Afterwards, the King taking charge of the Gamarāla’s girl and the Prince, when for the Prince the age of about twelve years was filled up, the King died. Having appointed the Prince to the sovereignty he remained ruling the kingdom with the ten kingly virtues.
North-western Province.
The feeding of a Prince from the finger is found in the Mahā Bhārata (Drōṇa Parva, lxii), in which Indra is represented as thus feeding Prince Māndhātṛi, who made his appearance in the world out of his father’s left side, as a consequence of the latter’s having drunk some sacrificial butter or ghī, which had the magic property of causing the birth of a son. The food thus provided was so nourishing that the infant grew to twelve cubits in as many days. In A. von Schiefner’s Tibetan Tales (Ralston), this Prince was not fed thus, but was suckled by the eighty thousand wives of his father, having been born from a tumour on the crown of the King’s head; his boyhood occupied twenty-one million (and a few hundred thousand) years.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. iii, p. 216, in a legend of the founding of the Vaiśālī kingdom, two children are described as being reared by a religious mendicant by means of a supply of milk which issued from his thumbs.
[1] The “permission” of a King is a command. [↑]