FullReads

As soon as she was burnt to death the Mahárájá had all her bones collected and put into four dishes, and he gave them to one of his servants to take to Sunkásí Rání’s mother. When her mother uncovered dish after dish and found nothing but bones, she asked the servant, “Of what use are bones?” “These are your daughter’s bones,” said he: “therefore Anárbásá Mahárájá sent them to you. Sunkásí Rání ill-treated and killed his children, and so he burnt her.”

The rest of the story she pronounced exact ( thík ).

2. The bél-tree is the Ægle Marmelos
of botanists.

3. With the different deaths and transformations of the children compare in this book: Phúlmati Rání, pp. 3 and 4: the Kite’s Children, p. 22: the Bél-Princess, pp. 144, 145, 148: and in Old Deccan Days Surya Bai, pp. 85, 86. In “Die goldenen Kinder” (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen ) the golden children are killed and buried (p. 122). From their hearts spring two apple-trees having golden leaves and apples. The trees are destroyed; but a sheep has eaten an apple and then has two golden lambs. The step-mother kills them at once and sends the maid to wash the entrails in the stream, intending to cook them for her husband to eat (compare the curry in the “Pomegranate King,” p. 8; the broth ( Suhr ) in Grimm’s “von dem Machandelboom,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 271; and the stew in the Devonshire story, “The Rose-Tree,” told in Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 314). A piece of the entrail escapes, and as it floats away it swells and swells. On reaching the opposite bank it bursts, and out of it step the golden children. In a Hungarian story the children, one with a planet and one with a sun on his forehead, and each with a ring on his arm, are killed by a wicked woman who wants her daughter to take their mother’s place as queen. They turn first into two golden pear-trees. These are destroyed by fire, but one glowing coal from the fire is eaten by an old she-goat. The old goat then has two little golden-fleeced kids. They are killed, an old crow swallows a piece of the entrails as they are being washed in the brook; she flies to the seventy-seventh island in the ocean, builds a nest and lays two golden eggs. Out of the eggs come the golden-haired children with their planet, sun and golden rings. The old crow sends them for seven years to school to a hermit (here is the holy man again, see p. 283 of these notes), and then flies home with them to their father. The pillar of salt, into which their mother was changed, answers all the king’s questions. It is not said that she regained her human form (“Die verwandelten Kinder,” Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 58). In a Siebenburg story, “Die beiden goldenen Kinder,” the children are killed by an envious woman who becomes queen in their mother’s place. From their remains spring two golden pine-trees which are burnt; a sheep eats two of the sparks and has two golden lambs that are killed; from two pieces of the entrails step forth the golden-haired children (Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 2, 3). In this tale the children are restored to their father, the king, by the intervention of God himself (p. 4), who in these Siebenbuergische Maerchen plays a part just as often as “Khudá” does in the Indian tales, taking for the purpose the form of a “good old man,” and often wearing a grey mantle that reminds one of Odin. In the Netherlandish story of “The knight with the swan” (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. III. p. 302), King Oriant’s mother persuades the king his wife gave him seven puppies instead of seven children (each born with a silver chain round its neck in “proof of their mother’s nobility”). She sends the children to the forest to be destroyed. They are left there alive, and are fostered by an old man. When the queen-mother learns this, she sends servants to kill them. These are content with depriving six of the children of their silver chains, on which the children instantly become swans. (The seventh child is absent and so is saved.) A goldsmith makes two beakers out of one of the chains, and keeps the others intact. When the chains are hung again round the five swans’ necks, and the beaker shown to the sixth, they regain their human forms. See also paragraph 8 of the notes to Phúlmati Rání.