A certain King had six wives, none of whom had children, in spite of
doctors and all sorts of doctors’ stuff. He was advised by his ministers
to take a seventh wife. There was in the city a poor woman who earned
her livelihood by gathering cow-dung from the fields, kneading it into
cakes, which, after drying in the sun, she sold for fuel. She had a very
beautiful daughter, who had contracted friendship with three girls much
above her rank, namely, the daughter of the King’s minister, the
daughter of a rich merchant, and the daughter of the King’s chaplain. It
happened one day that all four were bathing together in a tank near the
palace, and the King overheard them conversing as follows: Said the
minister’s daughter, “The man who marries me won’t need to buy me any
clothes, for the cloth I once put on never gets soiled, never gets old,
and never tears.” The merchant’s daughter said, “And my husband will
also be a happy man, for the fuel which I use in cooking never turns to
ashes, but serves from day to day, and from year to year.” Quoth the
chaplain’s daughter, “My husband too will be a happy man, for when once
I cook rice it never gets finished; no matter how much we may eat, the
original quantity always remains in the pot.”[183] Then said the poor
woman’s daughter, “And the man who marries me will also be happy, for I
shall give birth to twin children, a son and a daughter; the girl will
be divinely beautiful, and the boy will have a moon on his forehead and
stars on the palms of his hands.”
The King didn’t care to have any of the three young ladies, but resolved
at once to marry the fourth girl, who would present him with such
extraordinary twin children, notwithstanding her humble birth, and their
nuptials were celebrated in due form, much to the chagrin of his six
wives. Some time after the King had occasion to go for six months to
another part of his dominions, and when about to set out he told his new
wife that he expected her to be confined before the period of his
absence was expired, and that he would like to be present with her at
the time, lest her enemies (her co-wives) might do her some injury. So
giving her a golden bell he bade her hang it in her room, and when the
pains of labour came on to ring it, and he would be with her in a
moment, no matter where he might be at the time; but she must only ring
it when her labour pains began. The six other wives had overheard all
this, and the day after the King had departed went to the new wife’s
room and affected to admire the golden bell, and asked her where she got
it and what was its use. The unsuspecting creature told them its
purpose, upon which they all exclaimed that it was impossible the King
could hear it ring at the distance of hundreds of miles, and besides,
how could the King travel such a distance in the twinkling of an eye?
They urged her to ring the bell and convince herself that what the King
had said to her was all nonsense. So she rang the bell, and the King
instantly appeared, and seeing her going about as usual, he asked her
why she had summoned him before her time. Without saying anything about
the six other wives, she replied that she had rung the bell merely out
of curiosity to know if what he had said was true. The King was angry,
and, telling her distinctly she was not to ring the bell until the
labour pains came upon her, went away again. Some weeks after the six
wives once more induced her to ring the bell, and when the King appeared
and found she was not about to be confined and that she had been merely
making another trial of the bell (for, as on the former occasion, she
did not say that her co-wives had instigated her), he was greatly
enraged, and told her that even should she ring when in the throes of
childbirth he should not come to her, and then went away. At last the
day of her confinement arrived, and when she rang the bell the King did
not come.[184] The six jealous wives seeing this went to her and said
that it was not customary for the ladies of the palace to be confined in
the royal apartments, and that she must go to a hut near the stables.
They then sent for the midwife of the palace, and heavily bribed her to
make away with the infant the moment it was born. The seventh wife gave
birth, as she had promised, to a son who had a moon on his forehead and
stars on the palms of his hands, and also to an uncommonly beautiful
girl. The midwife had come provided with a couple of newly-littered
pups, which she set before the mother, saying, “You have given birth to
these,” and took away the twin children in an earthen vessel, while the
mother was insensible. The King, though he was angry with his seventh
wife, yet recollecting that she was to give birth to an heir to his
throne, changed his mind, and came to see her the next morning. The pups
were produced before the King as the offspring of his new wife, and
great was his anger and vexation. He gave orders that she should be
expelled from the palace, clothed in leather, and employed in the
market-place to drive away crows and keep off dogs, all of which was
done accordingly.
