The Kathá Sarit Ságara; or, Ocean of the Streams of Story

In Gonzenbach’a Sicilianische Märchen, No. 55, Vol. I, p. 359, Epomata plays some young men much the same trick as Devasmitá, and they try in much the same way to conceal their disgrace. The story is the second in my copy of the Śuka Saptati.

Bernhard Schmidt in his Griechische Märchen, page 37, mentions a very similar story, which he connects with that of Admetos and Alkestis. In a popular ballad of Trebisond, a young man named Jannis, the only son of his parents, is about to be married, when Charon comes to fetch him. He supplicates St. George, who obtains for him the concession, that his life may be spared, in case his father will give him half the period of life still remaining to him. His father refuses, and in the same way his mother. At last his betrothed gives him half her allotted period of life, and the marriage takes place. The story of Ruru is found in the Ádiparva of the Mahábhárata, see Lévêque, Mythes et Légendes de l’Inde, pp. 278, and 374.

Liebrecht, in note 485 to page 413 of his translation of Dunlop’s History of Fiction, compares this story with one in The Thousand and One Days of a princess of Kashmír, who was so beautiful that every one who saw her went mad, or pined away. He also mentions an Arabian tradition with respect to the Thracian sorceress Rhodope. “The Arabs believe that one of the pyramids is haunted by a guardian spirit in the shape of a beautiful woman, the mere sight of whom drives men mad.” He refers also to Thomas Moore, the Epicurean, Note 6 to Chapter VI, and the Adventures of Hatim Tai, translated by Duncan Forbes, p. 18.