A Group of Eastern Romances and Stories from the Persian, Tamil and Urdu

by Unknown

The King and his Four Ministers.

Under the title of “Strike, but Hear,” a considerably abridged and modified version of this Tale is given in the Rev. Lal Behári Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal (London: Macmillan & Co., 1883), of which this is the substance:

A king appoints his three sons to patrol in turn the streets of his capital during the night. It happens that the youngest prince in going his rounds one night sees a very beautiful woman issuing from the palace, and he asks to know what business she is bent upon at such an hour. She replies: “I am the guardian deity of this palace. The king will be killed this night, and therefore I am going away.” The prince persuades the goddess to return into the palace and await the event. He enters his father’s bed-chamber and discovers a huge cobra near the royal couch, and at once cuts the deadly snake into many pieces, which he puts into a brass vessel that was in the room. Then seeing that some drops of the serpent’s blood had fallen on his step-mother’s bosom, he wraps a piece of cloth round his tongue to protect it from the poison, and licks off the blood. The lady awakes, and recognises him as he is leaving the room. She accuses him to the king of having used an unpardonable freedom with her. In the morning the king sends for his eldest son and asks him: “If a trusted servant should prove faithless, how should he be punished?” The prince replies: “Surely his head should be parted from his body. But before doing so, you should ascertain whether the man is actually guilty.” And then he proceeds to relate the

Story of the Woman who knew the Language of Animals.

There was in former times a goldsmith who had a grown-up son, whose wife was acquainted with the language of animals, but she kept secret from her husband and all others the fact of her being endowed with such a rare gift. It happened one night that she heard a jackal exclaim: “There is a dead body floating on the river; would that some one might give me that body to eat, and for his pains take the diamond ring from the finger of that dead man.” The woman arose from her bed and went to the bank of the river, and her husband, who had not been asleep, got up and followed her unobserved. She went into the water, drew the corpse on to the land, and, being unable to loose the ring from the dead man’s finger, which had swelled, she bit off the finger, and, leaving the corpse on the bank of the river, returned home, whither she had been preceded by her husband. Almost petrified by fear, the young goldsmith concluded from what he had seen that his wife was not a human being but a rákshasí; and early in the morning he hastened to his father and related the whole affair to him—how the woman had got up during the night and gone to the river, out of which she dragged a dead body on to the land, and was busy devouring it when he ran home in horror at the loathsome sight. The old man was greatly shocked, and advised his son to take his wife on some pretext into the forest, and leave her there to be destroyed by wild beasts. So the husband caused the woman to get herself ready to go on a visit to her parents, and after a hasty breakfast they set out. In going through a dense jangal, where the goldsmith purposed abandoning his wife, she heard a serpent cry: “O passenger, I pray thee to seize and give me that croaking frog, and take for thy reward the gold and precious stones concealed in yonder hole.” The woman at once seized the frog and threw it towards the serpent, and then began digging into the ground with a stick. Her husband quaked with fear, thinking that his ghúl-wife was about to kill him; but she called to him, saying: “My dear husband, gather up all the gold and precious gems.” Approaching the spot with hesitation, he was surprised to perceive an immense treasure laid bare by his wife, who then explained to him how she had learned of it from the snake that lay coiled up near them, whose language she understood. Then said he to his wife: “It is now so late that we cannot reach your father’s house before dark, and we might be slain by wild beasts. Let us therefore return home.” So they retraced their steps, and approaching the house, the goldsmith said to his wife: “Do you, my dear, go in by the back door, while I enter by the front and show my father all this treasure.” The woman accordingly went in by the back door and was met by her father-in-law, who, on seeing her, concluded that she had killed and devoured his son, and striking her on the head with a hammer which he happened to have in his hand she instantly fell down dead. Just then the son came into the room, but it was too late.

“I have told your majesty this story,” adds the eldest prince, “in order that, before putting the man to death, you should make sure that he is guilty.”

