"Your two Princes having come and done [this] work went away."
On account of it the King appointed to kill the two Princes. Having
given information of it to the King's younger brother also, the
younger brother asked, "What is that for?"
The King said, "After I went to the war these two Princes went to
the palace, and tore the Queen's cloth also, and having stabbed and
cut her with their knives, the blood was flowing down when I came."
After that, the King's younger brother asked at the hand of those
Princes, "Why did you come and beat the Queen, and stab and cut her
with the knife, and go away?"
The Princes said, "We did not do even one thing in that way. As we
were coming playing and playing with oranges, our orange fruit having
fallen in the palace, when we asked our step-mother for it she did not
give it. 'Am I a slave to drag about oranges?' she said. Afterwards
we went into the palace, and taking the orange fruit went away. We
did not do a thing of that kind," they said.
The King, however, did not take that to be true. "I must kill the
two Princes," he said. Their uncle took the word of the two Princes
for the truth.
Afterwards the Princes' uncle said, "Go to the river, and [after]
washing your heads come back."
As they were setting off the Princes took a bow and arrow; and having
gone to the river, while they were there, when they were becoming
ready to wash their heads, two hares, bounding and bounding along,
came in front of the two Princes. Having seen the hares, the younger
son said, "Elder brother, shoot those two hares." He shot at them;
at the stroke the two hares died.
The two Princes, washing their heads, took away the two hares
also. Having gone to the city, and given them into the uncle's hand,
the uncle plucked out the four eye-balls of the hares, and gave them
into the Queen's hands:--"Here; they are the four eye-balls of the
Princes," he said.
Afterwards, having looked and looked at the eyes, she brought an Indi
(wild Date) spike, and saying and saying, "Having looked and looked
with these eyes, did you torment me so much?" she went to the palace
where the King was, and pierced [with the spike] the very four [eyes].
After that, having cooked the hares' flesh, and cooked and given
them a bundle of rice, the uncle told the two Princes to go where
they wanted, and both of them went away.
(Apparently the story is incomplete, but the narrator knew of no
continuation, and I did not meet with it elsewhere.)
Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
In The Jataka, No. 120 (vol. i, p. 265), a Queen of the King of Benares
is described as scratching herself, rubbing oil on her limbs, and
putting on dirty clothes in order to support the charge she brought
against the Chaplain, of assaulting her during the King's absence on
a warlike expedition. In No. 472 (vol. iv, p. 118) a Queen scratched
herself and put on soiled clothes in order to induce the King to
believe that her son-in-law, Prince Paduma, had assaulted her. Paduma
was accordingly sentenced to be thrown down a precipice.
In Folklore of the Santal Parganas (Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 27, a Queen
who was a Prince's step-mother behaved in the same way until the King
promised to kill the boy. He smeared the blood of a dog on his sword,
and abandoned the boy in the forest.
In Indian Nights' Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 273, a King observed
that two swallows had a nest in a veranda at the palace. The hen
disappeared, having been caught by a falconer. The cock constantly
attended to the young ones, but when it brought a fresh mate the two
came only once on the second day, and the cock then disappeared. The
King then examined the nest, and found in it four dead young ones,
each with a thorn in its throat. He concluded that if his wife died
and he married again the new Queen might ill-treat his two sons. After
a while the Queen died and the King was persuaded by the Ministers
to marry again. One day when the two Princes were amusing themselves
with pigeons one of the birds alighted near the new Queen, who hid
it under a basket and denied that she had seen it, but guided by
signs made by an old nurse the younger Prince found and took it. On
another occasion the elder Prince recovered one in the same way,
though forcibly opposed by the Queen. The Queen then charged them
with insulting her, the King banished them, and they went away.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 166, a King and
Queen while in the veranda of the palace watched a pair of birds at
a nest. One day a strange hen was seen to go with the cock to the
nest, carrying thorns in her bill. When the nest was examined it
was discovered that the thorns had been given to the young ones,
and that they were dead. The King and Queen discussed it, and the
King promised not to marry again if the Queen died. When she died, by
the Ministers' advice and after many refusals he married a Minister's
daughter who became jealous of the two Princes, complained of their
disobedience and abusive language, and induced the King to order them
to be killed in the jungle. There the soldiers' swords being turned
into wood they allowed the boys to escape. The rest of the story is
given in the last note, vol. i, p. 91.
In the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton's ed., vol. iv, p. 71), in the
Sindibad-nameh, the favourite concubine of the King of China fell
in love with his only son and offered to poison his father, but on
his rejection of her offers she tore her robes and hair, and charged
him with assaulting her. The seven Wazirs told the King tales of the
perfidy of women, and persuaded him to countermand the death penalty
to which the Prince was sentenced, the Prince explained the affair,
and the woman was sent away.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. i, p. 107, the
favourite concubine of a King being repulsed by the Crown Prince,
charged him with improper conduct towards her, and induced the King to
send him to govern the frontier districts. She and a Counsellor then
forged an order that he must pluck out and send his eyes. When she
received them she hung them before her bed and addressed opprobrious
language to them. The Prince became a flute player, and while earning
a living thus, accompanied by his wife, was recognised by his father,
who scourged the two plotters with thorns, poured boiling oil on
their wounds, and buried them alive.
In Santal Folk Tales (Campbell), p. 33, a raja and his wife observed
the attention paid by a hen-sparrow to her young ones, and that after
she died another mate who was brought let them die of hunger. The queen
pointed this out, and told the raja to take care of her children in
case she died. When he was persuaded by his subjects to marry afresh
after her death, the new wife took a dislike to the elder son, and by
an assumed illness induced the raja to exile him. The other brother
accompanied him, and they had various adventures.