Vetāla 7: The King who married his Dependent to a Nereid

Click the link to jump directly to the english translation of the seventh Vetāla. This page only contains the notes.

The Hindi version{GL_NOTE::} differs considerably from Somadeva. It forms No. 8. The man seeking service is a Rājput, but does not get employment though he waits a whole year. Nevertheless, he attaches himself to the king’s suite when they go hunting, and is the only one who never loses sight of the king. When questioned he quotes various maxims on the lot of man, etc., and proceeds to kill a deer and prepare a meal for the king. He is rewarded, and given a responsible position. One day he is sent “on some business” to the seashore and enters a temple of Devī.

A beautiful maiden follows him in and speaks to him. She says:

“If you wish to have anything to do with me, you must bathe in this pool....”

The rest follows as in Somadeva, but there is no mention of any city or wealth of the damsel, and the pair return to the palace.

In the Tamil version{GL_NOTE::} (also No. 8) we also have no subaqueous city, although it resembles our text more closely than the Hindi. The “individual, whose name was Kārpadigan,” gets employment at once. The incident of the two fruits, and the mission to Ceylon follow as in Somadeva. But there is no banner rising from the sea: instead, the hero is swallowed by a large fish. He manages to cut the belly open and swim safely to shore, where he enters a temple of Kālī. There he meets “a beautiful princess, surrounded by a numerous train of damsels.” The rest follows as in our text, except that the girl turns out to be “the daughter of the King of the Serpent World,” and Vikrama’s decision is the opposite to that in both Somadeva and the Hindi version.

“If a person be in the employ of another,” he says,

“it is but justice that he should do all in his power to serve him: that the king should resign to his servant a damsel whom he adored is the more meritorious act.”

It will thus be seen that both the leading vernacular versions have dropped the most important point of the story—namely, that the hero’s adventures take place under the sea.

Probably the closest analogue to our story is that found in the sixth fable of the second chapter of the Hitopadeśa{GL_NOTE::}:

“I am Kandarpa-Ketu, son of Jīmūta-Ketu, King of Singhala-dwipa (Ceylon). One day as I was in the pleasure-garden, I heard from a voyaging merchant, that on the fourteenth day of the month, in the midst of the sea which was near, beneath what had the appearance of a Kalpa-tree, there was to be seen, seated on a couch variegated with the lustre of strings of jewels, a certain damsel, as it were the goddess Lakṣmi, bedecked with all kinds of ornaments, and playing on a lute. I therefore took the voyaging merchant, and, having embarked in a ship, went to the place specified. On reaching the spot, I saw her exactly as she had been described; and, allured by her exquisite beauty, I leaped after her into the sea. In an instant I reached a golden city; where, in a palace of gold, I saw her reclining on a couch, and waited upon by youthful sylphs. When she perceived me at a distance she sent a female friend, who addressed me courteously.

On my inquiry, her friend said:

‘That is Ratna-Mañjarī, the daughter of Kandarpa-keli, King of the Vidyādharas. She has made a vow to this effect:

“Whosoever shall come and see the city of gold with his own eyes, shall marry me.”’

Accordingly I married her by that form of marriage called Gandharva: after the conclusion of which

I remained there a long while delighted with her. One day she said to me in private: ‘My beloved husband, all these things may be freely enjoyed; but that picture of the fairy Swarna-rekhā must never be touched.’ Some time afterwards, my curiosity being excited, I touched Swarna-rekhā with my hand. For doing so I was spurned by her, although only a picture, with her foot beautiful as the lotus, and found myself alighted in my own country.”

For this latter incident of instantaneous transportation by breaking some taboo, falling into magic water, etc., see Ocean, Vol. II, pp. 223, 223n¹, and cf. Losaka Jātaka{GL_NOTE::} (where there are four subaqueous palaces), and Waldau, Böhmische Märchen, p. 410.

In the history of the famous Arab, Hātim Tā’i, is a story of his adventures at the bottom of a well.{GL_NOTE::} He enters it to recover a man who has fallen in, but soon finds himself on a broad plain. A wonderful castle appears, in which he discovers the lost man in company with a maiden of marvellous beauty. After sundry adventures he arranges for the youth to return to his relatives. Subaqueous palaces are found throughout European literature. Cf. that of Morgan le Fay in the Orlando Innamorato,{GL_NOTE::} canto 36; also the continuation of the romance of Huon de Bourdeaux{GL_NOTE::}; and the romance of Ogier le Danois.{GL_NOTE::} A similar sea-castle occurs in Prym and Socin, Syrische Märchen, p. 125. Our present story resembles in many points “Der rothe Kund” in Gaal’s Märchen der Magyaren.

Tales in which human beings marry dwellers in the water are common enough in Europe. See Ralston, Russian Folk - Tales, p. 116 et seq.; Coxwell, Siberia and Other Folk-Tales, p. 466 et seq.; Weckenstedt, Wendische Märchen, p. 192, and La Motte Fouqué’s Undine. In Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, vol. i, p. 53, King Wilkinus marries a “Meerweib.” Philostratus relates{GL_NOTE::} how Menippus married a female of the Rākṣasī type and was saved only just in time by his friend Apollonius:

“Ἡ χρηστὴ νύμφη μία τῶν ἐμπουσῶν ἐστιν, ἃς λαμίας τε καὶ μορμολυκίας οἱ πολλοὶ ἡγῶυνται. ἐρῶσι δ’αὐταὶ, καὶ ἀφροδισίων μέν, σαρκῶν δὲ μάλιστα ἀνθρωπείων ἐρῶσι καὶ παλεύουσι τοῖς ἀφροδισίοις, οὓς ἄν ἐθέλωσι δαίσασθαι.”

Thus it will be seen that stories of the “fairy palace under the sea” type are closely allied to that widely spread cycle of tales of which the sirens of Greek legend can be taken as the standard example.

Before speaking further of the sirens themselves I would give an extract from an interesting letter of Mr David Fitzgerald printed in The Academy{GL_NOTE::}:

“The Sirens’ tale—like many other episodes of the Iliad and the Odyssey —reappears in various forms, one of the most curious of which is perhaps to be found in Ireland. I borrow it from O’Curry. Ruad, son of Rigdonn, a king's son, crossing over to North-land with three ships and thirty men in each, found his vessel held fast in mid-sea. [ Cf. our tale of Vidūṣaka, Ocean, Vol. II, p. 72.] At last he leaped over the side to see what was holding it, and sinking down through the waters, alighted in a meadow where were nine beautiful women. These gave him nine boatloads of gold as the price of his embraces, and by their power held the three vessels immovable on the water above for nine days. Promising to visit them on his return, the young Irish prince got away from the Sirens and their beds of red bronze, and continued his course to Lochlann, where he stayed with his fellow-pupil, son to the king of that country, for seven years. Coming back, the vessels put about to avoid the submerged isle, and had nearly gained the Irish shore, when they heard behind them the song of lamentation of the nine sea-women, who were in vain pursuit of them in a boat of bronze. One of these murdered before Ruad⁵s eyes the child she had borne him, and flung it head foremost after him. O’Curry left a version of this tale from the Book of Ballymote. I have borrowed a detail or two given in the Tochmarc Emere (fol. 21b)— e.g. the important Homeric feature of the watery meadow (machaire). The story given by Gervaise of Tilbury (ed. Liebrecht, pp. 30, 31), of the porpoise-men in the Mediterranean and the young sailor; the Shetland seal-legend in Grimm’s edition of Croker’s tales (Irische Elfenmärchen, Leipzig, 1826, p. xlvii et seq.); and the story found in Vin-centius Bellovacensis [Vincent of Beauvais] and elsewhere, of the mermaid giantess and her purple cloak, may be named as belonging or related to the same cycle. These legends are represented in living Irish traditions, and the purple cloak just referred to appears, much disguised, in the story of Liban in the Book of the Dun.”

As mentioned above, there is a distinct relationship between the sea-maiden and the siren. If her nature is not that of a vampire she is a nereid (as in our present story), but if she has a weakness for leading travellers astray and then eating them, she becomes a siren. Both varieties have their analogies in Indian mythology.

For the sake of comparison we should remember that Homer presents the sirens to us as beautiful maidens of normal appearance, who by their enchanting songs lead mariners to their death. Like the Hindu Rākṣasīs they delight in blood and human flesh. No mention is made of their ornithological aspect. It is this very point, however, that later classical writers especially mention. Thus Apollonius Rhodius{GL_NOTE::} (221-181 B.C.) describes them as partly virgins and partly birds; Apollodorus{GL_NOTE::} (140 B.C.) says that from the thighs they had the forms of birds; Ovid{GL_NOTE::} and Hyginus{GL_NOTE::} (a.d. 4) give them the feet and feathers of birds with beautiful virgin faces; and Aelian{GL_NOTE::} says they are represented as winged maidens with the feet of birds. Various suggestions to explain the phenomenon have been put forward,{GL_NOTE::} none of which is wholly satisfactory. If we interpret the Homeric Σειρῆνες as the treacherous calm of the ocean concealing hidden dangers beneath its smiling surface, we need not be surprised if we find them connected with death due to normal causes. Such proves to be the case, and they are constantly represented on tombs and painted on lekythi, sometimes in their Homeric form, but more usually as halfbirds.

Writing on this subject Miss Harrison{GL_NOTE::} says:

“As monuments on tombs, the Siṛens seem to have filled a double function; they were sweet singers, fit to be set on the grave of poet or orator, and they were mourners to lament for the beauty of youth and maiden. It is somewhat curious that they are never sculptured on Attic tombs in the one function that makes their relation to death intelligible—i.e. that of death-angels. The Siren of the Attic graves must surely be somehow connected with the bird death-angels that appear on the Harpy tomb, but her function as such seems to have been usurped for Attica by the male angels Death and Sleep.”

Thus there appears to be a distinct affinity between the sirens and the keres, erinyes and harpies.

The conception of the soul-bird is widespread,{GL_NOTE::} but has nowhere become so important as in the Malay Archipelago. In Malaya, Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes we find a host of curious customs in which rice is placed on the head of persons whose soul-bird seems, for one reason or another, to show signs of departing.{GL_NOTE::} In two of the sculptures of Bōrō-Budur in Java, one of the architectural marvels of the world, one represents{GL_NOTE::} two beings, half-human, half-bird. To the right stands a king with a retinue which is sitting on the ground. Leemans described the two bird-maidens as “un couple de Gandharvīs célestes dont l’une accompagne le chant de l’autre sur un instrument à cordes.” In the recently issued edition of Krom and Erp,{GL_NOTE::} however, they are called Kinnaras. As we have already seen (Ocean, Vol. I, p. 202), Kinnaras are usually represented with horses’ heads, but are also divine musicians. Neither of the above terms seems exactly to describe the siren-like beings of the sculptures, but their occurrence at Bōrō-Budur is of considerable interest.

Turning now to ancient Buddhist siren legends, we notice that, as in the case of Somadeva’s story of the nereid, the scene of action is in Ceylon or its immediate neighbourhood. Doubtless the shipwrecks occur among the numerous shoals and islands in Palk Strait.

In the Valāhassa Jātaka{GL_NOTE::} we read of a city in Ceylon called Sirīsavatthu, entirely inhabited by Rākṣasīs. It was their custom to entice shipwrecked mariners into their city, where, after a period of love and dalliance, their real nature would assert itself. On one occasion five hundred merchants were wrecked, and subsequently taken to Sirīsavatthu. They all paired off, and in the middle of the night the chief Rāk-shasī left her man in order to eat the flesh of a previous lover who now lay in magic chains in the house of torment. After her meal she returned, but it had had the effect of making her body cold. When about to embrace her, the merchant noticed the change and guessed the truth. In the morning he warned his companions, but only half the number were willing to try to effect an escape. The Bodhisattva suddenly appeared in the form of a flying white horse and took the two hundred and fifty merchants to a place of safety. The others were devoured by the Rākṣasīs.

An interesting version of the above story is given by Hiuen Tsiang (a.d. 629) in his Si-yu-ki (or Hsi-yü-chi).{GL_NOTE::} Here the Rākṣasīs dwell in a great iron city in Ratnadvīpa (Ceylon). They have the habit of erecting on the towers of the city two flagstaffs with lucky or unlucky signals according to circumstances. As soon as a possible prey is sighted, they change themselves into beautiful women, and approaching their victims with flowers and scents, entice the men to enter their city with the sound of sweet music. The rest of the tale resembles the Jātaka, but only the hero finally escapes on the “divine horse.”

Whether this seventh Vetāla story is based on any of the early Buddhist legends dealing with maidens-of-the-sea is impossible to say. I have merely attempted to present very briefly the different forms of Indian siren stories, drawing attention to possible analogies with the well-known Σειρῆνες of Greek mythology.