Tale VII.

[2.] Legends of transformed maidens being delivered from the power of enchantment and married by heroes and knights are common enough, but we less frequently meet with stories presenting a reversed plot. I have met with one, however, nearly identical with that given in the text, attached to a ruined castle of Wâlsch-Tirol.

[3.] The Buddhist idea of the soul is very difficult to define. In other legends given later in the present volume (e. g. the episode of the burying of Vikramâditja’s body and the action of the fourth youth in “Who invented Women?”) we find it, just as in the present one, spoken of as a quite superfluous and fantastic adjunct without which a man was to all intents and purposes the same as when he had it. Spence Hardy affirms as the result of conversations with Buddhists during half a life passed among them in Ceylon, as well as from the study of their writings, that “according to Buddhism there is no soul.”

[4.] Compare note 7 to “Vikramâditja’s Birth.”

[5.] Obö. “A heap of stones on which every traveller is expected of his piety to throw one or more as he goes by.” (Jülg.) Abbé Huc describes them thus: “They consist simply of an enormous pile of stones heaped up without any order, surmounted with dried branches of trees, while from them hang other branches and strips of cloth on which are inscribed verses in the Tibet and Mongol languages. At its base is a large granite urn in which the devotees burn incense. They offer besides pieces of money which the next Chinese traveller, after sundry ceremonious genuflexions before the Obö, carefully collects and pockets. These Obös are very numerous.”

[6.] The sacred mountain of Meerû. See [note 4, Tale III].