Notes on women whose love is scorned

Note: this text is extracted from Book III, chapter 20.

As is only natural, the motif of the revenge of a woman whose love has been scorned enters into nearly every collection of stories in the world. It is, moreover, not only in fiction that we have records of such happenings. Apart from Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, we read (Paulin Paris, Étude sur les differents Textes, imprimés et manuscripts, du Roman des Sept Sages), of Fausta, second wife of Constantine the Great, who caused the death of Crispus, son of his first wife, and also of Lucinian, son of Lucinius, by similar false accusations. Then there was the case of Aśoka, the great Buddhist Emperor of India (274-237 B.C.). After the death of his first wife, named (according to the Ceylon records) Asandhimitrā, he married one of her attendants, Tiṣyarakṣitā, and made her his chief wife. She had fallen in love with Aśoka’s eldest son and heir (by another wife), Kuṇāla, Viceroy of Taxila. He rejected her advances, however, and was shortly sent abroad to put down a revolt. The Emperor became ill in his son’s absence and decided to recall Kuṇāla and set him on the throne. Tiṣyarakṣitā, seeing what this would mean for her, managed to cure the Emperor herself, obtaining in return the favour of exercising regal power for seven days. She immediately has Kuṇāla’s eyes put out, but later the blind son comes to the court disguised as a lute-player, and the queen is burnt. (See Benfey, Orient und Occident, vol. iii, p. 177; Cambridge History of India, vol. i, p. 500; Przyluski, “La Légende de l’Empereur Açoka,” Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. xxxiii, 1923, chap. iv, “ Avadāna de Kuṇāla,” p. 281-295.)

Both the above stories appear in W. A. Clouston’s Book of Sindibād, pp. xxvii, xxix, to which we shall refer again later.

In Greek legend we have the stories of Hippolytus and his stepmother Phædra; Phineus and his sons with their mother-in-law; Bellerophon and Anteia, wife of Prætus; and Peleus and Astydameia (called Hippolyte in Horace, Odes, iii, 7, 17), wife of Acastus.

The oldest tale of this nature comes from Egypt, and was current in Thebes towards the end of the XlXth Dynasty. It is known as “The Story of the Two Brothers,” and has already been referred to (Vol. I, pp. 129, 130) in connection with the “ External Soul” motif. I take the following from Maspero’s Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt. It forms the first story in his excellently annotated collection, and is preceded by a full bibliography.

The two brothers Anupu and Baîti lived in the same house. Anupu, the elder brother, was married and owned the house, while Baîti did all the field work and slept with the cows each night. One day both brothers were in the fields and Anupu sent Baîti to the village to get seed. He asks Anupu’s wife for it; she is dressing her hair and tells him to take it. He shoulders five measures of the seed, which exhibition of strength at once rouses her admiration.

“And her heart went out to him as one desires a young man. She arose, she laid hold on him, she said to him:

‘Come, let us lie together for the space of one hour. If thou wilt grant me this, in faith I will make thee two beauteous garments.’

The youth became like a cheetah of the south in hot rage, because of the evil suggestion she had made to him, and she was frightened exceedingly, exceedingly. He spake to her, saying;

‘But in truth thou art to me as a mother, and thy husband is to me as a father, and he who is my elder, it is he who enables me to live. Ah! this horrible thing that thou hast said to me, do not say it to me again, and for me I shall tell it to no one; I shall not let it escape from my mouth for anyone.’

He took up his burden and went to the fields. When he reached his elder brother they set to work at their labour.”

That evening Anupu’s wife tore her garments, rubbed fat on her body to look like bruises and told her husband, who was the first to get home, that his brother had reduced her to this condition. Accordingly Anupu prepares to slay Baîti and awaits his arrival behind the stable door. The cows, however, warn Baîti of his impending fate, and he flies with all his might. We then get the earliest example of the “Magical Impediments” motif —a sheet of waterfull of crocodiles separates the two brothers, and after waiting till the next morning Baîti tells his brother the whole truth, and castrates himself on the spot.

“The elder brother cursed his heart exceedingly, exceedingly, and he remained there and wept over him. He leapt, but he could not pass over to the bank where his younger brother was, because of the crocodiles.

His younger brother called to him, saying:

‘Thus whilst thou didst imagine an evil action, thou didst not recall one of the good actions or even one of the things that I did for thee. Ah! go to thy house, and do thou thyself care for thy cattle, for I shall not live longer in the place where thou art—I go to the Vale of the Acacia.’”

Anupu is overcome, and returning home kills his wife and throws her to the dogs.