The king then calls his second son, and asks him the same question as he had asked his brother, to which he replies by relating the

Story of the King and his Faithful Horse.

Once a king while engaged in the chase was separated from his attendants, and seeing what he conceived to be rain-water dropping from the branch of a tree, being very thirsty, he held his drinking-cup under it until it was nearly filled, and as he was about to put it to his lips his horse purposely moved so as to cause the contents to be spilled on the ground, upon which the king in a rage drew his sword and killed the faithful animal. But afterwards discovering that what he had taken for rain-water was poison that dropped from a cobra in the tree, his grief knew no bounds.

Calling his third son, the king asks him what should be done to the man who proved false to his trust, and the prince tells the

Story of the Wonderful Fruit

which bestowed perennial youth on him who ate of it, with some unimportant variations from the same story in our Romance.

Then the youngest prince explained the occasion of his presence in the royal bed-chamber, and how he had saved the king and his consort from the cobra’s deadly bite. And his majesty, overjoyed and full of gratitude, strained his faithful son to his heart, and ever afterwards cherished and loved him with all a father’s love.

Another version is orally current in Kashmír, and, under the title of “The Four Princes,” a translation of it is given by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles in his excellent collection, Folk-Tales of Kashmír, from which are extracted the following details:

Four clever and handsome young princes are hated by their step-mother, who persuades her husband the king to cease his personal and secret inspection of the city and adjacent towns and villages—which had long been his custom, going about at night in disguise—and appoint his four grown-up, idle sons to the duties. But still the queen is jealous of them, and poisons the king’s mind against them, so that he speaks harshly to his worthy sons, without any apparent cause. One night the four princes met together and discussed the altered conduct of the king towards them, and the three younger proposed that they should privily quit the country, but this was strenuously opposed by the eldest brother, who suggested that they should rather take turn and patrol the city, one of them each night, to which they agreed. It happened that the eldest prince, in the course of his perambulation one night, came past the hut of a Bráhman, whom he saw gazing out of the open window towards the heavens, and presently heard him say to his wife that he had just observed the king’s star obscured by another star, which indicated that his majesty would die in seven days. His wife asked him how he should die then, and he replied that a black snake would descend from the sky on the seventh day, enter the royal bed-chamber by the door that opened into the courtyard, and bite the king’s toe, thus causing his death. Then the Bráhman made a sacrifice, and, after prayers and incantations, he told his wife farther, that the king’s life would be saved if one of his relations dug pits in the courtyard on the east side of the palace, filled some with water and the others with milk, and scattered flowers on the ground between the ponds and the door of the king’s room. He must be ready, sword in hand, outside the door at the appointed time, when the snake will come and swim across the ponds and pass over the flowers, after which it will become comparatively harmless. Then he must strike and slay the snake with his sword, and taking some of its warm blood smear it over the king’s toes—thus will he be preserved from evil. The prince, having treasured these directions in his memory, on the seventh day follows them exactly, and having taken some of the snake’s blood, gently opens the door of the king’s chamber and enters, having first tied a bandage over his eyes, that he should not see the queen. But being thus blindfolded he smears the blood on the queen’s toes instead of those of the king, which causes her to awake, and to shriek on seeing a man glide out of the room, which awakes the king, who recognises his eldest son as the intruder. The queen, on discovering the blood on her feet concludes that it was a rákshasa, and becomes frantic with fright, but her husband sets her mind at rest by telling her that he is now assured of the wickedness of his sons, who had employed a demon to destroy them both, and he would have them all executed on the morrow, at which the queen was highly delighted. Then the king causes the four princes to be stripped of their royal robes and thrown into a dungeon. In the morning they are brought into the presence of the king, who gives order for their immediate execution, and they are being led away when one of them made signs and prostrated himself before the throne, as if he wished to say something. “Let him speak,” said the king. “Perhaps he wants to relieve his heart of some foul secret—let him speak.” The prince then began to relate the

