The fatalism of The Third Koyal Mendicant, though not so prominent in the Italian version, is still present; but in the nearest analogue to these two tales which I know it is emphatically repudiated and put down to the tempting of Satan,—and this though the story as it reaches us is in a distinctly Islamic guise. It occurs in The Seven Vazīrs—a work which forms part of some texts of The Thousand and One Nights—and is known as The Forbidden Doors.[1] The hero is a prodigal who becomes a porter plying for hire. He is engaged as servant to ten old men who live together, and who correspond to the old sheykh and ten young men of the better-known version. They die one by one; and, as the last one is dying, the hero's curiosity overcomes him and he conjures him to disclose the reason of their lamentations. The -dying man replies, forbidding him to open a certain locked door—a prohibition he, of course, disregards. A black eagle takes him up and conveys him to the Land of Women, where he weds the queen, who again charges him not to open a particular door. After seven months he disobeys, and is borne back by the same black eagle to the spot where it had first seized him, whence he finds his way once more to the palace of his former masters.
Here, it will be observed, the Forbidden Chamber is duplicated. The hero both reaches and quits the Houri Paradise by disobedience to the prohibition. There can be little doubt that in the earlier form of this story there is but one forbidden door—namely, the one whereby the hero quits the Paradise, and that the other is a reflection of this. On the other hand, the absence of the harem is, probably, a note of antiquity. The story in this form approaches a very wide-spread tale, which is found even beyond the limits of the Aryan and Semitic races. In the Hitopadesa[2]- a king's son goes to seek a maiden, who lies on a couch in the sea, under a tree. She catches sight of him and disappears; but he leaps into the sea, arrives at the golden city in which she dwells, and weds her. She forbids him to touch a picture of a certain vidyâdharâ or fairy. He disobeys, and the pictured figure resents his insolence with a kick so violent as to fling
- ↑ The Book of Sindihad, &c. edited by W. A. Clouston, p. 170.
- ↑ Clouston, op. cit. p. 309. Hitopatésa tradiut du Sanscrit, par Edouard Lancercau, Book ii, Story No. 6. p. 127.
