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inhabited by a hermit of supernatural powers. There she saw a large jambu-tree in flower, which seemed compassionately to console her with the sweet buzzing of its bees. And she took the form of a bee, and sat down on it to rest, and began to drink the honey of a flower. And immediately she saw her husband, from whom she had been so long separated, come there, and she bedewed that flower with a tear of joy. And she abandoned the body of a bee, and went and united herself to her husband Rankumálin, who had come there in search of her, as the moonlight is united to the moon.
Then she went with him to his home : but from the jambu-flower bedewed with her tear a fruit was produced.*[1] And in course of time a maiden was produced inside the fruit. Now once on a time the hermit, who was named Vijitásu, was wandering about in search of fruits and roots, and came there, and that fruit, being ripe, fell from the jambu-tree and broke, and a heavenly maiden came out of it, and respectfully bowing, saluted the feet of that hermit. That hermit, who possessed divine insight, when he beheld her, at once knew her true history, and being astonished, took her to his hermitage, and gave her the name of Vinayavatí. Then in course of time she grew up to womanhood in his hermitage, and I, as I was roaming in the air, saw her, and being infatuated by pride in my own good looks and by love, I went to her, and tried to carry her off by force against her will. At that moment the hermit Vijatásu, who heard her cries, came in, and denounced this curse upon me, " O thou whose whole body is full of pride in thy beauty, become an ugly camel. But when thou shalt be slain by king Pushkaráksha, thou shalt be released from thy curse. And he shall be the husband of this Vinayavatí."
" When cursed in these words by the hermit I became a camel on this earth, and now, thanks to you, my curse is at an end; so go to that forest on the other side of the western sea, named Surabhimáruta, and obtain for a wife that heavenly creature, who would make Śrí herself lose all pride in her own beauty." When the heavenly Vidyádhara had said this to Pushkaráksha, he flew up to the sky. Then Pushkaráksha returned to his city, and entrusted his kingdom to his ministers, and mounting his horse, went
- ↑ * Cp. Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales, p. 15, Giles's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, p. 294, and the classical legend of tho birth of Adonis. A similar story will be found in Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 306. In Bernhard E. Schmidt's Grie- chische Märchen, No. 5, throe maidens come out of a citron, and one of them again out of a rosebush. For other parallels see the Notes to No. XXI, in Miss Stokes's Indian Fairy Tales. Cp. also Das Rosmarinsträuchlein in Kaden's Unter den Olivenbäumen, (Stories from tho South of Italy), p. 10. In the 49th Story of the Pontamerone of Basile a fairy comes out of a citron. The word I have translated " tear" is in the original vírya.
