Notes.
This saga-like story is of peculiar literary interest because of its ancient connections. I know of no modern analogues; but there are two very old parallels, as well as two unmistakable references to the identical situation in our story which date from before the Christian era, and also a Persian Märchen that goes back as far as the twelfth century.
Herodotus (III, 119) first tells the story of a Persian woman who chooses rather to save the life of her brother than of her husband and children.
“When all the conspirators against Darius had been seized [i.e., Intaphernes, his children, and his family], and had been put in chains as malefactors condemned to death, the wife of Intaphernes came and stood continually at the palace-gates, weeping and wailing. So Darius after a while, seeing that she never ceased to stand and weep, was touched with pity for her, and bade a messenger go to her and say, ‘Lady, King Darius gives thee as a boon the life of one of thy kinsmen; choose which thou wilt of the prisoners.’ Then she pondered a while before she answered, ‘If the king grants the life of one alone, I make choice of my brother.’ Darius, when he heard the reply, was astonished, and sent again, saying, ‘Lady, the king bids thee tell him why it is that thou passest by thy husband and thy children, and preferrest to have the life of thy brother spared. He is not so near to thee as thy children, not so dear as thy husband.’ She answered, ‘O king! if the gods will, I may have another husband and other children when these are gone; but, as my father and mother are no more, it is impossible that I should have another brother. That was my thought when I asked to have my brother spared.’ The woman appeared to Darius to have spoken well, and he granted to her the one that she asked and her eldest son, he was so pleased with her. All the rest he put to death.”
This story from the Greek historian clearly supplied not merely the thought but also the form of the reference in lines 909–912 of Sophocles’ “Antigone.” In Campbell’s English translation of the Greek play, the passage, which is put into the mouth of the heroine, runs thus:—
“A husband lost might be replaced; a son,
If son were lost to me, might yet be born;
But with both parents hidden in the tomb,
No brother may arise to comfort me.”
Chronologically, the next two occurrences of the story are Indian. In the “Ucchaṅga-jātaka” (Fausböll, No. 67, of uncertain date, but possibly going back to the third century B.C.) we are told—
“Three husbandmen were by mistake arrested on a charge of robbery, and imprisoned. The wife of one came to the King of Kosala, in whose realm the event took place, and entreated him to set her husband at liberty. The king asked her what relation each of the three was to her. She answered, ‘One is my husband, another my brother, and the third is my son.’ The king said, ‘I am pleased with you, and I will give you one of the three; which do you choose?’ The woman answered, ‘Sire, if I live, I can get another husband and another son; but, as my parents are dead, I can never get another brother. So give me my brother, sire.’ Pleased with the woman, the king set all three men at liberty.”
In the Cambridge translation of this “Jātaka,” the verse reply of the woman is rendered thus:—
“A son’s an easy find; of husbands too
An ample choice throngs public ways. But where
With all my pains another brother find?”
In the “Rāmāyana,” the most celebrated art epic of India, we are told how, in the battle about Lankā, Lakshmana, the favorite brother and inseparable companion of the hero Rāma, is to all appearances killed. Rāma laments over him in these words: “Anywhere at all I could get a wife, a son, and all other relatives; but I know of no place where I might be able to acquire a brother. The teaching of the Veda is true, that Parjanya rains down everything; but also is the proverb true that he does not rain down brothers.” (Ed. Gorresio, 6 : 24, 7–8.) This parallel was pointed out by R. Pischel in “Hermes,” 28 (1893) : 465.
The Persian Märchen alluded to above is cited by Th. Nöldeke in “Hermes,” 29 : 155.
In this story the wife, when she is given the opportunity to choose which she will save of her three nearest relatives,—i.e., her husband, her son, and her brother, who have been selected to be the food for the man-eating snake that grows from the devil-prince Dahāk’s shoulder,—says, “I am still a young woman. I can get another husband, and it may happen that I might have another child by him: so that the fire of separation I can quench somewhat with the water of hope, and for the poison of the death of a husband find a cure in the antidote of the survival of a son; but it is not possible, since my father and mother are dead, for me to get another brother; therefore I bestow my love on him [i.e., she chooses the brother].” The Dahāk is moved to pity, and spares her the lives of all three.
The riddle form in which our story is cast is possibly an invention of the narrator; but folk-tales ending thus are common (see [notes to No. 12]). Again, our story fails to state whether or not all three men were pardoned. The implication is that they were not. The localization of the events seems to point either to a long existence of the story in La Laguna province or to exceptional adaptive skill on the part of the narrator.