King Brahmadatta picked up in Kampilla a destitute girl named Padmávati, 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 Padma, 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 Padma 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 Padmávati 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
Padma'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 Straparoia'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 Tzitzin na, and in the Albanian by the Belle of
the Earth.