A curious instance of precocity is related in the Third Book of the “Masnaví” (see ante, p. 556), of which Mr. E. H. Whinfield gives an outline in his admirable and most useful abridgment of that work: The boys wished to obtain a holiday, and the sharpest of them suggested that when the master came into school each boy should condole with him on his alleged sickly appearance. Accordingly, when he entered, one said, “O master, how pale you are looking!” and another said, “You are looking very ill to-day,” and so on. The master at first answered that there was nothing the matter with him, but as one boy after another continued assuring him that he looked very ill, he was at length deluded into imagining that he must really be ill. So he returned to his house, making the boys follow him here, and told his wife that he was not well, bidding her mark how pale he was. His wife assured him he was not looking pale, and offered to convince him by bringing a mirror; but he refused to look at it, and took to his bed. He then ordered the boys to begin their lessons; but they assured him that the noise made his head ache, and he believed them, and dismissed them to their homes, to the annoyance of their mothers.
Another example of juvenile cleverness is found in a Persian collection of anecdotes entitled “Latá’yif At-Taw’áyif”, by ’Alí ibn Husain Al-Va’iz Al-Káshifí: One day Núrshírván saw in a dream that he was drinking with a frog out of the same cup. When he awoke he told this dream to his vazír, but he knew not the interpretation of it. The king grew angry and said, “How long have I maintained thee, that if any difficulty should arise thou mightest unloose the knot of it, and if any matter weighed on my heart thou shouldst lighten it? Now I give thee three days, that thou mayest find out the meaning of this dream, and remove the trouble of my mind; and if, within that space, thou art not successful, I will kill thee.” The vazír went from the presence of Núrshírván confounded and much in trouble. He gathered together all the sages and interpreters of dreams, and told the matter to them, but they were unable to explain it; and the vazír resigned his soul to death. But this story was told in the city, and on the third day he heard that there was a mountain, ten farsangs distant from the city, in which was a cave, and in this cave a sage who had chosen the path of seclusion, and lived apart from mankind, and had turned his face to the wall. The vazír set out for his place of retirement, saying to himself, “Perhaps he will be able to lay a plaster on my wound, and relieve it from the throbbings of care.” So he mounted his horse, and went to find the sage. At the moment he arrived at the hill a company of boys were playing together. One of them cried out with a loud voice, “The vazír is running everywhere in search of an interpreter, and all avails him nothing; now the interpretation of the dream is with me, and the truth of it is clear to me.” When these words reached the ears of the vazír he drew in the reins, and calling the boy to him asked him, “What is thy name?” He replied, “Buzurjmihr.” The vazír said, “All the sages and interpreters have failed in loosing the knot of this difficulty—how dost thou, so young in years, pretend to be able to do it.” He replied, “All the world is not given to every one.” The vazír said, “If thou speakest truth, explain.” Said the boy, “Take me to the monarch, that I may there unloose the knot of this difficulty.” The vazír said, “If thou shouldst fail, what then will come of it?” The boy replied, “I will give up my own blood to the king, that they may slay me instead of thee.” The vazír took the boy with him, returned, and told the whole matter to the king and produced the boy in his presence. The king was very angry, and said, “All the wise men and dream-interpreters of the court were unable to satisfy me, and thou bringest me a child, and expectest that he shall loose the knot of the difficulty.” The vazír bowed his head. And Buzurjmihr said, “Look not upon his youth, but see whether he is able to expound the mystery or not.” The king then said, “Speak.” He replied, “I cannot speak in this multitude.” So those who were present retired, and the monarch and the youth were left alone. Then said the youth, “A stranger has found entrance into thy seraglio, and is dishonouring thee, along with a girl who is one of thy concubines.” The king was much moved at this interpretation, and looked from one of the wise men to another, and at length said to the boy, “This is a serious matter thou hast asserted; how shall this matter be proceeded in, and in what way fully known?” The boy replied, “Command that every beautiful woman in thy seraglio pass before thee unveiled, that the truth of this matter may be made apparent.” The king ordered them to pass before him as the boy had said, and considered the face of each one attentively. Among them came a young girl extremely beautiful, whom the king much regarded. When she came opposite to him, a shuddering as of palsy, fell upon her, and she shook from head to foot, so that she was hardly able to stand. The king called her to him, and threatening her greatly, bade her speak the truth. She confessed that she loved a handsome slave and had privately introduced him into the seraglio. The king ordered them both to be impaled, and turning to the rewarding of Buzurjmihr, he made him the object of his special bounty.
