Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/21

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INTRODUCTION.
ix

efforts. Unable to say on which of the three she ought to bestow her hand, she shuts herself up in a tower, and they do likewise. The story figures in several collections of Eastern tales. Its best form is that which it assumes in the second of the "Twenty-five tales of a Vetala," the "Story of three young Bráhmans who restored a young lady to life."[1] But the most thoroughly Indian of the Portuguese tales is "Pedro and the Prince" (No. 6), in which a trusty retainer saves his master's life, and is, in consequence of his self-sacrificing loyalty, turned into a marble statue. It is best known as the story of "Der treue Johannes" (Grimm, No. 22), and that of "Rama and Luxman," in Miss Frere's "Old Deccan Days" (No. 5). An Indian variant of the story, in which no mention is made of the human sacrifice by which the faithful servant is restored to life, will be found at p. 253 of the first volume of Mr. Tawney's translation of the Kathá Sarit Ságara.

  1. The fifth of the Vetála Tales deals with a similar subject. See vol. ii. pp. 242-245 and 258-60 of Mr. Tawney's translation of the Kathá Sarit Ságara, where several other variants are mentioned. See also Oesterley's translation of the Baitál Pachísí, pp. 183-185.