friend, called Rájá Nal, but they were ashamed to go to his palace.
The three weeks were now nearly over, only two more days were left. So
the Rání said, "In two days we shall be able to eat. Go into the
jungle and cut grass, and sell it in the bazar. We shall thus get a
few pice and be able to buy a little food." The Rájá went out to the
jungle, but he had to break and pull up the grass with his hands. He
worked half the day, and then sold the grass in the bazar for a few
pice. They were able to buy food, and worshipped God and cooked it;
and as the three weeks were now over they were allowed to eat it.
They stayed in Rájá Nal's country, and lived in a little house they
hired in the bazar. Rájá Harichand went out every day to the jungle
for grass, which he pulled up or broke off with his hands, and then
sold in the bazar for a few pice. The Rání saved a pice or two
whenever she could, and at the end of two years they were rich enough
to buy a hook such as grass-cutters use. The Rájá could now cut more
grass, and soon the Rání was able to buy some pretty-coloured silks in
the bazar.
Her husband went daily to cut grass, and she sat at home making
head-collars with the silks for horses. Four years after they had
bought the hook, she had four of these head-collars ready, and she
took them up to Rájá Nal's palace to sell. It was the first time she
had gone there, for she and her husband were ashamed to see Rájá Nal.
Their fakírs' dresses had become rags, and they had only been able to
get wretched common clothes in their place, for they were miserably
poor.
"What beautiful head-collars these are!" said Rájá Nal's coachmen and
grooms; and they took them to show to their Rájá. As soon as he saw
them he said, "Where did you get these head-collars? Who is it that
wishes to sell them?" for he knew that only one woman could make such
head-collars, and that woman was the Rání Báhan. "A very poor woman
brought them here just now," they answered. "Bring her to me," said
Rájá Nal. So the servants brought him Rání Báhan, and when she saw the
Rájá she burst into tears. "What has brought you to this state? Why
are you so poor?" said Rájá Nal. "It is God's will," she answered.
"Where is your husband?" he asked. "He is cutting grass in the
jungle," she said. Rájá Nal called his servants and said, "Go into the
jungle, and there you will see a man cutting grass. Bring him to me."
When Rájá Harichand saw Rájá Nal's servants coming to him, he was very
much frightened; but the servants took him and brought him to the
palace. As soon as Rájá Nal saw his old friend, he seized his hands,
and burst out crying. "Rájá," he said, "what has brought you to this
state?" "It is God's will," said Rájá Harichand.
Rájá Nal was very good to them. He gave them a palace to live in, and
servants to wait on them; beautiful clothes to wear, and good food to
eat. He went with them to the palace to see that everything was as it
should be for them. "To-day," he said to the Rání, "I shall dine with
your husband, and you must give me a dinner cooked just as you used to
cook one for me when I went to see you in your own country." "Good, I
will give it you," said the Rání; but she was quite frightened, for
she thought, "The Rájá is so kind, and everything is so comfortable
for us, that I am sure something dreadful will happen." However, she
prepared the dinner, and told the servants how to cook it and serve
it; but first she worshipped God, and entreated him to have mercy on
her and her husband. The dinner was very good, and nothing evil
happened to any one. They lived in the palace Rájá Nal gave them for
four and a half years.
Meanwhile the farmers in Rájá Harichand's country had all these years
gone on ploughing and turning up the land, although not a drop of rain
had fallen all that time, and the earth was hard and dry. Now just
when the Rájá and Rání had lived in Rájá Nal's palace for four and a
half years Mahádeo was walking through Rájá Harichand's country. He
saw the farmers digging up the ground, and said, "What is the good of
your digging and turning up the ground? Not a drop of rain is going to
fall." "No," said the farmers, "but if we did not go on ploughing and
digging, we should forget how to do our work." They did not know they
were talking to Mahádeo, for he looked like a man. "That is true,"
said Mahádeo, and he thought, "The farmers speak the truth; and if I
go on neglecting to blow on my horn, I shall forget how to blow on it
at all." So he took his deer's horn, which was just like those some
yogís use, and blew on it. Now when Rájá Harichand had chosen the
twelve years' famine, God had said, "Rain shall not fall on Rájá
Harichand's country till Mahádeo blows his horn in it." Mahádeo had
quite forgotten this decree; so he blew on his horn, although only ten
and a half years' famine had gone by. The moment he blew, down came
the rain, and the whole country at once became as it had been before
the famine began; and moreover, the moment it rained, everything in
Rájá Harichand's palace became what it was before the angels entered
it. All the men and women came to life again; so did all the animals;
and the gold and silver were no longer charcoal, but once more gold
and silver. God was not angry with Mahádeo for forgetting that he said
the famine should last for twelve years, and that the rain should fall
when Mahádeo blew on his horn in Rájá Harichand's country. "If it
pleased Mahádeo to blow on his horn," said God, "it does not matter
that eighteen months of famine were still to last." As soon as they
heard the rain had fallen, all the ryots who had gone to other
countries on account of the famine returned to Rájá Harichand's
country.
