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THE SHIPWRECKED PRINCE.
SEPTEMBER, 1885.]
prince often laid himself down to die. But one day while wandering in the upper part of it he reached a cave, and by this cave he saw a woman sitting. This was passing strange. Surely, thought he, this can be no ordinary person, for such cannot exist here. This must be a goddess, or some especially holy woman." He went still nearer and when the woman saw him she began to weep, whereupon the prince asked her why she wept on seeing him. "I have come to comfort and not to trouble thee," he added, "and great and many have been the trials and dangers through which I have passed before I reached hither."
On hearing this the woman brushed away her tears, and smiling called him to sit beside her, and gave him rich food to eat, and pleasant drinks to assuage his thirst. And then she asked him how he had arrived there; for it was the chief residence of an ogre," who ate men and women as easily as the prince was eating the dinner before him; hence the reason of his not meeting with any living creature, man or beast, before coming to the cave. Alas! Alas! all had been slain and devoured by this ogre. "As for me," continued the woman, "I am the daughter of a king, and was brought hither by the ogre, who at first determined to eat me, but changed his mind when he saw that I should make a pleasant companion; and appointed me his mistress. It would have been better had he slain me. Now he is on some marauding expedition and doubtless will return at evening. Ah me! Ah me!" whereon she fell to weeping bitterly and it was with great difficulty that the prince persuaded her to lift her lovely face and hope for the best.
"But tell me of thyself," she said, "who art thou? Whence camest thou? How camest thou hither?-And tell me quickly that I may know thy state and hide thee safely before the ogre's return; for did he but get a glimpse of thee his appetite would be rekindled and
The words used here were atsa-ratah and shánts. Atsa-ratsh is the Kismirt for the Sanskrit apsaras, (female divinities of surprising loveliness, who reside in Indra's heaven, &c.): it is also the ordinary pandits' word for a very lovely woman, and shánts means a very abstemious, honest, devout person.
The narrator's word here was rokhus the Sanskrit rakshasa. As far as he remembered the Musalman who told him the story mentioned the word jinn. Following Captain Temple's reasons I have translated both of these words ogre, because the rakshasa occupies in Indian stories an almost parallel position with that of the ogre in Euro
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he would devour thee. Think not of escape by any other means. Hadst thou the strength of many men and couldst thou travel as a bird, yet thou couldst not fly from this powerful monster, who passes over the way of a year in one day."
So the prince hastily recounted all that had happened to him.
"A cruel fate forced me from home, Far in a foreign land to roam : There I became most wise and great, And raised to second in the state. "In time my heart began to yearn Unto my kindred to return;
To see again my home and there To tell them of my fortune fair. "But God had other will than I: Three times have I been like to die; Three times I escaped to different soil; Sick and alone to mourn and toil. "Yet God is gracious still to me,
That He hath brought me unto thee; Here let me tarry thee beside; Here let me evermore abide."
The woman consented, and immediately told him to follow her into the cave where she would hide him. She put him in a strong box that was kept in one of the innermost recesses of the cave and locked it up, with a prayer that God would protect him.
Towards evening the ogre arrived and being tired he at once stretched out his massive limbs upon the ground, while the woman with a large pointed piece of iron picked his teeth, which were crammed full of bits of flesh and bone, shampooed1o his arms and legs and in other ways coaxed and wheedled him. As luck would have. it the ogre was in a good temper that night. Thanks, a thousand thanks, the woman said to herself, the prince will escape for this night. But alas! she had scarcely encouraged this hope before the ogre's keen
pean tales; and the character ascribed to the jinn in genuine Indian Folktales, as in this story, has been borrowed from the rakshasa. Cf. notes to Wide-Awake Stories: jinn, p. 318, and ogre, p. 327.
10 Muth dyun, to rub and percuss the whole surface of the body in order to mitigate pain or to restore tone and vigour. Qulis in Kasmir after a long march throw themselves upon the ground and get their fellows to trample, etc., upon them. (The word for rubbing, polishing, and thrashing or trampling oorn by the feet of oxen, is the same as in Persian, malish).
