Then the Destiny King asked, "Where then is the other Prince? Did
he die?"
The firewood trader said, "That Prince did not die. One day, when I was
asking that Prince and this Prince, 'Is Destiny the greatest thing or
not?' the Prince said, 'Destiny is the greatest'; this Prince said, 'It
is insufficiently great.' Because of it I sent him out of the kingdom."
Thereupon the Destiny Prince, saying, "It is I myself who am that
Prince," told them the circumstances that had occurred to him. Both
parties after that having become sorrowful, remained living [there],
protecting that city in happiness.
Immigrant from Malayalam, Southern India. (Written in
Sinhalese, and partly related in that language.)
In the Jataka story No. 544 (vol. vi, p. 117), the King of Videha
sums up the Hindu belief in predestination from the day of a person's
birth, as follows: "There is no door to heaven: only wait on destiny:
all will at last reach deliverance from transmigration."
His daughter afterwards illustrated the Buddhist doctrine that a
person's destiny depends on his acts and thoughts in his present life
as well as in previous ones:--"As the balance properly hung in the
weighing-house causes the end to swing up when the weight is put in,
so does a man cause his fate at last to rise if he gathers together
every piece of merit little by little."
The Maha Bharata (Santi Parva, cclviii), states that all gods must
inevitably become mortals, and all mortals must become gods; and also
(ccxcix) that whatever one's lot may be it is the result of deeds
done in previous lives.
The inevitable action of Karma is well exhibited in a story in
Folk-Tales of the Telugus (G. R. Subramiah Pantulu), p. 59, in
which when the God Siva and his wife Parvati saw a poverty-stricken
Brahmana on his way home, and the latter wished to give him riches,
Siva remarked that Brahma had not written on his face [at his birth]
that he must enjoy wealth. To test this, Parvati threw down on the
path a heap of a thousand gold muhrs (£1,500). When the Brahmana
got within ten yards of it, he was suddenly struck by the idea that
he would see if he could walk along like a blind man, so he shut his
eyes, and did not open them until he had gone past the money.
In the Katha Sarit Sagara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 280, a Princess who had
arranged through a confidante to meet a man in a temple at night, met
there instead a Prince who was accidentally spending the night there,
and without recognising who he was, accepted him as her husband, and
afterwards returned to the palace. On the following day the Prince
appeared before the King, who formally bestowed the Princess on him,
one of the Ministers remarking to the King, "Fate watches to insure
the objects of auspicious persons."
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 327, a King asked his
two daughters which was the greater, Karma (fate, as the effect of
acts in previous lives), or Dharma (righteousness). The younger said
"Karma," the elder, "Dharma." He was so angry that he married the
younger one to a young Brahmana thief; but he became very wealthy
in a miraculous manner, and afterwards invited his father-in-law
to a feast at which he was waited on by his daughter, the disgraced
Princess, whom he did not recognise. At the end of it she told him
who they were, and he promised to give the kingdom to her husband.
In The Kathakoça (Tawney), p. 82, a Princess had as her companions
the daughters of a merchant and a gardener who were born on the same
day as herself. When the Princess was married she requested that her
two comrades might be married to the same young man, and this was done.