North-western Province.
In The Orientalist, vol. ii, p. 145, Mr. N. Visuvanathapillai, Mudaliyār, relates this as a Tamil story. The girl was Princess Devallī; to save the country she was condemned to death, but her mother bribed the executioners to set her afloat in the river, in a box. A hunter who had trapped a tiger on the river bank secured the box, released the Princess, and put in the tiger. The Guru (teacher) had heard of the Queen’s stratagem, and sent a dozen of his pupils in a boat in search of the box. They brought it into a room in a deserted building, and remained in an adjoining one, being instructed to clap their hands and shout, “Hail! Long life to our Master!” when they heard the box opened. Amid this applause of the boys the tiger killed the Guru. (In The Orientalist, vol. iii, p. 269, Mr. J. P. Lewis noted that this story is from the Kathā sintāmaṇi).
In Old Deccan Days (M. Frere), p. 280, a Brāhmaṇa foretold that unless a baby Princess should be sent out of the country she would destroy it utterly. The Rāja her father caused her to be placed in a box, which was launched on a river, and floated down. A merchant saw it, and got a fisherman to bring it ashore, the box to go to him and the contents to belong to the merchant. He got the Princess, reared her, and married her to his son. The rest of the tale is the legend of the Goddess Pattinī, who caused Madura to be burnt in revenge for the execution of her husband on a false charge of stealing the Queen’s bangle.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 102, an ascetic told a merchant that when his daughter got married all the family would die, and he advised him to set her adrift in a basket on the Ganges. Her father having promised to do this, the ascetic ordered his pupils to intercept the basket and bring it secretly to his monastery. A Prince who had gone to bathe found and opened the basket, married the girl by the Gāndharva rite (in which a garland of flowers is thrown round the neck), put a fierce monkey in her place, and set the basket afloat again. The boys brought it, and the ascetic placed it in a room to perform incantations alone, he said. When he opened it the monkey flew at him and tore off his nose and ears, and he became the laughing-stock of the place.
In the Kathākoça (Tawney), p. 132, an ascetic informed a merchant that the bad luck of his two daughters would bring about his destruction, and advised him to set them afloat in the Ganges in a wooden box, and cause a ceremony to be performed for averting calamity. The ascetic performed the ceremony for him, and sent his pupils to bring the box. The King of that city got the box ashore, took the girls, and put two apes in their place. When the ascetic opened the box at his monastery he was killed by the apes and became a Rākshasa.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., pp. 398, 399, 410, the incident occurs of newly-born infants being placed in boxes, set afloat in a river, and rescued by a person lower down.[6] At p. 445, a girl who had been married to a King was set afloat in a box, and rescued by a washerman.
In Sagas from the Far East, p. 120, there is a Kalmuk variant in which a man who desired to take the wealth of an old couple, got inside a statue of Buddha, and instructed them to give their daughter to the man who knocked at their gate in the morning. The man himself came and knocked, and married her, and he and his new wife left with all their gold and precious stones. A Khan’s son who was out hunting, taking a tiger with him, fired an arrow into a mound of sand; it struck something hard which proved to be a box which the man had placed there, containing the girl and jewels. The tiger was put in her place, and when the man carried off and opened the box in an inner room of his house it killed and ate him, and walked away next morning when the door was opened. The Prince married the girl.
In the Sinhalese history, the Mahāvansa, p. 147 (Dr. Geiger’s translation), it is stated that in order to appease the sea-gods who had caused the sea to overflow the land on the western coast of Ceylon in the first half of the second century B.C., the King of Kaelaṇiya “with all speed caused his pious and beautiful daughter named Dēvī to be placed in a golden vessel whereon was written ‘a king’s daughter,’ and to be launched upon that same sea.” She was brought ashore at the extreme south-east of Ceylon, and married by the King of Ruhuṇa or Southern Ceylon.
The original Indian story of the child who was consigned to the water in a basket or box appears to be that which is given in the Mahā Bhārata (Vaṇa Parva). According to it, an unmarried Princess, Kuntī, who bore a supernatural son to the deity Sūriya, the Sun, placed the infant in a water-tight wicker basket, and set it afloat in the adjoining river, from which it passed down to the Ganges, and then drifted down that river until it arrived near Campā, the capital of the Anga kingdom. The basket was brought ashore and opened by a car-driver who had gone to the river bank with his wife. These two, being childless, adopted the infant, who afterwards became famous as Karṇa, the leading Kuru warrior in the great battle against the Pāṇḍava Princes and their allies.