The midwife placed the vessel containing the twins along with the
unburnt clay vessels which a potter had set in order and then gone to
sleep, intending to get up during the night and light his furnace; in
this way she thought the little innocents would be reduced to ashes. It
happened, however, that the potter and his wife overslept themselves
that night, and it was near daybreak when the woman awoke and roused her
husband. She then hastened to the furnace, and to her surprise found all
the pots thoroughly baked, although no fire had been applied to them.
Wondering at such good luck, she summoned her husband, who was equally
astonished and pleased, and attributed it all to some benevolent deity.
In turning over the pots he came upon the one in which the twins were
placed, and the wife looking on them as a gift from heaven (for she had
no children) carried them into the house and gave out to the neighbours
that they had been borne by herself. The children grew in stature and in
strength and when they played in the fields were the admiration of every
one that saw them. They were about twelve years of age when the potter
died, and his wife threw herself on the pyre and was burnt with her
husband’s body. The boy with the moon on his forehead (which he always
kept concealed with a turban, lest it should attract notice) and his
beautiful sister now broke up the potter’s establishment, sold his wheel
and pots and pans, and went to the bazár in the King’s city, which they
had no sooner entered than it was lit up brilliantly. The shopkeepers
thought them divine beings and built a house for them in the bazár. And
when they used to ramble about they were always followed at a distance
by the woman clothed in leather who was appointed by the King to drive
away the crows, and by some strange impulse, she also used to hang about
their house.[185]
The youth presently bought a horse and went hunting in the neighbouring
jungles. It happened one day, while following the chase, that the King
met him, and, struck with his beauty, felt an unaccountable yearning for
him.[185] As a deer went past the youth shot an arrow and in so doing
his turban fell off, on which a bright light, like that of the moon, was
seen shining on his forehead. When the King perceived this, it brought
to his mind the son with the moon on his forehead and stars on the palms
of his hands who was to have been born of his seventh queen, and would
have spoken with the youth, but he immediately galloped off. When the
King reached home his six wives observing his sadness asked him its
cause, and he told them of the youth he had seen in the forest with a
moon on his forehead. They began to wonder if the twins were not still
alive, and sending for the midwife closely questioned her as to the fate
of the children. She stoutly declared that she had herself seen them
burnt to ashes, but she would find out who the youth was whom the King
had met while hunting. She soon ascertained that two strangers were
living in a house in the bazár which the shopkeepers had built for them,
and when she entered the house the girl was alone, her brother having
gone into the jungle to hunt. Pretending to be her aunt, the old woman
said to her, “My dear child, you are so beautiful, you require only the
_kataki_[186] flower to properly set off your charms. You should tell
your brother to plant a row of that flower in your courtyard.” “I never
saw that flower,” said the girl. “Of course not; how could you? It does
not grow in this country, but on the other side of the ocean. Your
brother may try and get it for you, if you ask him.” This suggestion the
old trot made in the hope that the lad would lose his life in venturing
to obtain the flower. When he returned and his sister told him of the
visit of their aunt and asked him to get her the _kataki_ flower, on
which she had set her heart, he at once consented, albeit he thought the
woman had imposed upon his sister by calling herself their aunt.
Next morning he rode off on his fleet horse, and arriving on the borders
of an immense forest he saw a number of rákshasí[187] roaming about, he
went aside and shot with his arrows some deer and rhinoceroses and then
approaching the rákshasís called out, “O auntie dear, your nephew is
here.” A huge rakshasí strode towards him and said, “O, you are the
youth with the moon on your forehead and stars on the palms of your
hands. We were all expecting you, but as you have called me aunt, I will
not eat you. What is it you want? Have you brought anything for me to
eat?” The youth gave her the game he had killed, and she began devouring
it. After swallowing all the carcases she said, “Well, what do you
want?” He answered, “I want some _kataki_ flowers for my sister.” She
told him it would be very difficult for him to get them, as they were
guarded by seven hundred rákshasas, but if he was determined to attempt
it, he had better first go to his uncle on the north side of the jungle.
He goes, and greets the rákshasa, calling him uncle, and having regaled
him with deer and rhinoceroses as he had done his “aunt,” the rákshasa
tells him that in order to obtain the flower he must go through an
impenetrable forest of _kachiri_[188], and say to it, “O mother
_kachiri_, make way for me, else I perish,” upon which a passage will be
opened for him. Next he will come to the ocean, which he must petition
in the same terms, and it would make a way for him. After crossing the
ocean he’ll come to the gardens where the _kataki_ blooms. The forest
opens a passage for the youth, and the ocean stands up like two walls on
either side of him, so that he passes over dryshod.[189] He enters the
gardens and finds himself in a grand palace which appeared unoccupied.
