While she was doing this, the scholars having gone to the King said, “It was a Princess who was there. After we went to a city to collect donations, having met with the Princess’s Prince he came back with us. Both of them are now at the school.”
After that, the King, having come to the school, and having asked about those things from those two, built a house with a tiled roof, and gave it and half the village to the Princess as a present.
North-western Province.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 86, a Prince induced three persons who were quarrelling over the ownership of some wonderful articles left by their master, a Fakīr, to run for three arrows which he discharged in three directions. While they were absent, he took three of the articles, and seating himself on a magic seat which was one of the things, was conveyed away by it.
At p. 306 ff. of the same work, a Prince and Princess eloped when the latter was about to be married to another Prince. While on their way, she remembered some jewels which she required, and he returned for them. In the meantime a robber had come up in the dark, and finding her servant asleep had ridden off with the Princess, who thought he was the Prince. When daylight came she found out her mistake, sent him to a village for food, and then rode off alone; and calling at a goldsmith’s house for a drink, was detained and requested to marry him. On her agreeing, he gave her gold ear-rings and her jewels, with which she rode off, and stayed with a married couple, disguising herself as a man. An elephant selected her as King. Then she got an artist to paint her portrait, and she hung it in a thoroughfare of the city, with a guard who seized all who recognised her. These proved to be the robber, her servant, the goldsmith, and the two who befriended her, and lastly the Prince. When the Prince saw her portrait he fainted. He was first made Prime Minister, and afterwards the Princess revealed herself to him, and he became King. The robber and goldsmith were imprisoned, and the others rewarded. The resemblance to the Sinhalese story is striking.
[1] Evidently a modern interpolation, as the Princess was represented as using only a writing style. [↑]