[7] Pakshapáta also means flapping of wings. So there is probably a pun here.
[8] So in the Swedish tale “The Beautiful Palace East of the Sun and North of the Earth,” the Phœnix carries the youth on his back to the Palace. Dr. Rost compares Arabian Nights, Night 77. See Lane, Vol. III, p. 17 and compare the Halcyon in Lucian’s Vera Historia, Book II. 40, (Tauchnitz edition,) whose nest is seven miles in circumference, and whose egg is probably the prototype of that in the Arabian Nights. Cp. the Glücksvogel in Prym and Socin, Syrische Märchen, p. 269, and the eagle which carries Chaucer in the House of Fame. In the story of Lalitánga, extracted by Professor Nilmani Mukerjea from the Kathá Kosha, a collection of Jaina stories, a Bháruṇḍa carries the hero to the city of Champá. There he cures the princess by a remedy, the knowledge of which he had acquired by overhearing a conversation among the birds.
[9] We should read sauvarnabhitti.
[10] Or Chandraprabhá, whose name means “light of the moon.” The forbidden chamber will at once remind the reader of Perrault’s La Barbe Bleue. The lake incident is exactly similar to one in Chapter 81 of this work and to that of Kandarpaketu in the Hitopadeśa. See Ralston’s Russian Folk-tales page 99. He refers to this story and compares it with that of the Third Royal Mendicant, Lane I, 160–173, and gives many European equivalents. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 214. Many parallels will be found in the notes to Grimm’s Märchen, Nos. 3 and 46; to which Ralston refers in his exhaustive note. In Wirt Sikes’s British Goblins, p. 84, a draught from a forbidden well has the same effect.
[11] The Dánavas are a class of demons or giants. Ruru was a Dánava slain by Durgá.
[12] In Śloka 172 b. I conjecture Śaktihasto for Śaktidevo, as we read in śl. 181 b. that the boar was wounded with a śakti.
[13] Literally, having auspicious marks.
[14] A spirit that enters dead bodies.
[15] I read Vidyutprabhám for Vidyádharím. But perhaps it is unnecessary.
[16] The Chakora is said to subsist upon moonbeams.