Note 192 — Appendix. VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES OF THE TALES IN THE SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS, VOL. III. (continued 4)

In the Tamil story-book, the English translation of which is called “The Dravidian Nights’ Entertainments,” a wandering princess, finding the labour pains coming upon her, takes shelter in the house of a dancing-woman, who says to the nurses, “If she gives birth to a daughter, it is well [because the woman could train her to follow her own ‘profession’], but if a son, I do not want him;—close her eyes, remove him to a place where you can kill him, and throwing a bit of wood on the ground tell her she has given birth to it.”—I daresay that a story similar to the Bengalí version exists among the Tamils.