THE PRINCE WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE PICTURE.—Vol. XI. p. 226.
In the Persian tales of "The Thousand and One Days," a young prince entered his father's treasury one day, and saw there a little cedar chest "set with pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and topazes;" on opening it (for the key was in the lock) he beheld the picture of an exceedingly beautiful woman, with whom he immediately fell in love. Ascertaining the name of the lady from an inscription on the back of the portrait, he set off with a companion to discover her, and having been told by an old man at Baghdad that her father at one time reigned in Ceylon, he continued his journey thither, encountering many unheard-of adventures by the way. Ultimately he is informed that the lady with whose portrait he had become enamoured was one of the favourites of King Solomon. One should suppose that his would have effectually cured the love-sick prince; but no: he "could never banish her sweet image from his heart."[508]
Two instances of falling in love with the picture of a pretty woman occur in the "Kathá Sarít Ságara." In Book ix., chap. 51, a painter shows King Prithvirúpa the "counterfeit presentment" of the beauteous Princess Rapalatá, and "as the king gazed on it his eye was drowned in that sea of beauty her person, so that he could not draw it out again. For the king, whose longing was excessive, could not be satisfied with devouring her form, which poured forth a stream of the nectar of beauty, as the partridge cannot be satisfied with devouring the moonlight." In Book xii., chap. 100, a female ascetic shows a wandering prince the portrait of the Princess Mandáravatí, "and Sundarasena when he beheld that maiden, who, though she was present there only in a picture, seemed to be of romantic beauty and like a flowing forth of joy, immediately felt as if he had been pierced with the arrows of the god of the flowery bow [i.e. Káma]." In chapter 35 of Scott's translation of the "Bahár-i-Dánish," Prince Ferokh-Faul opens a volume, "which he had scarcely done when the fatal portrait of the fair princess who, the astrologers had foretold, was to occasion him so many perils, presented itself to his view. He instantly fainted, when the slave, alarmed, conveyed intelligence of his condition to the sultan, and related the unhappy cause of the disorder." In Gomberville's romance of Polexandre, the African prince, Abd-el-Malik, falls in love with the portrait of Alcidiana, and similar incidents occur in the romance of Agesilaus of Colchos and in the Story of the Seven Wazírs (vol. vi.); but why multiply instances? Nothing is more common in Asiatic fictions.