When the young merchant had said this, Vikramáditya sent for his wife, whom he had rescued by killing the elephant, and handed her over to him. And then the couple, delighted at their marvellous reunion, recounted their adventures to one another, and their mouths were loud in praise of the glorious king Vishamaśíla.
[1] See Vol. I, pp. 199 and 515; and Vol. II, p. 265.
[2] Cp. Iliad V, 265 and ff.; and (still better) Aeneid VII, 280, and ff.
[3] Devíyasím is a misprint for davíyasím, as Dr. Kern points out.
[4] In European superstition we find the notion that witches can fly through the air by anointing themselves with the fat of a toad. Veckenstedt, Wendische Märchen, p. 288. In Bartsch, Sagen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, we read (Vol. II, p. 19) that Margretha Detloses confesses that she smeared her feet with some black stuff that Satan brought, and then said, Auf und darvan und nergens an. Anneke Mettinges (ibid. p. 23) smeared herself with yellow fat; Anneke Swarten (ibid. p. 27) with black stuff from an unused pot.
[5] See page 104 of this volume. An older form of that story is perhaps the Saccam̱kirajátaka, No. 73, Fausböll, Vol. I, p. 323. Tho present story bears perhaps a closer resemblance to that of Androclus, Aulus Gellius, N. A. V, 14, the Indian form of which may be found in Miss Stokes’s tale of “The Man who went to seek his fate.”
[6] Valí should of course be vallí.
[7] Cp. Oesterley’s Baitál Pachísí, p. 14; and the note on p. 176. In Aelian’s Varia Historia, III, 19, there is a tree, the fruit of which makes an old man become gradually younger and younger until he reaches the antenatal state of non-existence. The passage is referred to by Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, p. 207. Baring Gould, in Appendix A to his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, gives a very curious passage from the Bragda Mágus Saga, an Icelandic version of the romance of Maugis. Here we have a man named Vidförull who was in the habit of changing his skin and becoming young again. He changed his skin once when he was 330 years old, a second time at the age of 215, and a third time in the presence of Charlemagne. It is quite possible that the story in the text is a form of the fable of the Wandering Jew.
[8] I read devakumárau.