Notes on the motif of laughter

Note: this text is extracted from Book I, chapter 5:

“Then as that Brāhman was being led off to the place of execution in order that he might be put to death, a fish in the market laughed aloud, though it was dead”

Dr Liebrecht in Orient und Occident, vol. i, p. 341, compares with this story one in the old French romance of Merlin. There Merlin laughs because the wife of the Emperor Julius Cæsar had twelve young men disguised as ladies-in-waiting. Benfey, in a note on Dr Liebrecht’s article, compares with the story of Merlin one by the Countess D’Aulnoy, No. 36 of the Pentamerone of Basile, Straparola, iv, 1, and a story in the Suka Saptati. -

In the tale from Straparola (see translation by W. G. Waters, London, 1894, vol. i, p. 177) it is a wild satyr, named Chiappino, who laughs—twice. First because the hero is called Constanzo, when really she is a woman disguised and should be called Constanza. The second laugh was for exactly the same reason as in our story. The reference to the Pentamerone story of “The Three Crowns” (Burton, vol. ii, p. 404 et seq.) by Benfey is quite inappropriate, as it merely deals with a case of a woman’s love scorned by a man who, when accused of attempted seduction, proves to be a woman. The version in Suka Saptati is very like our text, and the laugh is even more mysterious and ironical than that in the Ocean of Story, because it shows the double hypocrisy of the queen, and the fish is not only dead, but cooked:

“King Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī dines with his beloved wife Kāmalīlā. He offers her roast fish, and she declines: ‘My lord, I am unable to look at these men, much less to take hold of them.’ When the fish heard that they, fried as they were, broke into peals of laughter, so that the people of the city heard it.”

In this case the final exposure of the queen is brought about in a very intricate way by the wise maiden Bālapaṇḍitā. The same story appears, even more elaborately, in Knowles’ Folk-Tales of Kashmir, 1888, p. 484 et seq. It appears in Jacobi’s Indian Fairy Tales, 1892, p. 186 et seq.; and also in Bompas’ Folk-Lore of the Santal Parganas, 1909, p. 70 et seq. In the former the “guessing riddles” motif is introduced into the story, while in the latter there are two laughing fish. Professor Bloomfield (Joum. Amer. Orient. Soc., 1916, vol. xxxvi,pp. 54-89), in his paper, “Psychic Motifs in Hindu Fiction, and the Laugh and Cry Motif” has classified the various kinds of laughs occurring in Hindu fiction. There is the cry and laugh together, and each separately. Of laughter by itself, as in our text, there is the laugh of joy, of irony, malice, trickery and triumph. Then there is the sardonic laugh, the enigmatic, fateful laugh (sometimes with ironic humour in it), and finally there is the laugh of mystery, as in the case of the fish that laughed. Examples from Hindu fiction of all these varieties will be found in Bloomfield’s article. In England we have the expression, “enough to make a cat laugh” but imagine anything being so funny or curious as to raise a laugh from the coldest-blooded of animals—a fish, and that a dead one!

In one case, however, in Prabandhacintāmaṇi (see Tawney’s fine translation, Bib. Indica, 1899, p. 15) the fish is not dead, but has just been thrown up by the waves. When the king demands an explanation it is given as follows:—

“In a former life, as a poor wood-carrier, you used to come to eat your humble meat at the bank of this very river. One time you saw walking in front of you a Jaina hermit who had come to break a month’s fast. So you called him and gave him the ball of meat that you had made. From the surpassing merit of that act you have become King Çālivāhana. The hermit has become a god. That god entered into the fish and laughed for joy at beholding the soul of the wood-carrier, which is none other than yourself, born in the rank of a king.”

(See Tawney’s note on p. 208 of his translation, where he refers to a similar tale in the Prabandhakośa.)

Smuggling men into the harem is a favourite motif of Eastern tales. One of the best-known cases occurs at the beginning of the Nights (Burton, vol. i, pp. 6 and 9) in “The Story of King Shahryar and his Brother,” where the brother sees the queen enter a garden with twenty slave-girls:

“... they advanced a little way into the garden till they came to a jetting fountain amiddlemost a great basin of water; then they stripped off their clothes and behold, ten of them were women, concubines of the king, and the other ten were white slaves.”

(See also “The Reeve’s Tale” on p. 282 of the same volume.)

In ancient India the smuggling of men into harems seems to have been brought to a fine art, if we may judge from the sixth chapter of Part V of Vātsyāyana’s Kāma Sūtra. Instructions are given as to the best way for entrance and exit, and by what means the Palace guards can be bribed or avoided. It is suggested that besides getting into the harem in womens clothes the lover can sometimes gain entrance disguised as a watchman, or may be taken in or out rolled in a bed or curtain cloth. After showing the utter depravity of both the women, their lovers and guards, Vātsyāyana ends the chapter by saying the information given is merely for the good of men to enable them to protect their own wives against any such deceits! — n . m . p .