 [ed. III. Vol. IV. 50]. The parallel is very close and the old woman gives “une chienne à manger des choses fortement saupoudrèes de senève qui lai picotait le palais et les narines et l’animal larmoyait beaucoup.” She then shows her to the young woman and tells her the bitch was her daughter. “Son malheur fut d’avoir le cœur dur; un jeune homme l’aimait, elle le rebuta. Le malheureux après avoir tout tenté pour l’ attendrir, désespéré de sa dureté en prit tant de chagrin qu’il tomba malade et mourut. Dieu l’a bien vengè; voyez en quel état pour la punir il a reduit ma pauvre fille, et comment elle pleure sa faute.” The lesson was not thrown away. The story occurs also in the Gesta Romanorum as “The Old Woman and her Dog” [in Bohn’s edition it is Tale XXVIII], and it also finds a place where we should little have expected to find it, in the Promptuarium of John Herolt of Basil, an ample repository of examples for composing sermons: the compiler a Dominican friar, professing to imitate his patron saint, who always abundabat exemplis in his discourses.” [In Bohn’s edition we are told that it appears in an English garb amongst a translation of Æsop’s Fables published in 1658.] Dr. Rost refers us to Th. Wright, Latin Stories, London, 1842, p. 218. Loiseleur Deslongchamps Essai sur les Fables Indiennes, Paris, 1838, p. 106 ff. F. H. Von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, 1850 I, cxii. ff and Grässe, I. 1, 374 ff. In Gonzenbach’a Sicilianische Märchen, No. 55, Vol. I, p. 359, Epomata plays some young men much the same trick as Devasmitá, and they try in much the same way to conceal their disgrace. The story is the second in my copy of the Śuka Saptati.
[1] Cp. the way in which Rüdiger carries off the daughter of king Osantrix, Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, Vol. I, p. 227.
[2] τηρήσαντες νύκτα χειμέριον ὕδατι καὶ ἀνέμῳ καὶ ἅμ’ ἀσέληνον ἐξῇσαν. Thucyd. III. 22.
[3] The word dasyu here means savage, barbarian. These wild mountain tribes called indiscriminately Śavaras, Pulindas, Bhillas &c., seem to have been addicted to cattle-lifting and brigandage. So the word dasyu comes to mean robber. Even the virtuous Śavara prince described in the story of Jímútaváhana plunders a caravan.
[4] Cathay?
[5] Compare the rose garland in the story of the Wright’s Chaste Wife; edited for the early English Text Society by Frederick J. Furnivall, especially lines 58 and ff.
“Wete thou wele withowtyn fable
“Alle the whyle thy wife is stable
“The chaplett wolle holde hewe;
“And yf thy wyfe use putry
“Or telle eny man to lye her by
Then welle yt change hewe,
And by the garland thou may see,
Fekylle or fals yf that sche be,
Or elles yf she be true.
See also note in Wilson’s Essays on Sanskrit Literature, Vol. I, p. 218. He tells us that in Perce Forest the lily of the Kathá Sarit Ságara is represented by a rose. In Amadis de Gaul it is a garland which blooms on the head of her that is faithful, and fades on the brow of the inconstant. In Les Contes à rire, it is also a flower. In Ariosto, the test applied to both male and female is a cup, the wine of which is spilled by the unfaithful lover. This fiction also occurs in the romances of Tristan, Perceval and La Morte d’Arthur, and is well known by La Fontaine’s version, La Coupe Enchantée. In La Lai du Corn, it is a drinking-horn. Spenser has derived his girdle of Florimel from these sources or more immediately from the Fabliau, Le Manteau mal taillé or Le Court Mantel, an English version of which is published in Percy’s Reliques, the Boy and the Mantel (Vol. III.) In the Gesta Romanorum (c. 69) the test is the whimsical one of a shirt, which will neither require washing nor mending as long as the wearer is constant. (Not the wearer only but the wearer and his wife). Davenant has substituted an emerald for a flower.
The bridal stone,
And much renowned, because it chasteness loves,
And will, when worn by the neglected wife,
Shew when her absent lord disloyal proves
By faintness and a pale decay of life.
I may remark that there is a certain resemblance in this story to that of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, which is founded on the 9th Story of the 2nd day in the Decamerone, and to the 7th Story in Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen.
See also “The king of Spain and his queen” in Thorpe’s Yule-tide Stories, pp. 452–455. Thorpe remarks that the tale agrees in substance with the ballad of the “Graf Von Rom” in Uhland, II, 784; and with the Flemish story of “Ritter Alexander aus Metz und Seine Frau Florentina.” In the 21st of Bandello’s novels the test is a mirror (Liebrecht’s Dunlop, p. 287). See also pp. 85 and 86 of Liebrecht’s Dunlop, with the notes at the end of the volume.
[6] A man of low caste now called Ḍom. They officiate as executioners.
[7] Compare the way in which the widow’s son, the shifty lad, treats Black Rogue in Campbell’s Tales of the Western Highlands (Tale XVII d. Orient und Occident, Vol. II, p. 303.)
[8] Datura is still employed, I believe, to stupefy people whom it is thought desirable to rob.
[9] I read iva for the eva of Dr. Brockhaus’s text.
[10] A precisely similar story occurs in the Bahár Dánish. The turn of the chief incident, although not the same, is similar to that of Nov VII, Part 4 of Bandello’s Novelle, or the Accorto Avvedimento di una Fantesca à liberare la padrona e l’ innamorato di quella de la morte. (Wilson’s Essays, Vol. I, p. 224.) Cp. also the Mongolian version of the story in Sagas from the Far East, p. 320. The story of Śaktimatí is the 19th in the Śuka Saptati. I have been presented by Professor Nílmani Mukhopádhyáya with a copy of a MS. of this work made by Babu Umeśa Chandra Gupta.
[11] Cp. the story of the Chest in Campbell’s Stories from the Western Highlands. It is the first story in the 2nd volume and contains one or two incidents which remind us of this story.
[12] I read mahâkulodgatáḥ.