Remaining in this manner, the Princess who is in the Prince disguise began to seek her husband. It was thus:—This Princess having caused to be made ready a very spacious hall which causes the minds of the spectators who saw it to rejoice to the degree that from the outer districts men come to look at it, began to cause donations [of food] to be given to all who arrive there.
Having caused her own figure to be made from wax, and having put clothes on it, and established it at a place in front of this hall, she caused guards to be stationed around, and commanded them, “Any person having come near this wax figure, at the very time when he has touched it you are to bring that person near me.” She said [thus] to the guards.
While a few days were going, men came from many districts to look at this hall. Among them, having walked and walked seeking this Princess, were her Prince and the creeper cutter, the two Vaeddās and the trader, the royal Prince and the Minister-Prince. The whole of them having come and seen this wax figure, touched the hand of the wax figure. The guards who were stationed there, because the whole of these said persons touched the wax figure, arrested them and gave charge of them to the Princess.
Thereupon the Princess commanded them to kill the creeper cutter. Having censured the Vaeddās she told them to go. To the son of the King who caused her to teach, she gave in marriage the Princess whom, having come in the disguise of the Prince, she married. Taking charge of her own Lord she from that time lived in happiness.
The story of the Prince and Princess (No. 8, vol. i) bears a close resemblance to this tale in some of the incidents; see also No. 108 in vol. ii.
In the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton’s ed., vol. iii, p. 62) the story of Āli Shār and Zumurrud also contains similarities. When the two had no other means of support, Zumurrud sent her master or husband to buy a piece of silk and thread for working on it. She then embroidered it for eight days as a curtain, which Āli Shār sold for fifty dīnārs to a merchant in the bazaar, after she had warned him not to part with it to a passer-by. They lived thus for a year, till at last he sold one to a stranger, owing to the urging of the merchants. The purchaser followed him home, inserted opiates into a half plantain which he presented to him, and when Āli Shār became unconscious fetched his brother, a former would-be purchaser of Zumurrud, and they carried off the girl. By arrangement with an old woman, a friend of the youth’s, she lowered herself from a window at midnight, but Āli Shār, who waited there for her, had fallen asleep, and a Kurdish thief in the darkness took her away, and left her in charge of his mother. When this woman fell asleep she escaped on horse-back in male attire, was elected King at a city at which she arrived, and by giving a monthly feast to all comers in a great pavilion that she erected for the purpose, seized all her captors, and caused them to be flayed alive. At last she found her husband in this way.
In Folklore of the Santal Parganas (collected by Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 301, the marriage of the disguised wife of a Prince to a Princess occurs. While they were travelling the Prince was imprisoned on a false charge, his wife dressed as a man, was seen by a Princess who fell in love with her, and agreed to marry the Princess if according to the custom of her own country the vermilion were applied to the bride’s forehead with a sword (the marriage to the sword). When she told the Princess her story the latter informed the Raja, who released the Prince and remarried his daughter to him.