Note 37 — INTRODUCTION.

The story of the cleverness of Mahaushadha (No. 8) forms the counterpart of that of Viśākhā, who herself plays a part in the tale, which is told at somewhat tedious length. Some of its incidents will be familiar to readers of Western folk-tales. Professor Schiefner has called attention (in a footnote to page 129) to several variants of the story of the mystic fowl—sometimes a cock, sometimes a hen or goose, a layer of golden eggs—the eater of which is destined to become a king. It forms the opening of the German story of “The Two Brothers” (Grimm, No. 60, vol. iii. pp. 102–107); but in it the peculiarity of the bird is stated to be that the eating of its heart and liver enables the eater to become rich. Three Russian variants of the story are given by Afanasief in his collection of “Russian Popular Tales” (v., No. 53, viii., No. 26, and pp. 464–7). In all of them the eater of the bird or a part of it becomes a king. Many mythologists37 recognise in the golden egg the Sun, which may be looked upon as a gleaming egg laid every morning by the brooding Night. But the king-making power attributed to the bird’s eaten flesh remains a mystery. In the story of Mahaushadha, the boy Bahvannapāna, who has eaten the head of the mystic cock, is elected king by the ministers at a certain court on account of his good looks. Having gone forth in search of some successor to their deceased monarch, they find him sleeping under a tree, “the shadow of which never moved from his body,” and they exclaim, “As he is extremely handsome, and is well provided with signs, we will invest him with the sovereignty.” In the East-European variants the fortunate youth is frequently chosen as king because his taper, when he takes one to church, kindles of its own accord. One of the tasks which Mahaushadha is called upon to execute by way of proving his cleverness is “to supply some rice which had not been crushed with a pestle, and yet was not uncrushed, and which had been cooked neither in the house nor out of the house, neither with fire nor yet without fire,” and to send it “neither along the road nor yet away from the road, without its being shone upon by the daylight, but yet not in the shade,” by a messenger who should be “not riding, but also not on foot” (page 139). Similar tests frequently appear in European folk-tales. Thus, in one of the Lithuanian Tales (Schleicher, No. 1), a gentleman promises to marry a village maiden if she can fulfil certain conditions, saying, “If you come to me neither clothed nor bare, not riding nor driving nor walking, not along the road, nor beside the road, nor on the footpath, in summer and likewise in winter, then will I marry you.” The abduction of the mule which was watched by five men (page 142), one of whom sat on its back while the others held its four legs, is evidently a reminiscence of an ingenious theft commemorated in many such stories as “The Master Thief” (Grimm, No. 192). But Mahaushadha’s contrivances for making the dog talk and for keeping the sheep thin (page 175) are novel. The latter, as a plan of working on the body through the eye, may be compared with Jacob’s use of the rods which he placed “in the watering-troughs when the flocks came to drink” (Genesis xxx. 38).