Among the Rájá's servants was the kotwál, and very anxious he was,
when he came to life again, to find the Rájá and Rání; only he did not
know how to do so, and wondered where he had best seek for them.
Meanwhile the Rání Báhan had a dream that God sent her, in which an
angel said to her, "It is good that you and your husband should return
to your country." She told this dream to her husband; and Rájá Nal
gave them horses, elephants, and camels, that they might travel like
Rájás to their home, and he went with them. They found everything in
order in their own palace and all through their country, and after
this lived very happily in it. But the Rání said to Rájá Harichand,
"If you had only done what I told you, and said you would give me to
the fakír, all this misery would not have come on us."
Later they went to stay again with Rájá Bhoj, and slept in the same
room as they had had when they came to him poor and wretched. In the
night they saw the wall open, and the necklace came out of the crack
and hung itself up as before, and the wall closed again. The next day
they showed the necklace to Rájá Bhoj, saying, "It was on account of
this necklace that we ran away from you the last time we were here,"
and they told him all that had happened to it.
As for Gangá Télí, they never went near him again.
Told by Múniyá, March 4th, 1879.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
XXX.
THE KING'S SON AND THE WAZÍR'S DAUGHTER.
In a country there was a great king who had a wazír. One day he
thought he should like to play at cards with this wazír, and he told
him to go and get some for him, and then play a game with him. So the
wazír brought the cards, and he and the king sat down to play. Now
neither the king nor the wazír had any children; and as they were
playing, the king said, "Wazír, if I have a son and you have a
daughter, or if I have a daughter and you have a son, let us marry our
children to each other." To this the wazír agreed. A year after the
king had a son; and when the boy was two years old, the wazír had a
daughter. Some years passed, and the king's son was twelve years old,
and the wazír's daughter ten. Then the king said to the wazír, "Do you
remember how one day, when we were playing at cards, we agreed to
marry our children to each other?" "I remember," said the wazír. "Let
us marry them now," said the king. So they held the wedding feast; but
the wazír's little daughter remained in her father's house because she
was still so young.
As the king's son grew older he became very wicked, and took to
gambling and drinking till his father and mother died of grief. After
their death he went on in the same way, gambling and drinking, until
he had no money left, and had to leave the palace, and live anywhere
he could in the town, wandering from house to house in a fakír's
dress, begging his bread, and sleeping wherever he found a spot on
which to lie down.
Meanwhile the wazír's daughter was living alone, for her husband had
never come to fetch her as he should have done when she was old
enough. Her father and mother were dead too. She had given half of the
money they left her to the poor, and she lived on the other half. She
spent her days in praying to God, and in reading in a holy book; and
though she was so young, she was very wise and good.
One day, as the prince was roaming about in his fakír's rags, not
knowing where to find food or shelter, he remembered his wife, and
thought he would go and see her. She ordered her servants to give him
good food, a bath, and good clothes; "for," she said, "we were married
when we were children, though he never fetched me to his palace." The
servants did as she bade them. The prince bathed and dressed, and ate
food, and he wished to stay with his wife. But she said, "No; before
you stay with me you must see four sights. Go out in the jungle and
walk for a whole week. Then you will come to a plain where you will
see them." So the next day he set out for the plain, and reached it in
one week.
There he saw a large tank. At one corner of the tank he saw a man and
a woman who had good clothes, good food, good beds, and servants to
wait on them, and seemed very happy. At the second corner he saw a
wretchedly poor man and his wife, who did nothing but cry and sob
because they had no food to eat, no water to drink, no bed to lie on,
no one to take care of them. At the third corner he saw two little
fishes that were always going up and down in the air. They would shoot
down close to the water, but they could not go into it or stay in it;
then they would make a salaam to God, and would shoot up again into
the air, but before they got very high, they had to drop down again.
At the fourth corner he saw a huge demon who was heating sand in an
enormous iron pot, under which he kept up a big fire.