Story of the Merchant and his Faithful Dog,

which differs materially from our story of the Hunter and his Dog (p. [206]), but agrees with some versions current in various parts of India: A young merchant meets four men who are quarrelling over the possession of a poor dog, which they are dragging about most unmercifully. They tell him it is not an ordinary dog, for their late father charged them not to sell it for less than 20,000 rupís. He gives them the money and takes the dog with him. By-and-by he loses all his wealth through a series of unfortunate transactions, and borrows 15,000 rupís of another merchant on the security of his dog. One night a gang of robbers break into the merchant’s house and carry off all his valuables. They are followed unobserved by the dog, who watches them dig a pit and bury the treasure in it, intending to return and share their booty when they might do so with safety. Next day the dog, by means of signs, leads the merchant to the spot where his wealth was hidden, and when it is discovered, full of gratitude to the faithful animal, he writes out an acquittance of the young merchant’s loan, and having related the great service the dog had done him expressed a wish to purchase the dog, for which he enclosed a draft for 30,000 rupís, and putting the letter in the dog’s mouth, sends him back to his master. As the dog is trotting along he meets his master, who, concluding that he had run away, and that the merchant would quickly follow, determined to kill the animal, and if the merchant should come, he would say: “Give me back my dog, and I will return the money.” But when he had killed his dog and was about to take the carcase up, in order to conceal it, the letter dropped from his mouth, and the young merchant, stricken with remorse, fell down insensible.

Another of the princes then steps forward and relates the

Story of the Woman who knew the Language of Animals,

which does not differ very much from the same tale in the Bengalí collection, cited on p. [505], above, excepting that in place of a goldsmith the husband is a shikárí, or hunter; it is a bracelet set with five precious stones, not a diamond ring that the woman takes off the corpse in the river, and a crow, not a serpent, that tells of the treasure underground; and it is her father-in-law, not her husband, who accompanies her, and it is her husband who kills her when she comes home, thinking that she had devoured his father.

The youngest prince next makes his obeisance to his majesty and obtains leave to relate the

Story of the King and his Falcon,

which is similar to that of the King and his Faithful Horse in the Bengalí version: The king is about to drink of some water he had drawn from a spring, when his falcon dashed the cup out of his hand, whereupon the thirsty and enraged king drew his sword and killed his favourite bird. Afterwards a huge and deadly snake was found coiled up at the head of the spring, and too late the king saw that the falcon had saved his life.

His majesty having heard these stories, now began to suspect that his wife had deceived him regarding his four sons, and when the eldest prince had explained the whole affair, and shown the king the pits of water and milk and the body of the serpent, he was fully reconciled to them, and abdicating the throne in favour of his eldest son, and appointing the others to be governors of provinces, he retired to the wilderness and became a hermit.

The Lost Camel—p. [194].

Few stories are more widely spread than that of the Lost Camel, which occurs in the opening of our romance. It was formerly, and perhaps is still, reproduced in school-books as a reading exercise. Voltaire, in chapter iii of Zadig, ou la Destinée, (the substance of which he is said to have derived from Geuelette’s Soirées Bretonnes), gives a version in which a lost palfrey and a she-dog are accurately described by the “sage” from the traces they had left on the path over which they passed.

The oldest known written form of the story of the Lost Camel is in the great work of Mas’udí, the celebrated Arabian historian, ‘Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems,’ which has not yet been completely translated into English.—In an Arabic MS. text of the Alf Layla wa Layla (Thousand and one Nights), brought from the East by Wortley Montague, and now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, it forms an incident in the tale of the Sultan of Yaman’s Three Sons: After their father’s death the three royal youths quarrel over the succession to the throne, and at length agree to submit their respective claims to one of their father’s tributary princes. On the road one of them remarks: “A camel has lately passed this way, loaded with grain on one side and with sweetmeats on the other.” The second observes: “And the camel is blind of one eye.” The third adds: “And it has lost its tail.” The owner comes up to them, and on hearing their description of his beast forces them to go with him before the king of the country, to whom they explain how they discovered the defects of the camel and its lading. In this form it also occurs in the Turkish collection translated under the title of Turkish Evening Entertainments—see ante, p. [472]—with the addition of a woman riding on the back of the camel, she having got off the animal during a temporary halt, and left her small footprints in the sand.

