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Prakrit and Apabhraśa Studies
etc. and immediately there appears from nowhere eight heavenly damsels, bathe them, give divine clothes to wear, and serve them with royal dinner.
This was supposed to be one of the much-coveted sildhis during the period between 9th and 13th cent. For, a third source also, dated 1083, gives a glowing account of the same siddhi. In Gunacandrasūri's Mahāviracariya (Chapter V, pp. 160-161) the ascetic Vidyāsiddha produces through his Yogic powers sumpiu dinner. precious clothes, a bed and divine damsels.
11.3. It should be noted that Versions I and II do not have the flving shoes and the donkey-transformation pills. They appear for the first time in Version III, which is closest to the basic outline for the Western versions given by Thompson. But in that version, the substitution of magic gems for magic birds is the result of Jainistic reworking, as killing and eating of birds have been always one of the cardinal sins for the Jainas. Similarly fear of being neglected by the elder brother because of the newly got kingship is narratively weaker cause for the (wo brothers' separation, as compared to the accidental separation in a dense forest ili search of water.
11.4. Version IV removes the pivot of the magic objects (birds or gems) altogether, and turns the tale into one of diversity of destinies under the working of the law of Karma. Consequently it has to change the original account of the second brother's adventures and substitute for it a section (or sections) from another convenient tale-type (there was a whole cycle of such tales, with very numerous variants, some of them very much familiar from the epic and Purāṇic literature, e.g. the wanderings and sufferings of Rāma, of the Pāndavas, of Nala, of Hariscandra and such as one finds in the prototype of a tale-type known in the Early Gujarati literature as "Candana-Malayāgiri', with which our tale gets actually mixed up in Version IV A).
11.5. Each of these Indian versions (as also the basic outline of the non-Indian versions) has a different introduction based on a different motif and the going abroad of the two brothers also is in each case differently motivated.
