[6] Cp. the 77th chapter of this work, the second in the Vetála Panchavinśati, and Ralston’s exhaustive note, in his Russian Folk-tales, pp. 231, 232, 233. Cp. also Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, p. 114, and Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen, und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 486. The Pseudo-Callisthenes (Book II, c. 40) mentions a fountain that restored to life a salt fish, and made one of Alexander’s daughters immortal. This is perhaps the passage that was in Dunlop’s mind, when he said (page 129 of Liebrecht’s translation) that such a fountain is described in the Greek romance of Ismenias and Ismene, for which Liebrecht takes him to task. See the parallels quoted by Dunlop and Liebrecht. Wheeler, in his Noted Names of Fiction, tells us that there was a tradition current among the natives of Puerto Rico, that such a fountain existed in the fabulous island of Bimini, said to belong to the Bahama group. This was an object of eager and long-continued quest to the celebrated Spanish navigator, Juan Ponce de Leon. By Ismenias and Ismene Dunlop probably means Hysminias and Hysmine. See also Birlinger, Aus Schwaben, p. 185. Kuhn in his “Herabkunft des Feuers” traces this story back to the Śatapatha Bráhmaṇa.
[7] Here there is an elaborate pun. “King” may also mean “mountain,” “race” may mean “wings,” and the whole passage refers to Indra’s clipping the wings of the mountains.
[8] Compare the remarkable passage which M. Lévêque quotes from the works of Empedocles (Les Mythes et les Légendes de l’Inde, p. 90).
Ἔστιν ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν,
ἀίδιον, πλατέεσσι κατεσφρηγισμένον ὅρκοις,
εὖτέ τις ἀμπλακίῃσι φονῳ φίλα γῦια μιήνῃ
αἵμασιν ἢ ἐπίορκον ἁμαρτήσας ἐπομόσσῃ
δαίμων, οἵ τε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο,
τρὶς μιν μυρίας ὥρας ἀπὸ μακάρων ἀλάλησθαι,
φυόμενον παντοῖα διὰ χρόνου εἴδεα θνητῶν,