Thereupon the Destiny Prince, saying, “It is I myself who am that Prince,” told them the circumstances that had occurred to him. Both parties after that having become sorrowful, remained living [there], protecting that city in happiness.
Immigrant from Malayālam, Southern India. (Written in Sinhalese, and partly related in that language.)
In the Jātaka story No. 544 (vol. vi, p. 117), the King of Vidēha sums up the Hindū belief in predestination from the day of a person’s birth, as follows: “There is no door to heaven: only wait on destiny: all will at last reach deliverance from transmigration.”
His daughter afterwards illustrated the Buddhist doctrine that a person’s destiny depends on his acts and thoughts in his present life as well as in previous ones:—“As the balance properly hung in the weighing-house causes the end to swing up when the weight is put in, so does a man cause his fate at last to rise if he gathers together every piece of merit little by little.”
The Mahā Bhārata (Śānti Parva, cclviii), states that all gods must inevitably become mortals, and all mortals must become gods; and also (ccxcix) that whatever one’s lot may be it is the result of deeds done in previous lives.
The inevitable action of Karma is well exhibited in a story in Folk-Tales of the Telugus (G. R. Subramiah Pantulu), p. 59, in which when the God Śiva and his wife Pārvatī saw a poverty-stricken Brāhmaṇa on his way home, and the latter wished to give him riches, Śiva remarked that Brahmā had not written on his face [at his birth] that he must enjoy wealth. To test this, Pārvatī threw down on the path a heap of a thousand gold muhrs (£1,500). When the Brāhmaṇa got within ten yards of it, he was suddenly struck by the idea that he would see if he could walk along like a blind man, so he shut his eyes, and did not open them until he had gone past the money.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 280, a Princess who had arranged through a confidante to meet a man in a temple at night, met there instead a Prince who was accidentally spending the night there, and without recognising who he was, accepted him as her husband, and afterwards returned to the palace. On the following day the Prince appeared before the King, who formally bestowed the Princess on him, one of the Ministers remarking to the King, “Fate watches to insure the objects of auspicious persons.”
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 327, a King asked his two daughters which was the greater, Karma (fate, as the effect of acts in previous lives), or Dharma (righteousness). The younger said “Karma,” the elder, “Dharma.” He was so angry that he married the younger one to a young Brāhmaṇa thief; but he became very wealthy in a miraculous manner, and afterwards invited his father-in-law to a feast at which he was waited on by his daughter, the disgraced Princess, whom he did not recognise. At the end of it she told him who they were, and he promised to give the kingdom to her husband.
In The Kathākoça (Tawney), p. 82, a Princess had as her companions the daughters of a merchant and a gardener who were born on the same day as herself. When the Princess was married she requested that her two comrades might be married to the same young man, and this was done.