In Chinese Nights’ Entertainment (Fielde), p. 18, a poor man, overhearing his wife and son’s talk about food, pretended that he could find things by scent, and told his wife what food was in the cupboard. The news spread, and he was ordered to discover the Emperor’s lost seal. He feared punishment, and remarked, “This is sharp distress! This is dire calamity!” Hearing this, two courtiers, Sharp and Dyer, told him they had thrown the seal into a well, and begged him not to betray them; he recovered the seal. The Empress then hid a kitten in a basket, and asked what it contained. Expecting to be beheaded, he said, “The bagged cat dies.” When the basket was opened the kitten was dead.
Page 190. In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara, vol. i, p. 211, a woman having told a man that she wished to give her husband who was impaled a drink of water, he bent down and she stood on his back. On looking up he saw that she was eating the man’s flesh. He seized her by one foot, but she flew away, leaving her jewelled anklet, which he gave to the King, who married him to his daughter. When the Queen wanted a second anklet the man met with the Rākshasī again at the cemetery; she gave him the anklet and married her daughter to him.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir, 2nd ed., p. 334, a Prince while keeping watch over a dead body, cut off the leg of an ogress who came. When he gave the King her shoe he was rewarded.
Page 196. The escape of the Prince by sending his foster-brother finds a parallel in a story recorded in the Sinhalese history, the Mahāvansa, chapter x. The uncles of Prince Paṇḍukābhaya had endeavoured to murder him because of a prophecy that he would kill them in order to gain the sovereignty, and he had taken refuge among some herdsmen. The account then continues in Dr. Geiger’s translation, p. 69:—“When the uncles again heard that the boy was alive they charged (their followers) to kill all the herdsmen. Just on that day the herdsmen had taken a deer and sent the boy into the village to bring fire. He went home, but sent his foster-father’s son out, saying: ‘I am footsore, take thou fire for the herdsmen; then thou too wilt have some of the roast to eat.’ Hearing these words he took fire to the herdsmen: and at that moment those (men) despatched to do it surrounded the herdsmen and killed them all.”
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara, vol. i, p. 162, a King and Queen ordered their cook to kill the person who brought a message, and sent a Brāhmaṇa with it. On the way, the King’s son told him to get a pair of ear-rings made, took the message, and was killed by the cook.
In the Kathākoça, p. 172, a merchant who wished to get a youth killed, sent him with a letter to his son ordering poison (vishan̥) to be given to him. While the youth was asleep in the temple of the God of Love, the merchant’s daughter Vishā came there, read the letter, corrected the spelling of her name, and her brother married her to the youth. Eventually, the merchant’s son was killed by mistake in place of the youth, who became the heir, and the merchant died of grief.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes, extracted from the Chinese Tripiṭaka), vol. i, p. 165, we find the Indian form of the whole story. A wealthy childless Brāhmaṇa householder adopted an abandoned infant (the Bōdhisattva), but when his wife was about to be confined he left it in a ditch, where a ewe suckled it till the shepherd returned it to him. He next left it in a rut in a road, but when many hundred carts came next morning the bulls refused to advance until the child was placed in a cart. A widow took charge of it, the householder regretted what he had done, rewarded her, and regained it. Finding after some years that the boy was more intelligent than his own son, he abandoned him among some bamboos, but men seeking firewood saved him. When the householder heard of him he felt remorse, paid the men well, and took him back. Again becoming jealous of his intelligence and popularity, he sent him to a metal founder with a note in which the man was ordered to throw into his furnace the child who brought it. On his way the householder’s son, who was playing with others at throwing walnuts, told him to collect his nuts, delivered the letter, and was thrown into the furnace. The householder feared some accident, but arrived too late to save him. Determined to kill the elder boy he sent him with a letter to a distant dependant, who was ordered to drown him. On the road the youth called at the house of a Brāhmaṇa friend of the householder, where during the night the host’s clever daughter abstracted and read the letter, and replaced it by one giving instructions for the immediate marriage of the youth to her, and the presentation of handsome wedding presents; this was done. When he heard of it the householder became seriously ill; the couple went to salute him, and on seeing them he died in a fit of fury.
Page 198. In Sagas from the Far East, p. 201, in a Kalmuk tale, a woman picked up some tufts of wool, said she would weave cloth and sell it until an ass could be bought for her child, and would have a foal. When the child said he would ride the foal, his mother ordered him to be silent and to punish him went after him with a stick; as he was trying to escape the blow fell on his head and killed him.
In the Arabian Nights, vol. 5, p. 388, there is a story of a Fakīr who hung over his head a pot-ful of ghī which he had saved out of his allowance. With the money for which he could sell it he thought he would get a ewe, and gradually breeding sheep and then cattle, would become rich, get married, and have a son whom he would strike if he were disobedient. As he thought this he raised his staff, which struck and smashed the pot of ghī; this fell on him, and spoilt his clothes and bed.
Page 200. In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara, vol. ii, p. 60, a foolish King who wished to make his daughter grow quickly, was told by his doctors that they must place her in concealment while they were procuring the necessary medicine from a distant country. After several years they produced her, saying that she had grown by the power of the medicine, and the King loaded them with wealth. This story is given in Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues, vol. ii, p. 166.