No brother may arise to comfort me.”
Chronologically, the next two occurrences of the story are Indian. In the “Ucchaṅga-jātaka” (Fausböll, No. 67, of uncertain date, but possibly going back to the third century B.C.) we are told—
“Three husbandmen were by mistake arrested on a charge of robbery, and imprisoned. The wife of one came to the King of Kosala, in whose realm the event took place, and entreated him to set her husband at liberty. The king asked her what relation each of the three was to her. She answered, ‘One is my husband, another my brother, and the third is my son.’ The king said, ‘I am pleased with you, and I will give you one of the three; which do you choose?’ The woman answered, ‘Sire, if I live, I can get another husband and another son; but, as my parents are dead, I can never get another brother. So give me my brother, sire.’ Pleased with the woman, the king set all three men at liberty.”
In the Cambridge translation of this “Jātaka,” the verse reply of the woman is rendered thus:—
“A son’s an easy find; of husbands too
An ample choice throngs public ways. But where
With all my pains another brother find?”
In the “Rāmāyana,” the most celebrated art epic of India, we are told how, in the battle about Lankā, Lakshmana, the favorite brother and inseparable companion of the hero Rāma, is to all appearances killed. Rāma laments over him in these words: “Anywhere at all I could get a wife, a son, and all other relatives; but I know of no place where I might be able to acquire a brother. The teaching of the Veda is true, that Parjanya rains down everything; but also is the proverb true that he does not rain down brothers.” (Ed. Gorresio, 6 : 24, 7–8.) This parallel was pointed out by R. Pischel in “Hermes,” 28 (1893) : 465.
The Persian Märchen alluded to above is cited by Th. Nöldeke in “Hermes,” 29 : 155.