Turning to India, we find examples of the motif occur very frequently. See, for instance, the story of “ Pāla und Gōpāla,” translated by J. Hertel, Indisclie Erzähler, vol. vii, 1922 , pp. 64-68.

In his Book of Sindibād (pp. xxx, xxxi) Clouston cites two examples from H. H. Wilson, Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection of Oriental MSS., etc., 1828.

“In a Telugū palm-leaf manuscript entitled Sārangdhara Charita, the hero, Sārangdhara, is the son of Rājamahendra, King of Rājamahendri, whose stepmother Citrāṅgī falls in love with him. He rejects her advances, on which she accuses him to the king of attempting to violate her, and the king orders him to have his feet cut off, and to be exposed in the forest to wild beasts. There a voice from heaven proclaims that the prince in his former life was Jayanta, minister of Dhaval Candra, w'ho, being envious of Sumanta, one of his colleagues, contrived to hide the slippers of Sumanta under the bed of the queen. The king, finding them and ascertaining whose they were, commanded Sumanta to be exposed to wild beasts after having his legs and hands cut off; in retribution of which Jayanta, now Sārangdhara, suffers the like mutilation. He acknowledges the justice of the sentence, and his wounds are healed by a Yogī. A voice from heaven apprises the king of the innocence of his son, and he takes Sārangdhara back and puts Citrāṅgī to death. Sārangdhara adopts a religious life. In the Tamil version, when the prince has been mutilated and cast into the jungle, his dead mother’s lamentations are heard by the Siddhas, who restore the prince’s limbs, and a voice from heaven apprises the king of Citrāṅgī’s guilt. Again: In the Kumara Rāma Charita, Ratnaṅgī, one of the wives of Rāja Kāmpila, became enamoured of Kumara Rāma, his youngest son, and importuned him to gratify her desires. Finding him inexorable, her love was changed to hatred, and she complained to Kāmpila that Rāma had attempted her chastity. Kāmpila in a rage ordered Rāma to be put to death instantly, with his four chief leaders. The minister Bachapa, however, secreted Rāma and his friends in his palace, and decapitating five ordinary criminals, produced their heads to the rāja as those of his intended victims. Kāmpila soon repented of his haste, and the prince’s death was the subject of universal sorrow. After some time Rāma reappeared, and the Princess Ratnaṅgī, on hearing of this, hanged herself, by which Kāmpila was satisfied of the innocence of his son.”

The motif is also found in the Mahāpaduma Jātaka (see Cambridge Edition, vol. iv, p. 116 , No. 472), and Bloomfield, Life and Stories of Pārgvanātha, pp. 64, 85, 146, 199. On the latter page a preliminary bibliography of the motif is given, which includes references to the Mahābhārata, Kathā Sarit Sāgara, Jātakas, Kathāprakāga, etc., besides the collections of Ralston, Steel and Temple, and Clouston. One of the references is to Ralston’s Tibetan Tales, p. 206 . In this story the mother of Utpalavarṇā seduces her own son-in-law and he complies with her desires. A maid discloses the matter and Utpalavarṇā leaves the house. I would not include such examples under this motif. Bloomfield, however, divides it into three forms: the woman tempts, and the man rejects; the woman out of hatred [or fear] pretends that a man has made overtures to her, so as to get him into trouble; and the woman tempts and the man succumbs. The whole point of the motif is, I feel, the refusal of the man and the consequent intended revenge of the woman. Thus, whereas the first variety is the only true example of the motif, the second also may be included, but the third seems quite beside the point—the most important incident of the motif being missing.

Both Persian and Arabic fiction abound in examples of the motif. The best-known collection is that entitled The Book of Sindibād, or the Story of the King, his Son, the Damsel and the Seven Vazirs. For further details of its history, etc., reference should be made to Comparetti’s Ricerche intomo al Libro di Sindibād, translated by H. C. Coote for the Folk-Lore Society, 1882; The Book of Sindibād, W. A. Clouston, privately printed, 1884; and V. Chauvin, Bibliographic des Our rages Arabes, viii, Syntipas.

