[7] Cp. the 46th story in Sicilianische Märchen gesammelt von Laura von Gonzenbach, where a snake coils round the throat of a king, and will not let him go, till he promises to marry a girl, whom he had violated. See also Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 523.
[8] The Petersburg lexicographers explain ṭakka as Geizhals, Filz; but say that the word ṭhaka in Marathi means a rogue, cheat. The word kadarya also means niggardly, miserly. General Cunningham (Ancient Geography of India, p. 152) says that the Ṭakkas were once the undisputed lords of the Panjáb, and still subsist as a numerous agricultural race in the lower hills between the Jhelum and the Rávi.
[9] So in the Russian story of “The Miser,” (Ralston’s Russian Folk-tales, p. 47.) Marko the Rich says to his wife, in order to avoid the payment of a copeck; “Harkye wife! I’ll strip myself naked, and lie down under the holy pictures. Cover me up with a cloth, and sit down and cry, just as you would over a corpse. When the moujik comes for his money, tell him I died this morning.” Ralston conjectures that the story came originally from the East.
[10] This resembles the conclusion of the story of the turtle Kambugríva and the swans Vikaṭa and Sankaṭa, Book X, chap. 60, śl. 169, see also Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 292. A similar story is told in Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 349, of the people of Teterow. They adopted the same manœuvre to get a stone out of a well. The man at the top then let go, in order to spit on his hands.
[11] I follow Dr. Kern’s conjecture avikṛitânanâ.
[12] In the Sicilianische Märchen, No. 14, a prince throws a stone at an old woman’s pitcher and breaks it. She exclaims in her anger, “May you wander through the world until you find the beautiful Nzentola!” Nos. 12 and 13 begin in a similar way. A parallel will be found in Dr. Köhler’s notes to No. 12. He compares the commencement of the Pentamerone of Basile.
Chapter LXVI.
The next night Gomukha told the following story to Naraváhanadatta to amuse him.
In the holy place of Śiva, called Dhaneśvara, there lived long ago a great hermit, who was waited upon by many pupils. He once said to his pupils, “If any one of you has seen or heard in his life a strange occurrence of any kind, let him relate it.” When the hermit said this, a pupil said to him, “Listen, I will tell a strange story which I once heard.”