In one of the apartments he sees a young damsel of more than earthly
beauty asleep on a golden bed, and going near discovers a stick of gold
lying near her head and a stick of silver near her feet. Taking them in
his hand, by accident the gold stick fell upon the feet of the sleeping
beauty, when she instantly awoke, and told him she knew that he was the
youth with the moon on his forehead and stars on the palms of his hands;
that the seven hundred rákshasas who guarded the _kataki_ flowers were
then out hunting, but would return by sundown, and should they find him
they’d eat him. A rákshasí had brought her from her father’s palace, and
is so fond of her that she will not allow her to return home. By means
of the gold and silver sticks the rákshasí kills her when she goes off
in the morning, and by means of them also she is revived when she comes
back in the evening. He had better flee and save his life. But the youth
told her he would not go away without the _kataki_ flower, moreover,
that he would take her also with him. They spent the day in walking
about the gardens, and when it was drawing near the time for the return
of the rákshasas, the youth concealed himself under a great heap of the
_kataki_ flower which was in one of the rooms, having first “killed” the
damsel by touching her head with the golden stick. The return of the
seven hundred rákshasas was like the noise of a mighty tempest. One of
them entered the damsel’s room and revived her, saying at the same time,
“I smell a human being!”[190] The damsel replied, “How can a human being
come to this place?” and the rákshasa was satisfied. During the night
the damsel worms out of the rákshasí who was her mistress the secret
that the lives of the seven hundred rákshasas depended on the lives of a
male and female bee, which were in a wooden box at the bottom of a tank,
and that the only person who could seize and kill those bees was a youth
with a moon on his forehead and stars on the palms of his hands—but
there could be no such youth, and so their lives were safe.[191] When
the rákshasas had all gone out as usual next morning, the damsel, having
been revived by the youth, told him how the demons could be killed, and,
to be brief, he was not slow to put her directions into practice. After
the death of the seven hundred rákshasas, the youth took some of the
_kataki_ flowers and left the palace accompanied by the beautiful
damsel, whose name was Pushpavati. They passed through the ocean and
forest of _kachiri_ in safety, and arriving at the house in the bazár
the youth with the moon on his forehead presented the _kataki_ flower to
his sister. Going out to hunt the next day, he met the king, and his
turban again falling off as he shot an arrow, the King saw the moon on
his forehead and desired his friendship. The youth invited the King to
his house, and he went thither at midday. Pushpavati then told the King
(for she knew the whole story from first to last) how his seventh wife
had been induced by his six other wives to ring the bell twice
needlessly; how she gave birth to a boy and a girl, and pups were
substituted for them; how the twins were miraculously saved and brought
up in the house of a potter, and so forth. When she had concluded the
King was highly enraged, and next day caused his six wicked wives to be
buried alive. The seventh queen was brought from the market-place and
reinstated in the palace, and the youth with a moon on his forehead and
stars on the palms of his hands lived happily with his beautiful
twin-sister.
In two other Hindú versions known to me—but the story is doubtless as
widely spread over India as we have seen it to be over Europe—only the
leading idea of Galland’s tale reappears, though one of them suggests
the romance of “Helyas, the Knight of the Swan,” namely, the story
called “Truth’s Triumph,” in Miss Frere’s “Old Deccan Days,” p. 55 ff.
Here a rájá and his minister walking together come to a large garden,
where is a _bringal_-tree bearing 100 fruits but having no leaves, and
the minister says to the rájá that whosoever should marry the gardener’s
daughter should have by her 100 boys and one girl. The rájá espoused the
maiden, much to the vexation of the 12 wives he had already, and then
follows a repetition of the golden bell affair, as in the Bengalí
version. Drapadi Bai, the gardener’s daughter and the new rání, gives
birth “right off,” to 100 sons and a daughter, all of whom are thrown by
the nurse on a dust-heap in which are a great number of rat-holes, the
jealous co-wives fully expecting that the voracious rodents would
quickly eat them up. The nurse tells the young rání that her children
had turned into stones; such is also the story the 12 co-wives tell the
rájá on his return, and he orders poor Drapadi Bai to be imprisoned for
life. But the rats, so far from devouring the children, nourished them
with the utmost care. It comes to the knowledge of the 12 co-wives that
the children are still alive; they are discovered and turned into
crows—all save the little girl, who luckily escapes the fate of her 100
brothers, gets married to a great rájá, and has a son named Ramchandra,
who effected the restoration to human form of his crow-uncles by means
of magic water which he obtained from a rákshasí.
