North-western Province.
This story contains references to several notions that are still preserved in the villages, such as the fulfilment of wishes, either silent or expressed aloud, when presenting offerings at the wihāras, the protection of human beings by the personal intervention of guardian deities, and the existence of internal apartments in certain rock masses. A high rounded hill of gneiss is pointed out at Nīrammulla, in the North-western Province,[9] inside which King Vīra-Bāhu is stated to have constructed a palace; and many flat rocks which emit a hollow sound when trodden on are supposed to contain such an apartment or “house” as that mentioned in this tale. The belief that a human being may become a demon before death is, I think, not now held; but in the Jātaka story No. 321 (vol. iii, p. 48) a wicked boy became a prēta “while still alive.”
Examples of the wishes made on presenting religious offerings are to be seen in the Jātaka stories Nos. 514, 527, and 531. In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. ii, p. 137, it is stated, “Thus, when one pronounces a wish in the name of acts productive of goodness that one has effected, the realisation depends solely on the heart and good fortune; whatever may be the mark at which one aims there is no one who does not attain it.”
In Tales of the Sun (Mrs. H. Kingscote and Pandit Naṭēśa Sāstrī), p. 220, a girl who was being carried off by robbers while on her cot, escaped like the Queen in this story.
In Tales of the Punjab (Mrs. F. A. Steel), p. 227, the same incident is found, the person who escaped being the wife of a barber, whom thieves were carrying off. In this case she did not first increase the load on the bed by branches or fruits. (See also vol. i, p. 357.)
In Indian Fairy Tales (M. Stokes), p. 140, a Prince who was going in search of a magic Bēl fruit was instructed by a fakīr how to take it, and was warned that if he looked back while returning, he and his horse would be turned into stone. This occurred, and nothing was then done to them by the fairies and demons who were chasing them. Afterwards the fakīr found them, cut his little finger from the tip to the palm, smeared the blood from it on the Prince’s forehead and on the horse, prayed to God, and they became alive again.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 210, the son of a Brāhmaṇa smashed with a lighted piece of wood the skull of a person who was being burnt in a funeral pyre in a cemetery. Some of the brain flew out and entered his open mouth, and he immediately became a Rākshasa.
In the same work, vol. ii, p. 578, an Apsaras who was the wife of a gambler was by a curse of Indra’s turned into an image (apparently a wooden or stone relief) on a pillar in a temple. The Jewish legend of Lot’s wife shows that the notion of such transformations, especially when a person disobeyed an injunction not to look back, was of very ancient date.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., pp. 191 ff., four Princes were changed into stones by a Jōgī, or Hindu ascetic. In a footnote, p. 192, Mr. Knowles gives references to such metamorphoses elsewhere, among them being the turning of a hunter into stone[10] owing to a curse by Damayantī. Mr. Knowles states that many stones in Kashmīr are believed to be the petrified bodies of men who have been cursed. I do not remember seeing or hearing of any instances of such petrifaction in Ceylon, but we may gather from the story just given and that numbered 136 that such a belief is held there.