The prince returned to his wife, and told her all he had seen. "Do you
know who the happy man and woman are?" she said. "No," he answered.
"They are my father and mother," she said. "When they were alive, I
was good to them, and since their death I gave half their money to the
poor; and on the other half I have lived quietly, and tried to be
good. So God is pleased with them, and makes them happy." "Is that
true?" said her husband. "Quite true," she said. "And the miserable
man and woman who did nothing but cry, do you know who they are?"
"No," said the prince. "They are your father and mother. When they
were alive, you gambled and drank; and they died of grief. Then you
went on gambling and drinking till you had spent all their money. So
now God is angry with them, and will not make them happy." "Is that
true?" said the prince. "Quite true," she said. "And the fishes you
saw were the two little children we should have had if you had taken
me to your home as your wife. Now they cannot be born, for they can
find no bodies in which to be born; so God has ordered them to rise
and sink in the air in these fishes' forms." "Is that true?" asked the
prince. "Quite true," she answered. "And by God's order the demon you
saw is heating that sand in the big iron pot for you, because you are
such a wicked man."
The moment she had told all this to her husband, she died. But he did
not get any better. He gambled and drank all her money away, and lived
a wretched life, wandering about like a fakír till his death.
Told by Múniyá, March 8th, 1879.
[Decoration]
NOTES.
INTRODUCTORY.
In these stories the word translated God, is _Khudá_. Excepting in
"How king Burtal became a Fakír" (p. 85), and in "Rájá Harichand's
Punishment" (p. 224), in which Mahádeo plays a part, the tellers of
these tales would never specify by name the god they spoke of. He was
always _Khudá_, "the great _Khudá_ who lives up there in the sky." In
this they differed from the narrator of the _Old Deccan Days_ stories,
who almost always gives her gods and goddesses their Hindú
names--probably because, from being a Christian, she had no religious
scruples to deter her from so doing.
When the heroes of these stories are called Rájás, the word Rájá has
been kept: when they are called Bádsháhs, we have called them kings.
The Ayahs say, "A Bádsháh is a much greater man than a Rájá." When
_bádsháh_ (the Persian _pádisháh_) in its corrupted form of _básá_ is
tacked on to a proper name, such as _Anár_ (_Anárbásá_), _Hírálál_
(_Hírálálbásá_), the _básá_ has been preserved, because, Dunkní says,
in these cases _básá_ is no longer a title, but part of the proper
name.
Old Múniyá tells her stories with the solemn, authoritative air of a
professor. She sits quite still on the floor, and uses no gestures.
Dunkní gets thoroughly excited over her tales, marches up and down the
room, acting her stories, as it were. For instance, in describing the
thickness of Mahádeo's hair in King Burtal's story, she put her two
thumbs to her ears, and spread out all her fingers from her head
saying, "His hair stood out like this," and in "Loving Lailí," after
moving her hand as if she were pulling the magic knife from her pocket
and unfolding it, she swung her arm out at full length with great
energy, and then she said, "Lailí made one 'touch'" (here she brought
back the edge of her hand to her own throat), "and the head fell off."
Dunkní sometimes used an English word, such as the "touch" in the
present case.
All these stories were read back in Hindústání by my little girl to
the tellers at the time of telling, and nearly all a second time by me
this winter before printing. I never saw people more anxious to have
their tales retold exactly than are Dunkní and Múniyá. Not till each
tale was pronounced by them to be _thík_ (exact) was it sent to the
press.
It is strange in these Indian tales to meet golden-haired,
fair-complexioned heroes and heroines. Mr. Thornton tells me that in
the Panjáb when one native speaks of another with contempt, he says,
"he is a black man," _ek kálá ádmí hai_. Sir Neville Chamberlain tells
me that if you wish to praise a native for his valour and brave
conduct, you say to him, "Your countenance is red," or "your cheeks
are red," and that nothing is worse than to tell him his "face is
black." And this is what Mr. Boxwell says about the expression "kálá
ádmí" and our fairy tales:--
"The stories are of the Aryan conquerors from beyond the
Indus; distinguished by their fair skin from the dark
aborigines of India. In Vedic times Var[n.]a, 'colour,'
is used for stock or blood, as the Latins used Nomen. It
is in India 'Yas Dásam var[n.]am adharam guhákar.' 'Who
sank in darkness the Barbarian colour.' R. V. II. 4.
"Indra, again, 'Hatvé Dasyún pra Áryam var[n.]am ávat.'
'Having slain the Barbarians, helped the Aryan colour.'
