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One day when the Indrásan Rájá was hunting by himself in the jungle he was very tired, and he saw the house in the tank. So he said, “I will go into that house to rest a little while, and to-morrow I will return home to my father.” So, tying his horse outside, he went into the house and lay down to sleep. By and by, the two little birds came and perched on the roof above his head. They began to talk, and the Rájá listened. The little husband-dove said to his wife, “This is the man who cut his wife to pieces.” And then he told her how the Indrásan Rájá had married the beautiful Phúlmati Rání, who weighed only one flower, and how the shoemaker’s wife had drowned her; how God had brought her to life again; how the shoemaker’s wife had burned her; and last of all, how the Rájá himself had cut her to pieces. “And cannot the Rájá find her again?” said the little wife-dove. “Oh, yes, he can,” said her husband, “but he does not know how to do so.” “But do tell me how he can find her,” said the little wife-dove. “Well,” said her husband, “every night, at twelve o’clock, the Rání and her servants come to bathe in the tank. Her servants wear yellow dresses, but she wears a red one. Now, if the Rájá could get all their dresses, every one, when they lay them down and go into the tank to bathe, and throw away all the yellow dresses one by one, keeping only the red one, he would recover his wife.”

The Rájá heard all these things, and at midnight the Rání and her servants came to bathe. The Rájá lay very quiet, and after they all had taken off their dresses and gone into the tank, he jumped up and seized every one of the dresses,–he did not leave one of them,–and ran away as hard as he could. Then each of the servants, who were only fairies, screamed out, “Give me my dress! What are you doing? why do you take it away?” Then the Rájá dropped one by one the yellow dresses and kept the red one. The fairy servants picked up the dresses, and forsook the Phúlmati Rání and ran away. The Rájá came back to her with her dress in his hand, and she said, “Oh, give me back my dress. If you keep it I shall die. Three times has God brought me to life, but he will bring me to life no more.” The Rájá fell at her feet and begged her pardon, and they were reconciled. And he gave her back her dress. Then they went home, and Indrásan Rájá had the shoemaker’s wife cut to pieces, and buried in the jungle. And they lived happily ever after.

Told by Dunkní at Simla, July 25th, 1876.

NOTES.

FAIRY TALE TRANSLATED
BY
MAIVE STOKES.

WITH NOTES BY MARY STOKES

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.”