Notes.
I know of no parallels to this interesting story, which appears to be old native tradition. The hero transformed by enchantment into a beast, and saved by the devotion of the human lover, suggests the “Beauty and Beast” cycle (Macculloch, ch. IX; Crane, 7, 324 [notes 5 and 6]; Ralston, Tibetan Tales, p. XXXVII f.); only it is to be noted that those stories are, after all, heroine tales, not hero tales, for the interest in them is centred on the disenchantment brought about by the maiden who comes to love the prince in his beast form. The curse by a disappointed witch, and the prophecy that only after five hundred years will the curse be removed, suggest in a way the “Sleeping Beauty” cycle (Grimm, No. 50; and Bolte-Polívka’s exhaustive notes); only here, too, the resemblance is but vague. There is no magic sleep in our story, but a Circe-like transformation of the prince and all his subjects into animals, the city itself being changed into a forest of trees. We have already met with stories in the Philippines based on the idea of animal-marriages (e.g., Nos. [18], [19], [29]); but, even were it demonstrable that all those tales were imported, it would not necessarily follow that the savage idea behind them, too, was imported. Their adoption by the natives might indicate, on the contrary, that the basic idea was already well known.
I might call attention to the fact that the number 500 and the monkey-prince suggest vaguely Buddhistic lore.