R. V. III. 34.
"Again, in K. V. I. 104. They pray--
"'Te nas ávaksa suvitáya var[n.]am.' 'May they bring our
colour to success.'
"In later times 'var[n.]a' is the regular word for
caste; and the Brahmins and the rest of the twice-born
who still represent the Aryan var[n.]a are much fairer
than the Çúdras and Hill people.
"In the Ikhwán ussafa the black skin is one of the
results of the Fall to Adam and Hawa.
"'Áftáb ki garmí se rang mutaghaiyar aur siáh ho gayá.'
'From the heat of the sun their colour became changed
and black.'"
But I think the fact that the conquering races that invaded India from
the north were fair and ruddier than the aborigines, and that their
descendants, the high-caste natives, are to this day fairer than the
aborigines, though it explains the phrases, "he is only a black man,"
and "your cheeks are red," does not account for the golden hair and
fair skin of so many of our princes and princesses. I believe that
they all owe their characteristics to the fact that such are the
characteristics of the solar hero, although they cannot all lay claim
to a solar origin for themselves. For this golden hair and white skin,
at first the property of the shining sun-hero alone, would naturally
in the course of time be given to other Indian folk-lore heroes on
whose beauty and brightness it was necessary to lay a stress. Prince
Majnún, for instance, certainly has nothing solar about him, yet his
hair is described as red. Dunkní, in answer to a half incredulous,
half inquiring exclamation of mine when I heard this, asserted, "Red!
yes, it was red: red like gold."
The black-haired Maoris give their sea-nymphs yellow hair (_Old New
Zealand_, p. 19); and Sir George Grey in his _Polynesian Mythology_,
p. 295, writes thus of the Maori fairies: "Their appearance is that of
human beings, nearly resembling an European's; their hair being very
fair, and so is their skin. They are very different from the Maoris,
and do not resemble them at all." But as the Maoris do not seem to
have any myths of golden-haired solar heroes, these peculiarities of
hair and complexion cannot be referred to the same cause as those of
my little daughter's Indian princes and princesses.
I.--PHÚLMATI RÁNÍ.
1. Phúlmati is a garden rose, not a wild rose. It must be a local name
for the flower. I can find it in no dictionary. Dunkní says her
heroine was named after a pink rose.
2. She has hair of pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess Jahúran,
p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, Sonahrí Rání, p. 54, Jahúr Rání, p.
93, Prince Dímá-ahmad and Princess Atása, Notes, p. 253. Also, Híra
Bai, the cobra's daughter in _Old Deccan Days_, p. 35. So many
princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy
for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them,
Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs rings if it falls to the
ground--see Naake's _Slavonic Fairy Tales_, p. 100. And devils being
fallen heroes or angels, the following references may be made to them.
In Haltrich's _Siebenbuergische Maerchen_, p. 171, in "Die beiden
Fleischhauer in der Hoelle," the devil's grandmother gives the good
brother a hair that had fallen from the devil's head while he slept.
The man carries it home and the hair suddenly becomes as big as a
"Heubaum" and is "of pure gold." Also in one of Grimm's stories the
hero is sent to fetch three golden hairs from the devil's head--see
_Kinder und Hausmaerchen_, vol. I. p. 175, "Der Teufel mit den drei
goldenen Haaren."
3. Her beauty lights up a dark room. In this shining quality she
resembles many Asiatic and European fairy-tale heroes and heroines.
See in this book Hírálí, whose face shone like a diamond, p. 69; and
the Princess Labám, who shone like the moon, and her beauty made night
day, p. 158. In _Old Deccan Days_, p. 156, the prince's dead body on
the hedge of spears dazzles those who look at it till they can hardly
see. Pánch Phúl Rání, p. 140, shines in the dark jungle like a star.
So does the princess in Chundun Rájá's dark tomb, p. 229. In a
Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the _Indian Antiquary_
for February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54, the dream-nymph, Tillottama,
whenever she appears, lights up the whole place with her beauty. "At
every breath she drew when she slept, a flame like a flower issued
from her nostril, and when she drew in her breath the flower of flame
was again withdrawn." Her beauty lit up her house "as if by
lightning." See Appendix _A_. In Naake's _Slavonic Fairy Tales_, p.
96, is the Bohemian tale quoted above of Princess Golden-Hair. "Every
morning at break of day she [the princess] combs her golden locks; its
brightness is reflected in the sea, and up among the clouds," p. 102.