In a Siberian version three youths are met by a man, who asks them if they have seen his camel, to which they reply by describing the colour and peculiarities of the animal so exactly that he accuses them to the prince of the country of having stolen it. “I have lost a camel, my lord,” says he; “and when I met these three young men we saluted, and I told them of my loss. One of these youths asked me: ‘Was thy camel of a light colour?’ The second: ‘Was thy camel lame?’ And the third: ‘Was thy camel not blind of an eye?’ I answered ‘Yes’ to their questions. Now decide, my lord. It is evident that these young men have stolen my camel.” Then the prince asked the eldest: “How did you know that the camel was of a light colour?” He answered: “By some hairs which had fallen on the ground when it rubbed itself against the trees.” The two others gave answers similar to those in our version. Then said the prince to the man: “Thy camel is lost; go and look for it.” So the stranger mounted his horse and departed.[281]

Captain (now Sir) Richard F. Burton, in his Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley, vol. i, p. 142, thus describes how a paggi, or tracker, sets about discovering a strayed camel: “He ties on his slippers with packthread, winds his sheet tight round his waist, and squatting upon the ground scrutinises the footprint before he starts, with all the air of a connoisseur, making meanwhile his remarks aloud: ‘He is a little, little camel—his feet are scarcely three parts grown—he treads lightly with the off foreleg, and turns this toe in—his sole is scarred—he is not laden—there he goes—there—there, he is off to the jungles of Shaykh Radhan’.”

The Hunter and his Dog—p. [206].

A variant of this story is cited from a Cawnpore newspaper in the Asiatic Journal, vol. xv (new series), Part II, October, 1834, p. 78, which is to the following effect: A man named Dabí had a dog called Bhyro, the faithful companion of his travels, who guarded his goods from robbers while he slept. He wished to go to a distant part of the country on a speculation in grain, but had not sufficient funds for this purpose. After much cogitation he at length resolved to pledge his dog for 1000 rupís, and when he applied to several persons was laughed at for his folly; but a wealthy merchant named Dyarám gave the money, on condition that it should be paid back within twelve months, taking the dog Bhyro in pledge. When eleven months had passed the merchant began to bewail the stupidity which had induced him to lend so large a sum on so precarious a security. His relentings were, however, premature. One dark and dreary night he was aroused from his slumbers by a great noise, occasioned by the clashing of swords and the barking of Bhyro. A band of armed men had entered the house with intent to plunder, but before they could effect their purpose they had been observed by the faithful Bhyro, who commenced an attack upon them. Before Dyarám could render any assistance Bhyro had laid two of the robbers dead at his feet; a third, on the approach of Dyarám, aimed a blow at his head, which was prevented from taking effect by Bhyro seizing the ruffian by the throat and laying him prostrate on the ground. After peace was restored Dyarám congratulated himself on having received Bhyro in pledge for Dabí, by which act he not only escaped being plundered, but in all probability murdered. Next morning Dyarám called Bhyro, and, after caressing him, said: “The service you rendered me last night is more than an equivalent for the 1000 rupís I lent your master; go, faithful creature, I give you a free discharge from your obligation as security for him.” Bhyro shook his head in token that it was impossible for him to go until his master returned; but Dyarám, comprehending his meaning, soon arranged matters, by writing a statement of the circumstances, and giving a voucher for the 1000 rupís. This document he tied round Bhyro’s neck, which done, Bhyro expressed his delight by leaping about in every direction, and, after licking the hands of Dyarám, darted out of the house and set off in quest of his master. While these scenes were transpiring in Dyarám’s house, Dabí was not unmindful of the pledge he had left behind him, and, having succeeded in his speculation, was returning with all haste to redeem it. At his last stage homewards he was surprised to see Bhyro approaching him with every demonstration of joy, but at sight of him Dabí’s rage was kindled, and repulsing Bhyro as he fawned upon him he thus addressed him: “O ungrateful wretch! is this the return you have made for my kindness to you? and is this the manner in which you have established my character for veracity? You remained faithful to your trust during eleven months—could you not have held out for thirty short days? You have, by your desertion from your post, entailed dishonour upon me, and for this you shall die.” And, so saying, he drew his sword and slew him. After having committed this deed, he observed a paper tied round Bhyro’s neck, and having read it, his grief was indescribable. To atone in some measure for his rash act, he caused poor Bhyro to be buried on the spot where he fell, and a superb monument to be erected over his remains. To the grave of Bhyro, even at the present day, resort natives who have been bitten by dogs, they believing that the dust collected there, when applied to the wounds, is an antidote for hydrophobia.

It will be observed, on comparison, that the chief difference between this version and the Kashmírí story, cited in p. [509], is that in the latter the dog does not venture to attack the robbers, but follows them to the place where they conceal their plunder and next day leads his temporary master to the spot, while in the foregoing the dog Bhyro boldly flies at the rascals, and slays or disables three of them, thus preserving the house from being robbed. The Tamil version has the dog’s killing the paramour of the merchant’s wife in place of the robbery, and the tragical catastrophe of the suicides of all the characters.

A version given from Oudh, by Mr. G. H. Roberts, of Sítápúr, in Indian Notes and Queries, 1887, p. 150, agrees exactly with the Kashmírí story.

The Bráhman’s Wife and the Mungús—p. [211].

This story is of world-wide popularity, and the preceding tale of the Hunter and his Faithful Dog must be considered as an off-shoot from it. In this country the form in which it is generally known is the legend of Llewellyn and his hound Gellert, which has been so finely versified by Spencer. I have adduced many variants of the story in the Appendix to my Book of Sindibád, and have treated it still more fully in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii. pp. 166-186, where, besides versions found in the Sindibád cycle (including, of course, the European Seven Wise Masters),[282] are given several Indian forms of the story, and lastly the oldest known version, from the Vinaya Pitaka of the Chinese collection of Buddhist books, which, according to Dr. S. Beal—one of the greatest living authorities on Chinese Buddhist literature—probably dates from the time of Asoka’s Council, B.C. 230. But indeed the story may be many thousands of years old, for there is no reason to suppose it to be of Buddhist invention; and we need not be surprised should it be discovered some day in an Egyptian papyrus.

This Tamil version is one of three known to me in which it is the mother, not the father, who kills the faithful animal, the others being one current in Ceylon, and one from the North-West Provinces, cited in a very entertaining work entitled Past Days in India, and also in the small collection of Indian tales appended by Vermieux to his Hermit of Mottee Jhurna, second edition, p. 101; it is, moreover, singular in representing the woman as destroying herself and her husband then killing his little son and afterwards himself—tragic incidents added by the author probably to enable the supposed narrator to more forcibly impress on the king’s mind the terrible consequences of acting in affairs of moment with inconsiderateness and precipitation.

Among the Malays the story is told in this manner: A man left a tame bear in charge of his house and of his sleeping child while he was absent from home. On his return he missed the child and found the house in great disorder, as if some desperate struggle had taken place, and the floor was smeared with blood. Hastily concluding that the bear had killed his child, the enraged father slew the animal with his spear, but almost immediately afterwards found the carcase of a tiger, which the faithful bear had defeated and killed, and the child emerged unharmed from the jangal, where it had taken refuge.

The Faithless Wife and the Ungrateful Blind Man—p. [215].

Two very bad characters, and the less my readers have to do with such, the better for their own peace of mind, I trow!—There is a tale in the Kathá Sarit Ságara of a woman who cruelly abandoned her helpless husband in the jangal, and went off with a lusty young fellow, but I am unable to say in which chapter of that most valuable and entertaining collection it occurs, though I made a special search for it.

As a set-off to the faithless wife of the blind man—who afterwards proves to be himself an arrant scoundrel—read the touching address of Damayanti to her husband the ruined Rájá Nala, when he proposes in the jangal that she should return to her parents and leave him to his fate: “O king, thinking of thy purpose, my heart trembleth, and all my limbs become faint. How can I go, leaving thee in the lone woods, despoiled of thy kingdom and deprived of thy wealth, thyself without a garment on, and worn with hunger and toil? When, in the deep woods, fatigued and afflicted with hunger, thou thinkest of thy former bliss, I will, O great monarch, soothe thy weariness. In every sorrow, there is no medicine equal unto the wife, say the physicians. It is the truth, O Nala, that I speak unto thee!”[283]

A story somewhat resembling the incident of the blind man and the honest Setti will be found in the notes on the Rose Of Bakáwalí, under the heading of ‘The Bráhman and the Lion.’

The Wonderful Mango Fruit—p. [220].

Analogues of this story are found in a Canarese collection entitled Kathá Manjarí, with a magpie in place of a parrot as the bearer of the youth-renewing fruit, and in the Tútí Náma (or Parrot-Book) of Nakhshabí, a work written A.D. 1329, which has not yet been completely translated into English, and is now generally known from Káderi’s abridgment.

Fruits having the property of restoring the youth and vigour of those who ate of them figure in many Asiatic stories—there is a notable instance in the opening of the Indian collection entitled Sinhasana Dwatrinsati, or Thirty-two (Tales) of a Throne. And from the East the notion was introduced into the European mediæval romances; for example, in the Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, “at the bidding of an angel,” I quote from Mr. Sydney L. Lee’s notes to his edition of the work printed for the Early English Text Society, “Huon gathers three of the Apples of Youth, each of which when eaten by a man of eighty or a hundred years old transforms him to a young man of thirty. Huon bestows one of the apples on the admiral of Tauris and his white hair and beard grow yellow as he eats it, and he suddenly becomes a youth of strength and beauty. The second is eaten by the abbot of Cluny, who is 114 years old, with similar results. The third rejuvenates Thierry, emperor of Germany.”

The Poisoned Food—p. [226].

This is the third instance in the romance of food being poisoned by serpents, and it is of very common occurrence in Eastern fictions. The oldest known form of the story is found in a Sanskrit collection entitled Vetálapanchavinsati, or Twenty-five (Tales) of a Vetála, or Vampyre, which is given fully in the Appendix to my Book of Sindibád, and the story occurs in all the Eastern texts of the Sindibád cycle. This Tamil version is peculiar in representing an old man as falling a victim to the poison dropped from a snake’s mouth into food given him by a young pilgrim, and the imprisoning of the latter in the village temple of Kálí and so forth. In all other versions known to me, the poison is dropped into an open dish of milk carried by a slave-girl on her head, and her master’s guests, partaking of the milk, all perish.

The Rescued Snake—p. [231].

With an important difference, this tale resembles that of the Bráhman and the Lion, p. [254], which is a variant of the world-wide fable of the Hunter and the Serpent—the difference being that in this case the snake ultimately rewards its rescuer. In the story of Nala and Damayanti, the rájá rescues a snake from a jangal fire and carries it some distance and is about to set it down when the snake says: “Carry me ten steps farther, and count them as you go.” So Nala proceeds, counting the steps—one, two, three; and when he says “ten” (Sansk. dasa, which means “bite” as well as “ten”) the snake takes him at his word and bites the rájá on the forehead, upon which he becomes black. But this the snake does for Nala’s own benefit, that he should not be recognised in his degradation.