Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 2
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 2
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
“Now in the month of Adar, Jesus, after the manner of a King, assembled
the boys together. They spread their clothes on the ground and he sat
down upon them. Then they put on his head a crown made of flowers, and
like chamber-servants stood in his presence, on the right and on the
left, as if he was a king. And whoever passed by that way was forcibly
dragged by the boys, saying, ‘Come hither and adore the king; then go
away.’”
A striking parallel to this is found in the beginning of the Mongolian
Tales of Ardshi Bordshi—_i.e._, the celebrated Indian monarch, Rájá
Bhoja, as given in Miss Busk’s “Sagas from the Far East,” p. 252.
“Long ages ago there lived a mighty king called Ardshi Bordshi.[160] In
the neighbourhood of his residence was a hill where the boys who were
tending the calves were wont to pass the time by running up and down.
But they had also another custom, and it was that whichever of them won
the race was king for the day—an ordinary game enough, only that when it
was played in this place the Boy-King thus constituted was at once
endowed with such extraordinary importance and majesty that everyone was
constrained to treat him as a real king. He had not only ministers and
dignitaries among his playfellows, who prostrated themselves before him,
and fulfilled all his behests, but whoever passed that way could not
choose but pay him homage also.”[161]
This is followed by an analogous story to that of Alí Khwajah and the
Merchant of Baghdad, under the title of “The False Friend,” in which a
merchant on a trading journey entrusts a friend with a valuable jewel to
give to his wife on his return home, and the friend retaining it for his
own use suborns two men to bear witness that they saw him deliver it to
the merchant’s wife, so the King dismisses the suit. But the Boy-King
undertakes to try the case _de novo_; causes the two witnesses to be
confined in separate places, each with a piece of clay which he is
required to make into the form of the jewel, and the models are found to
be different one from the other, and both from the shape of the jewel as
described by the false friend. A similar story occurs in several Indian
collections, with a Kází instead of the Boy-King.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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