King Brahmadatta picked up in Kampilla a destitute girl named Padmávatí,
who scattered lotuses at every step she moved, and made her his
favourite queen. She was very simple-minded. Other queens used to play
tricks upon her, and at the time of her first delivery cheated her most
shamefully. The wicked ladies said to her on that occasion, “Dear Padmá,
you are a rustic girl; you do not know how to give birth to a royal
child. Let us help you.” She yielded. They covered her eyes, threw into
the river the twin boys she had brought forth, and smeared her face with
blood. They deceived her by telling her that it was only a lump of flesh
that she had given birth to, and it had been thrown into the river. At
the same time they informed her husband that Padmá had eaten up her two
new-born sons. The King enraged at her inhuman conduct, ordered her to
instant execution. But there was a shrewd man in the court who privately
saved her life. A divinity appeared to the King in a dream, and revealed
the whole truth to him. The King made a strict investigation in the
harem, and found that Padmávatí had been perfectly innocent. He became
disconsolate, and gave vent to loud lamentations. Soon after some
fishermen appeared at court and presented the King with two infants, who
betrayed their royal lineage by the resemblance which their features
bore to those of the King. They were reported to have been found in a
vessel floating on the river. The courtier who saved Padmá’s life now
wished to produce her before the King, but she refused to return and
proceeded to her father’s hermitage. After the death of her father she
travelled through various places in the habit of a devotee; and in the
course of her peregrinations she stopped at Banáres, from whence
Brahmadatta conducted her to his capital with great honour.
I am of opinion that this Buddhist tale is the original form of the
“Envious Sisters”—that it ended with the restoration of the children and
the vindication of the innocence of their mother. The second part of our
story has no necessary connection with the first, the elements of which
it is composed being found in scores—nay, hundreds—of popular fictions
in every country: the quest of wonderful or magical objects; one brother
setting out, and by neglecting to follow the advice tendered him by some
person he meets on his way, he comes to grief; a second brother follows,
with the same result; and it is reserved for the youngest, and the least
esteemed, to successfully accomplish the adventure. In the second part
of the “Envious Sisters,” the girl, the youngest of the three children,
plays the part of the usual hero of folk-tales of this class. There is,
generally, a seemingly wretched old man—a hideous, misshapen dwarf—or an
ugly, decrepit old woman—who is treated with rudeness by the two elder
adventurers, so they do not speed in their enterprise; but the youngest
addresses the person in respectful terms—shares his only loaf with
him—and is rewarded by counsel which enables him to bring his adventure
to a successful end. In the “Envious Sisters,” which I cannot but think
Galland has garbled from his original, the eldest clips the beard of the
hermit, and presumably the second does the same, since we are told he
found the hermit in the like condition (albeit, his beard had been
trimmed but a few days before). Each of them receives the same
instructions. In a true folk-tale the two elder brothers would treat the
old man with contempt and suffer accordingly, while the youngest would
cut his nails and his beard, and make him more comfortable in his
person. We do not require to go to Asiatic folk-lore for tales in which
the elements of the second part of the “Envious Sisters” are to be
found. In the German story of the Fox’s Brush there is a quest of a
golden bird. The first brother sets off in high hope; on the road he
sees a fox, who calls out to him not to shoot at it, and says that
farther along the road are two inns, one of which is bright and cheerful
looking, and he should not go into it, but rather into the other, even
though it does not look very inviting. He shoots at the fox and misses
it, then continues his journey, and puts up at the fine inn, where
amidst riot and revel he forgets all about the business on which he had
set out. The same happens to the second brother. But the youngest says
to the fox that he will not shoot it, and the fox takes him on its tail
to the small inn, where he passes a quiet night, and in the morning is
conveyed by the fox to the castle, wherein is the golden bird in a
wooden cage, and so on. Analogous stories to this are plentiful
throughout Europe and Asia; there is one, I think, in the Wortley
Montague MS. of The Nights.
In Straparola’s version of the “Envious Sisters,” when the children’s
hair is combed pearls and precious stones fall out of it, whereby their
foster-parents become rich; this is only hinted at in Galland’s story:
the boy’s hair “should be golden on one side and silvern on the other;
when weeping he should drop pearls in place of tears, and when laughing
his rosy lips should be fresh as the blossom new-blown;” not another
word is afterwards said of this, while in the modern Arabic version the
children are finally identified by their mother through such
peculiarities. The silver chains with which the children are born in the
romance of “Helyas, the Knight of the Swan,” correspond with the “gold
star” etc. on the forehead in other stories. It only remains to observe
that the Bird of our tale who in the end relates the history of the
children to their father, is represented in the modern Arabic version by
the fairy Arab Zandyk, in the modern Greek by Tzitzinæna, and in the
Albanian by the Belle of the Earth.
_ADDITIONAL NOTES._