The frame-story in every case is based on the motif here under consideration. A brief outline is as follows:—

After numerous failures to teach the only son of the king, the sage Sindibād finally succeeds in under six months. He then discovers that the prince is threatened with loss of life if he speaks a single word during the next seven days. Nevertheless, he goes to his father, who is anxious to test his newly acquired knowledge. To all the king’s questions he answers not a word. At this juncture one of the king’s harem, who is secretly enamoured of the prince, enters the audience-chamber and asks leave to try privately to induce the prince to speak. On leave being given she tells him of her love, and offers to poison the king. The prince flies from her in horror. The girl, fearing exposure, tears her clothes, scratches her face and in this condition returns to the king, stating that the prince, only pretending to be dumb, has attempted to rape her, and has suggested poisoning the king. The king orders the executioner to cut off his son’s head. There are seven vazirs at the court and they determine to do what they can to prolong the carrying out of this hasty sentence, hoping in time to establish the prince’s innocence. Accordingly the First Vazir tells a story showing the deceit of women, with the result that the king wavers in his decision. The guilty woman, however, now relates a tale exemplifying the deceits of man. The Second Vazir thereupon retaliates. These alternate stories continue till all the Vazirs have spoken. By this time the unlucky seven days have passed and the innocence of the prince is established, as he can now safely speak and give the real facts of the case.

The collection also appears in the Nights (see Burton, vol. vi, p. 127), under the title, “The Craft and Malice of Women.” In the Persian Bakhtyār Nāma it is the vazirs (ten in number) who urge the death of the accused man, and it is he himself who tells the stories. It also appears in the Nights (Burton, Supp., vol. i, p. 55 et seq.) as “The Ten Wazirs: or, the History of King Āzādbakht and his Son.” In Supp., vol. ii, pp. 295, 296, Clouston writes a note on the story. The plot, however, differs from the other similar collections, not only because of the fact stated above, but also because the son, in a state of drunkenness, wanders into the queen’s bedroom and falls asleep on the bed, to be later discovered by the royal couple. The king refuses to believe that she knows nothing about the matter and the jealous ten vazirs do all they can to bring about the prince’s death. Closely allied to these is the Tamil Alakeswara Kathā (see H. H. Wilson, Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection of MSS., etc., vol. i, p. 220). In the Turkish version, however, the plot follows the Arabic, and it is the prince’s mother-in-law who tempts his virtue. His horoscope shows that his life is in danger for forty days (not seven, as in the other versions) and forty vazirs tell stories. See E. J. W. Gibb, The History of the Forty Vezirs, 1886. The work is very popular in Turkey, where it is known as, Qirq Vezīr Tārīkhi. The original Turkish translation is said to have been made by one Sheykh-zāda, and the title of the work to have been Hikāyetu-Erba’īna-Sabāhin we Mesā —i.e. The Story of the Forty Moms and Eves.

There are two other occurrences of the “scorned love of women” in the Nights.

The first of these is in the long “Tale of Kamar al-Zaman” (Burton, vol. iii, p. 314). The two brothers, Amjad and As’ad, are tempted to incest by each other’s mother. On being repulsed they shut themselves up in the harem, and tell the king that his two sons have raped them and they refuse to come out until their two hearts are brought to them. The enraged monarch gives the necessary order, but the pitying treasurer, whose duty it is to kill the brothers, takes back to the king two vials of a lion’s blood which the brothers chance to slay. Later the repentant father finds the original letters written by the queens in his sons’ clothes. After numerous adventures Amjad and As’ad meet their father (vol. iv, p. 27), and marry two beautiful women they met during their wanderings, and all is well

“till there overtook them the Destroyer of delights, and the Sunderer of societies; and Allah knoweth all things!”

The second tale is that of the “History of Gharib and his Brother Ajib” (vol. vii, p. 83). Queen Jan Shah is suddenly called out as her prisoner, Gharib, had broken her idol and slain her men. She immediately goes to the temple and (like Anupu’s wife in the Egyptian tale) on seeing the great strength of Gharib

“her heart was drowned in the love of him and she said to herself:

‘I have no need of the idol and care for naught save this Gharib, that he may lie in my bosom the rest of my life.’”

On his refusal he is turned into an ape by her magic, and kept carefully in a closet. After two years he pretends by signs to agree to her wishes, and is accordingly restored to his original shape. That evening, he seizes her by the neck, breaks it and so kills her.

The first of the above stories is common in Kashmir; see, e.g., Stein and Grierson, “Tale of a King,” Hatim's Tales, 1923, pp. 45-57; and Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, pp. 166 , 423.

Thus we see that, in order for a story to be classified under the heading of this motif, the woman must make the suggestion, be repulsed, and seek revenge. This is the natural sequence of events w’hich has proved so popular in every part of the East, whence it has travelled slowly westward. An interesting point to notice is that it can be traced from East to West in the same collection of stories—that of the Sindibād Kāma cycle, for besides the various versions already mentioned (see also Vol. I, p. 170) it is found in the French Dolopathos, the English Seven Wise Masters, and numerous other versions. —n.m.p.