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How King Burtal Became A Fakir
by
Told by Dunkní.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Yamuná.
[2] Mahadeva, i.e. Siva.
NOTES.
FAIRY TALE TRANSLATED BY MAIVE STOKES.
WITH NOTES BY MARY STOKES
HOW KING BURTAL BECAME A FAKIR.
1. The Fakír strikes the dead antelope with his wand ( chábuk ), as in “Shekh Faríd,” p. 98. In both cases Dunkní says the wand used was a long, slender piece of bamboo. I do not know whether the bamboo is a lightning-plant. Possibly it is, being a grass (some grasses are lightning-plants, see Fiske’s Myths and Mythmakers, pp. 56, 61), and also because its long slender stems are lance-shaped. If it does belong to this class, naturally a blow from a bamboo (or lightning) wand would give life, for, says Fiske ( ib. p. 60), “the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summer has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god.”
2. The king tries to hide the ball in his hair. The wonderful power and strength of hair appears in tales from all lands: Signor de Gubernatis suggests that, in the case of solar heroes, their hair is the sun’s rays ( Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 117, vol. II. p. 154); and it seems to me possible that, just as the colour of the solar hero’s hair has been appropriated by Indian fairy-tale princes who are not solar, the qualities of his hair may have been attributed to that of folk-lore heroes who are not solar, and may also have been the origin of some of the strange superstitions prevalent about human hair. This theory, if correct, would account for most of the strange things that I have hitherto met about hair. It must be remembered that the sun’s rays are also his weapons; they turn to thunderbolts when the sun is hidden in the rain-clouds (Gubernatis, ib. vol. I. pp. 9, 17), and also to lightning (see ib. vol. II. p. 10, where the sun under the form of a bull is spoken of as the fire which sends forth lightning).
First there is Samson, whose name, according to Gesenius, means “solar,” “like the sun.” Of the hero Firud, it is told “that a single hair of his head has more strength in it than many warriors” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 117). Conan was the weakest man of the Féinn, because they used to keep him cropped. “He had but the strength of a man; but if the hair should get leave to grow, there was the strength of a man in him for every hair that was in his head; but he was so cross that if the hair should grow he would kill them all” (Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. III. p. 396). At p. 91 of Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, is the story of a king, “Der Capit�n Dreizehn,” who is “the strongest of his time,” and who has three long hairs, so long that they could be twisted twice round the hand on his breast. When these are cut off he becomes the weakest of men. When these grow again he regains his strength. The sun’s rays have most power when they are longest, i.e. when the sun is in apogee.
Possibly from this old forgotten myth about the solar hero’s hair came some superstition to which was due the Merovingian decree that only princes of the blood-royal should wear their hair long; cutting their long hair made them incapable of becoming kings. Their slaves were shaved. The barbarians ruled that only their free men should wear long hair, and that the slaves should be shaved. Professor Monier Williams, in the Contemporary Review for January 1879, p. 265, says that Govind, the 10th Guru and founder of the Sikh nationality, ordered the Sikhs to wear their hair long to distinguish themselves from other nations.