Note 516 — Appendix. VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES OF SOME OF THE TALES IN THE SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS. VOLS. I. AND II. (continued 2)

In the Arabian version the people resolve to leave the choice of a new king to the royal elephant because they could not agree among themselves (vol. i., p. 323); but in Indian fictions such an incident frequently occurs as a regular custom. In the “Sivandhi Sthala Purana,” a legendary account of the famous temple at Trichinopoli, as supposed to be told by Gautama to Matanga and other sages, it is related that a certain king having mortally offended a holy devotee, his capital and all its inhabitants were, in consequence of a curse pronounced by the enraged saint, buried beneath a shower of dust. “Only the queen escaped, and in her flight she was delivered of a male-child. After some time, the chiefs of the Chola kingdom, proceeding to elect a king, determined, by the advice of the saint, to crown whomsoever the late monarch’s elephant should pitch upon. Being turned loose for this purpose, the elephant discovered and brought to Trisira-málí the child of his former master, who accordingly became the Chola king.” (Wilson’s Desc. Catal. of Mackenzie MSS., i. 17.) In a Manipurí story of two brothers, Turi and Basanta—“Indian Antiquary,” vol. iii.—the elder is chosen king in like manner by an elephant who meets him in the forest, and takes him on his back to the palace, where he is immediately placed on the throne. See also “Wide-Awake Stories from the Panjáb and Kashmír,” by Mrs. Steel and Captain Temple, p. 141; and Rev. Lal Behari Day’s “Folk-Tales of Bengal,” p. 100, for similar instances. The hawk taking part, in this story, with the elephant in the selection of a king does not occur in any other tale known to me.