This story has been imported into the “History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome,” the European form of the Book of Sindibád, where the prince discovers to his father the paramour of his stepmother, the empress, in the person of a young man disguised as one of her maid-servants, and its presence in the work is quite inconsistent with the lady’s violent lust after the young prince. There is a similar tale in the Hebrew version, “Mishlé Sandabar,” but the disguised youth is not detected. Vatsyayana, in his “Káma Sutra” (or Aphorisms of Love), speaks of it as a common practice in India thus to smuggle men into the women’s apartments in female attire. In the Introduction to the “Kathá Sarit Ságara,” Vararuchi relates how King Yogananda saw his queen leaning out of a window and asking questions of a Bráhman guest that was looking up. That trivial circumstance threw the king into a passion, and he gave orders that the Bráhman should be put to death; for jealousy interferes with discernment. Then as that Bráhman was being led off to the place of execution in order that he should be put to death, a fish in the market laughed aloud, though it was dead. The king hearing it immediately prohibited for the present the execution of the Bráhman, and asked Vararuchi the reason why the fish laughed. He desired time to think over the matter and learned from the conversation of a rákshasí with her children that the fish said to himself, “All the king’s wives are dissolute, for in every part of his harem there are men dressed up as women, and nevertheless while those escape, an innocent Bráhman is to be put to death”; and this tickled the fish so that he laughed. Mr. Tawney says that Dr. Liebrecht, in “Orient und Occident,” vol. i. p. 341, compares this story with one in the old French romance of Merlin. There Merlin laughs because the wife of Julius Cæsar had twelve young men disguised as ladies-in-waiting. Benfey, in a note on Liebrecht’s article, compares with the story of Merlin one by the Countess d’Aulnois, No. 36 of Basile’s “Pentamerone,” Straparola, iv. 1, and a story in the “Suka Saptatí.” In this some cooked fish laugh so that the whole town hears them; the reason being the same as in the above story and in that of Merlin. In a Kashmírí version, which has several other incidents and bears a close resemblance to No. 4 of M. Legrand’s “Recueil de Contes Populaires Grecs,” to the story of “The Clever Girl” in Professor T. F. Crane’s “Italian Popular Tales,” and to a fable in the Talmud, the king requires his vazír to inform him within six months why the fish laughed in presence of the queen. The vazír sends his son abroad until the king’s anger had somewhat cooled—for himself he expects nothing but death. The vazír’s son learns from the clever daughter of a farmer that the laughing of the fish indicates that there is a man in the palace unknown to the king. He hastens home and tells his father the secret, who at once communicates it to the king. All the female attendants in the palace are called together and ordered to jump across the mouth of a pit which he has caused to be dug: the man would betray his sex in the trial. Only one person succeeded and he was found to be a man.[[162]] Thus was the queen satisfied, and the faithful old vazír saved, and his son, of course, married the farmer’s clever daughter.
PRINCE AHMAD AND THE PERI-BANU—p. [419].
How, in the name of all that is wonderful—how has it happened that this ever-delightful tale is not found in any text of The Nights? And how could it be supposed for a moment that Galland was capable of conceiving such a tale—redolent, as it is, of the East and of Fairyland? Not that Fairyland where “True Thomas,” otherwise ycleped Thomas the Rymer, otherwise Thomas of Erceldoune, passed several years in the bewitching society of the Fairy Queen, years which appeared to him as only so many moments: but Eastern Fairyland, with all its enchanting scenes; where priceless gems are as plentiful as “autumnal leaves which strow the brooks in Vallombrosa”; where, in the royal banqueting-hall, illuminated with hundreds of wax candles, in candelabra of the finest amber and the purest crystal, are bands of charming damsels, fairest of form and feature, who play on sweet-toned instruments which discourse heart-ravishing strains of melody;—meanwhile the beauteous Perí Bánú is seated on a throne adorned with diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and pearls and other gems, and by her side is the thrice-happy Prince Ahmad, who feels himself amply indemnified for the loss of his fair cousin Princess Núr-en-Nihár. Auspicious was that day when he shot the arrow which the enamoured Perí Bánú caused to be wafted through the air much farther than arm of flesh could ever send the feathered messenger! And when the Prince feels a natural longing to visit his father in the land of mortals from time to time, behold the splendid cavalcade issue from the portals of the fairy palace—the gallant jinn-born cavaliers, mounted on superb steeds with gorgeous housings, who accompany him to his father’s capital! But alas! the brightest sky is sooner or later overcast—human felicity is—etc., etc. The old king’s mind is poisoned against his noble son by the whisperings of a malignant and envious minister—a snake in the grass—a fly in the ointment of Prince Ahmad’s beatitude! And to think of the old witch gaining access to the fairy palace—it was nothing less than an atrocity! And the tasks which she induces the king to set Prince Ahmad to perform—but they are all accomplished for him by his fairy bride. The only thing to regret—the fatal blemish in the tale—is the slaughter of the old king. Shabbar did right well to dash into the smallest pieces the wicked vazír and the foul witch and all who aided and abetted them, but “to kill a king!” and a well-meaning if soft-headed king, who was, like many better men, led astray by evil counsellors!