When she let it down "it was bright as the rising sun," and almost
blinded Irik with its radiance, p. 107. The golden children (Schott's
_Wallachische Maerchen_, p. 125) shine in the darkened room "like the
morning sun in May." Gubernatis in the 2nd vol. of his _Zoological
Mythology_, mentions at p. 31 a golden boy who figures in one of
Afanassieff's stories; when this child's body is uncovered on his
restoration to his father, "all the room shines with light." And at p.
57 of the same volume he quotes another of Afanassieff's stories, in
which the persecuted princess has three sons "who light up whatever is
near them with their splendour." Of Gerd in Jötunheim, the beautiful
giant maiden with the bright shining arms, Thorpe says (_Northern
Mythology_, vol. I. p. 47), when she raised "her arms to open the
door, both air and water gave such a reflection that the whole world
was illumined." The boar Trwyth (who was once a king, but because of
his sons was turned into a boar) after his fall preserves some of his
old kingly splendour; for "his bristles were like silver wire, and
whether he went through the wood or through the plain he was to be
traced by the glittering of his bristles" (_Mabinogion_, vol. II. p.
310). In the same work (vol. III. p. 279), in "The Dream of Maxen
Wledig," is a maiden, of whom it is told: "Not more easy than to gaze
upon the sun when brightest was it to look upon her by reason of her
beauty." And in "Goldhaar" (Haltrich's _Siebenbuergische Maerchen_,
p. 61) when the hero's cap fell off he stood there "in all splendour
and his golden locks fell round his head, and he shone like the sun."
In a Santhali tale published by the Rev. F. T. Cole in the _Indian
Antiquary_ for January 1875, p. 10, called "Toria the Goatherd and the
Daughter of the Sun," a beggar's eyes are as dazzled by the Sun's
daughter's beauty "as if he had stared at the sun."
4. Phúlmati Rání has on her head the sun, on her hands moons, and her
face is covered with stars. Compare in these stories "The Indrásan
Rájá," p. 1, "The boy who had a moon on his forehead and a star on his
chin," p. 119, and "Prince Dímá-ahmad and Princess Atása," Notes, p.
253. In Fräulein Gonzenbach's _Sicilian Fairy Tales_, No. 5 (vol. I.
p. 21), the king's son's children are born, the boy with a golden
apple in his hand, the girl with a star on her forehead. In the Notes
to this story (vol. II. p. 207) Herr Köhler mentions a Tyrolean fairy
tale, "Zingerle, II. p. 112," where the king's son's daughter has a
golden apple in her hand, and her brother a golden star on his
forehead. In Milenowsky's _Bohemian Fairy Tales_, p. 1, is the story
"Von den Sternprinzen" in which the king's son by the queen has a gold
star on his forehead, and his son by the old woman has a silver star,
p. 2. These princes' children also are born with gold and silver stars
on their foreheads, p. 30. In a Hungarian tale, "Die verwandelten
Kinder," the old man's youngest daughter promises, and keeps her
promise, to give the king, if he marries her, twin sons, who will be
most beautiful, will have golden hair, and each a golden ring on his
arm; further, one is to have a planet, the other a sun on his
forehead--Stier's _Ungarische Volksmaerchen_, p. 57. Also in the same
author's _Ungarische Sagen und Maerchen_ in "Die beiden juengsten
Koenigskinder," the hero wins a bride (p. 77) who has a sun on her
forehead, a moon on her right, and three stars on her left, breast. In
"Eisenlaci" in the same collection the snake-king's daughter has a
star on her forehead (p. 109). Gubernatis (_Zoological Mythology_,
vol. I. p. 412) says, "In the seventh story of the third book of
Afanassieff, the queen bears two sons; one has a moon on his forehead
and the other a star on the nape of his neck. Her wicked sister
buries them; a golden and a silver sprout spring up which a sheep eats
and then has two lambs, one with a moon on its head, the other with a
star on its neck. The wicked sister who has married the king orders
them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown into the
road. The good, lawful queen eats them and again gives birth to her
sons." Gubernatis in the 2nd volume of the same work, p. 31, quotes
another of Afanassieff's stories, the thirteenth of the third book, in
which a merchant's wife has a son "whose body is all of gold, effigies
of stars, moon, and sun covered it." This is the gold boy mentioned in
the preceding paragraph as lighting up the room when his body was
uncovered. In "Das Schwarze Lamm," the empress bears a son with a
golden star on his forehead (Karadschitsch, _Volksmaerchen der
Serben_, p. 177).