Page 206—Five hundred pons.—It is possible that pon, like hun, is another name of a pagoda, a gold coin of the value of 3 1/2 rupís, which has not been coined in the mints of India since the early part of this century.
Page 212—The Want of Children.—In the note on this subject I omitted to include Hannah, mother of Samuel, the illustrious Hebrew seer (First Book of Samuel, ch. i, v, 9-11, and 20).— Asiatics consider a son as the “light,” or the “lamp,” of the household; and so it is said of a king, in the opening of the Persian romance entitled Bahár-i Dánish, or Garden and Spring, by 'Ináyatu-'lláh: “In the house of his prosperity the light [i. e. a son], which is the hope of descending life, beamed not, as the blossoms of his house [i. e. his women] produced not the fruit of his wishes; for which he made grief his companion, and sat lonely, like a point in the centre of the circle of sorrow”—poor fellow!
Page 391—The Story of the Envious Vazír.—I cannot call to mind any close parallel to this, but the incident upon which it turns, that of the old hag's artifice in procuring the lady's dress, recalls the story of “The Burnt Veil” in the Book of Sindibád, where a youth, desperately in love with the virtuous wife of a merchant, employs a crone—who, like too many of her sex in Muslim countries, went about evil-doing, in the guise of a devotee—to cause the lady's husband to put her away on suspicion of her being unfaithful. But this slight resemblance is doubtless merely fortuitous. The tale of the Envious Vazír exhibits more art than is usually found in Eastern fictions, especially the dénouement, where the Khoja's wife cleverly causes the malignant Vazír to convict himself of gross falsehood.
Page 430—The sentiment expressed to Sultan Mahmúd by the Independent Man has its analogue in one of the countless traditions of Hatim Taï, which goes thus: They asked Hatim: “Hast thou ever seen in the world any one more noble-minded than thyself?” He replied: “One day I had offered a sacrifice of 40 camels, and had gone out with some other chiefs to a corner of the desert. I saw a thorn-cutter, who had gathered together a bundle of thorns. I said to him: ‘Why goest thou not to share the hospitality of Hatim Taï, when a crowd has assembled at his feast?’ He replied: ‘Whoever can eat of the bread of his own labour will not put himself under an obligation to Hatim Taï.’ This man, in mind and magnanimity, I consider greater than myself.”
Page 483—For the original of the story of the Two Merchants see Méon's edition of Barbazan's collection of Fabliaux, Paris, 1808, tome i, 52, “Des Deux Bons Amis Loiax,” and for the modern French prose version see Le Grand's Fabliaux, edition 1781, iii, 262.
Page 499—Mr. James Moir, Rector, Grammar School, Aberdeen, is the authority (after his mother) for a story in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1884, vol. ii, pp. 68-71, which presents an interesting parallel to the tale from Salsette, with a clever girl in place of Little John: Three young girls are abandoned in a wood by their poverty-stricken parents, because they have too many mouths to feed. The little maidens arrive at a giant's house and are granted shelter for the night. The giant resolves to kill them and have them cooked for his breakfast in the morning. In order to distinguish in the dark his own three daughters from the stranger girls, he places “strae rapes” round the necks of the latter and gold chains round his daughters' necks, with the result that he puts his own offspring to death. Mally Whuppie, the heroine, wakes her sisters softly and they all escape. They next come to a king's house, and Mally and her sisters are to be married to the three sons of the king, provided he should obtain possession of three wonderful things from the giant: (1) his sword from the back of his bed; (2) his purse from beneath his pillow; and (3) the ring from off the giant's finger. Mally is successful in her two first adventures, and though she is caught by the giant when drawing off his ring, she ultimately escapes by a clever ruse.
Page 510—The story of the King and his Falcon occurs in many collections, and perhaps one of the oldest versions of it is found in Capt. R. C. Temple's Legends of the Panjáb, vol. i, p. 467, in the story of “Princess Niwal Dai,” where a snake is seen by the falcon to drop poison into the cup.
Page 519—The Rose of Bakáwalí.—I find my conjectures regarding the construction of this romance are borne out by Garcin de Tassy (Histoire de la Littèrature Hindouie, second edition, Paris, 1870, tome i, p. 606), in his account of a version in the Hindústání Selections by the Sayyíd Husain, compiled by order of the Military Examiners' Committee, and published at Madras in the year 1849, in 2 vols. He says: “Le second volume offre la reproduction, en 64 p., des deux tiers du Gul-i Bakâwalî d'après la rédaction de Nihâl Chand, dont j'ai donné la traduction en français. Huçain s'arrête au mariage de Tâj ulmulûk et de Bakâwalî, où devrait en effet finir de récit, le reste étant un hors-d'œuvre tout à fait hindou.”
He describes a similar romance (tome ii, pp. 531, 532) by Rayhán ed-Dín, of Bengal, written in rhymed couplets (masnaví) and entitled Khiyabán-i Rayhán, or Parterres of the Divine Grace, A.H. 1212 (A.D. 1797-1798): “Cet ouvrage,” he says, “roule sur le même sujet que le Gul-i Bakâwalî; mais, outre qu'il est tout en vers, il est beaucoup plus long. Il se divise en quarante chapitres, intitulés chacun Gul-gaschnî (Abondance de roses)… Au surplus, il est bon de rappeler ici ce que j'ai dit ailleurs, que le Gul-i Bakâwalî est une légende indienne qui est reproduite dans plusieurs rédactions différentes et même dans le dialecte des Laskars du Bengale.”
Another tale, in Persian, entitled Kissa-i Fírúz Sháh, if not identical with our romance, seems to be on the same plan, judging from the all-too brief account given of it by Dr. H. H. Wilson in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection of Oriental MSS., vol. ii, p. 137: “The story of Firoz Shah, son of the king of Badakshan, who sought a marvellous flower to cure his father.”
Page 520—In the so-called Suite des Mille et Une Nuits, by Chavis and Cazotte (Story of Habíb, the Arabian Knight), the Amír Salamis weeps himself blind on hearing a false report of his son Habíb's death. The hero, when he comes to know of this sore affliction, is told that the only remedy is to be found among the treasures of Solomon, preserved in a cavern, and going there he finds two flat opals fixed as eyes into a visor, which he takes away, and with them restores his father's sight. And the Rabbins say that Jacob wept himself totally blind from grief at the reported death of his son Joseph, and he recovered his sight many years afterwards by applying to his eyes the garment of Joseph, which his brethren brought from Egypt.
Page 529—There can be no doubt that the Panjábí legend of Rasálú's game with Sirikap and the story of the Prince and Dilbar are cousins, so to say, not far removed. In the former Rasálú makes it one of the conditions of sparing the life of the vanquished Sirikap that he must consent to have his forehead branded with a red-hot iron, “in token of his vassalage,” and another condition is that he forgive his daughter whom he had imprisoned. In the latter the hero compels Dilbar to liberate his four brethren, but she insists on first branding them on their backs, “in token of the state of slavery to which they had been reduced.”—It seems to me that in the earlier part of the Panjábí legend something must have dropped out in connection with Rasálú's rescuing the ants and the hedgehog from the river (p. 525), since it is usual in folk-tales for “thankful animals” to requite their benefactor by rendering him signal services.