The other story referred to is No. xx. of Miss Stokes’ “Indian Fairy
Tales,” which Mr. Coote could not have read, else he would not have been
at the trouble to maintain it was impossible that Galland derived his
tale from it: “so long,” says he, “as that story remained in the country
of its birth—India—it was absolutely inaccessible to him, for, great
traveller as he was, he never visited that far-off portion of the East.”
The fact is, this Hindú story only resembles Galland’s, and that
remotely, in the opening portion. Seven daughters of a poor man played
daily under the shady trees in the king’s garden with the gardener’s
daughter, and she used to say to them, “When I am married I shall have a
son—such a beautiful boy as he will be has never been seen. He will have
a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin,” and they all laughed at
her. The king, having overheard what she so often repeated, married her,
though he had already four wives. Then follows the golden bell affair
again, with a kettledrum substituted. When the young queen is about to
be confined her co-wives tell her it is the custom to bind the eyes of
women in her condition, to which she submits, and after she has borne
the wonderful boy she promised to do, they tell her she has been
delivered of a stone. The king degraded her to the condition of a
kitchen servant and never spoke to her. The nurse takes the baby in a
box and buries it in the jungle. But the king’s dog had followed her,
and when she went off he took the box out of the earth and swallowed the
baby. Six months after the dog brings him up, caresses him and swallows
him again. He does likewise at the end of a year, and the dog’s keeper,
having seen all told the four wives. They say to the king the dog had
torn their clothes, and he replies, he’ll have the brute shot to-morrow.
The dog overhears this and runs off to the king’s cow; he induces her to
save the child by swallowing him, and the cow consents. Next day the dog
is shot, and so on: the cow is to be killed and induces the king’s horse
to swallow the child, and so on.—There may have been originally some
mystical signification attached to this part of the tale, but it has
certainly no connection with our story.[192]
I had nearly omitted an Arabian version of the outcast infants which
seems to have hitherto escaped notice by story-comparers. Moreover, it
occurs in a text of The Nights, to wit, the Wortley-Montague MS., Nights
472–483, in the story of Abou Neeut and Abou Neeuteen = Abú Niyyet and
Abú Niyyeteyn, according to Dr. Redhouse; one of those translated by
Jonathan Scott in vol. vi. of his edition of the “Arabian Nights,”
where, at p. 227, the hero marries the King’s youngest daughter and the
King in dying leaves him heir to his throne, a bequest which is disputed
by the husbands of the two elder daughters. The young queen is brought
to bed of a son, and her sisters bribe the midwife to declare that she
has given birth to a dog and throw the infant at the gate of one of the
royal palaces. The same occurs when a second son is born. But at the
third lying-in of the princess her husband takes care to be present, and
the beautiful daughter she brings forth is saved from the clutches of
her vindictive sisters. The two little princes are taken up by a
gardener and reared as his own children. In course of time, it happened
that the King (Abú Neeut) and his daughter visited the garden and saw
the two little boys playing together and the young princess felt an
instinctive affection for them, and the King, finding them engaged in
martial play, making clay-horses, bows and arrows, &c., had the
curiosity to inquire into their history. The dates when they were found
agreed with those of the queen’s delivery; the midwife also confessed;
and the King left the guilty parties to be punished by the pangs of
their own consciences, being convinced that envy is the worst of
torments. The two young princes were formally acknowledged and grew up
to follow their father’s example.
We must go back to India once more if we would trace our tale to what is
perhaps its primitive form, and that is probably of Buddhist invention;
though it is quite possible this may be one of the numerous fictions
which have been time out of mind the common heritage of nearly all
peoples, and some of which the early Buddhists adapted to their own
purposes. Be this as it may, in the following tale, from Dr. Mitra’s
“Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepál” (Calcutta: 1882), pp. 65, 66, we
seem to have somewhat like the germ of the Envious Sisters: