Note on the story of Vāmadatta

Note: this text is extracted from Book XII, chapter 68

This story contains several fiction motifs, which are to be found in the Nights, where, however, they have been used in three quite distinct tales.

The first part of our story resembles the “Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince” a sub-story of “The Fisherman and the Jinni.” (See Burton, vol. i, pp. 69-80.) Here the wife appears at first to be very loving, and it is only due to the introduction of the overhearing motif that the husband becomes cognizant of her infidelity. The lover is a negro. The husband sees them together and badly wounds the negro. Later he tries to kill him, but his wife utters some unintelligible words and turns his lower half to stone. In this helpless condition she beats him with a hundred stripes a day. Finally he is rescued by a king who impersonates the negro. Rather similar is the “History of Sidi Nu’uman” (Burton, Supp., vol. iii, p. 325 et seq.), where the husband discovers that his wife is a corpse-eater. She thereupon turns him into a dog. He is finally released by being sprinkled with water by a “white” witch. He is then taught a charm by which he turns his wife into a mare, which he whips and stirrups without mercy. A similar story is current at Palena, in Abruzzi. (See Vol. II, p. 202 n ¹, of this work.)

The second part of our tale appears, with certain differences, in “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” which is the very next tale to “The Fisherman and the Jinni.”

Here two black bitches are led into the room and scourged by the lady of the house till her wrists fail her. She then hugs and kisses them. Later the Caliph demands an explanation, and this explanation forms “The Eldest Lady’s Tale” (Burton, vol. i, pp. 162-173). She had been disgracefully treated by her two sisters, and on her saving a serpent’s life they are changed into dogs. The serpent says, however, that if she fails to deal them three hundred stripes a day, she herself will share a like fate.

In a Kalmuck tale (No. II of Busk and Jülg, p. 183 et seq. of Coxwell) a Khan and his minister take their revenge on two women who had ill-treated them, by turning them into asses. In this shape they work for three years, till out of pity they are made to resume their former shape. As Coxwell has shown in his notes on this story (p. 238), the punishment of women by changing them into various animals is a motif found in many Russian collections. In the Votyak (Finnish tribe, N.-E. Russia) tale, “The Magic Bird,” three girls are turned into black mares and harnessed to heavy loads (Coxwell, p. 591). In the Mordvin (Finno-Turkish people between the Volga and Oka) tale “Enchanter and Enchantress” (p. 570) the wicked wife becomes a mare. In the Ossetian (S. Caucasian) tale “Tsopan” (p. 1011) the hero, after being turned successively into a duck and a dog, comes into possession of a felt whip, by the help of which he turns his wife and her new giant-husband into asses. In a Finnish tale, “The Merchant’s Son” (p. 647), the tsar’s daughter is punished by being turned into a beautiful horse, on which both sons ride. —n.m.p.