Having thus blown off the steam—I mean to say, having thus ventilated the enthusiasm engendered by again reading the tale of Prince Ahmad and the Perí Bánú, I am now in a fitter frame of mind for the business of examining some versions and variants of it; for though the tale has not yet been found in Arabic, it is known from the banks of Ganga to the snow-clad hills and vales of Iceland—that strange land whose heart is full of the fiercest fires. This tale, like that of Zayn al-Asnám, comprises two distinct stories, which have no necessary connection, to wit, (1) the adventures of the Three Princes, each in quest of the rarest treasure, wherewith to win the beautiful Princess Núr-en-Nihár; and (2) the subsequent history of the third Prince and the Perí Bánú. The oldest known form of the story concludes with the recovery of the lady—not from death’s door, but from a giant who had carried her off, and the rival claims of the heroes to the hand of the lady are left undecided: certainly a most unsatisfactory ending, though it must be confessed the case was, as the priest found that of Paddy and the stolen pullet, somewhat “abstruse.” In the “Vetálapanchavinsati,” or Twenty-five Tales of a Vampyre (concerning which collection see Appendix to the preceding volumes, p. 320), the fifth recital is to this purpose:
There was a Bráhman in Ajjayini (Oojein) whose name was Harisvamin; he had a son named Devasvamin and a daughter far famed for her wondrous beauty and rightly called Somaprabha (Moonlight). When the maiden had attained marriageable age, she declared to her parents that she was only to be married to a man who possessed heroism, or knowledge, or magic power. It happened soon after this that Harisvamin was sent by the king on state business to the Dekkan, and while there a young Brahman, who had heard the report of Somaprabha’s beauty, came to him as a suitor for the hand of his daughter. Harisvamin informed him of the qualifications which her husband must possess, and the Bráhman answered that he was endowed with magic power, and having shown this to the father’s satisfaction, he promised to give him his daughter on the seventh day from that time. In like manner, at home, the son and the wife of Harisvamin had, unknown to each other, promised Somaprabha to a young man who was skilled in the use of missile weapons and was very brave, and to a youth who possessed knowledge of the past, the present, and the future; and the marriage was also fixed to take place on the seventh day. When Harisvamin returned home he at once told his wife and son of the contract he had entered into with the young Bráhman, and they in their turn acquainted him of their separate engagements, and all were much perplexed what course to adopt in the circumstances.
On the seventh day the three suitors arrived, but Somaprabha was found to have disappeared in some inexplicable manner. The father then appealed to the man of knowledge, saying, “Tell me where my daughter is gone?” He replied, “She has been carried off by a rákshasa to his habitation in the Vindhya forest.” Then quoth the man of magic power, “Be of good cheer, for I will take you in a moment where the possessor of knowledge says she is.” And forthwith he prepared a magic chariot that could fly through the air, provided all sorts of weapons, and made Harisvamin, the man of knowledge, and the brave man enter it along with himself, and in a moment carried them to the dwelling of the rákshasa. Then followed a wonderful fight between the brave man and the rákshasa, and in a short time the hero cut off his head, after which they took Somaprabha into the chariot and quickly returned to Harisvamin’s house. And now arose a great dispute between the three suitors. Said the man of knowledge, “If I had not known where the maiden was, how could she have been discovered?” The man of magic argued, “If I had not made this chariot that can fly through the air, how could you all have come and returned in a moment?” Then the brave man said, “If I had not slain the rákshasa, how could the maiden have been rescued?” While they were thus wrangling Harisvamin remained silent, perplexed in mind. The Vampyre, having told this story to the King, demanded to know to whom the maiden should have been given. The King replied, “She ought to have been given to the brave man; for he won her by the might of his arm and at the risk of his life, slaying that rakshasa in combat.” But the man of knowledge and the man of magic power were appointed by the Creator to serve as his instruments. The perplexed Harisvamin would have been glad, no doubt, could he have had such a logical solution of the question as this of the sagacious King Trivikramasena—such was his six-syllabled name.
The Hindí version (“Baytâl Pachísí”) corresponds with the Sanskrit, but in the Tamil version the father, after hearing from each of the three suitors an account of his accomplishments, promises to give his daughter to “one of them.” Meanwhile a giant comes and carries off the damsel. There is no difference in the rest of the story.
In the Persian Parrot-Book (“Tútí Náma”) where the tale is also found[[163]]—it is the 34th recital of the loquacious bird in the India Office MS. No. 2573, the 6th in B. Gerrans’ partial translation, 1792, and the 22nd in Káderi’s abridgment—the first suitor says that his art is to discover anything lost and to predict future events; the second can make a horse of wood which would fly through the air; and the third was an unerring archer.