Another version is orally current in Kashmír, and, under the title of “The Four Princes,” a translation of it is given by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles in his excellent collection, Folk-Tales of Kashmír, from which are extracted the following details:
Four clever and handsome young princes are hated by their
step-mother, who persuades her husband the king to cease his
personal and secret inspection of the city and adjacent towns and
villages—which had long been his custom, going about at night
in disguise—and appoint his four grown-up, idle sons to the
duties. But still the queen is jealous of them, and poisons the
king's mind against them, so that he speaks harshly to his
worthy sons, without any apparent cause. One night the four
princes met together and discussed the altered conduct of the
king towards them, and the three younger proposed that they
should privily quit the country, but this was strenuously opposed
by the eldest brother, who suggested that they should rather
take turn and patrol the city, one of them each night, to which
they agreed. It happened that the eldest prince, in the course
of his perambulation one night, came past the hut of a Bráhman,
whom he saw gazing out of the open window towards the
heavens, and presently heard him say to his wife that he had just
observed the king's star obscured by another star, which
indicated that his majesty would die in seven days. His wife
asked him how he should die then, and he replied that a black
snake would descend from the sky on the seventh day, enter the
royal bed-chamber by the door that opened into the courtyard,
and bite the king's toe, thus causing his death. Then the Bráh-