HIKAYAT PUSPA WIRAJA. 
97 
The tale purports to be from the Siamese. Certainly van der 
Tuuk is right in doubting such an origin not only from the lack 
■of any Siamese word or title in the text, to which he calls atten- 
tion, but also from the closeness of resemblance between Malay 
and Perso-1 Indian versions, which render an intermediate Siamese 
channel highly improbable. He adverts to the Indian names in 
the tale and 1 surmises that the bare plot of the story, disaster 
following children’s molestation of young birds, may have come 
from the Pali. He suggests that the word “ Taksla,” which is 
given in the tale as the Siamese equivalent of “ Astana Pura 
Negara,” may be “ Takshasila ” the great Indian university of 
Buddhist literature. 
I propose here to give an outline of the- story and deal with 
it only from the standpoint of comparative folklore. 
In Astana Pura Negara ‘ the City of Palaces” called in the 
Siamese language Taksla, livqd Raja Puspa Wiraja with his con- 
sort Kemala Ivisna Dewi aiu^ their two sons Jaya Indra and Jaya 
Chindra. One day Antaraja, his brother and heir-apparent, plot- 
ted with the young men to dethrone Puspa Wiraja and steal his 
consort. Puspa Wiraja determined to vacate his throne and flee, 
so as to avoid civil war. His consort agreed — “ Where you go, I 
will go. For I am as it were a shoe: if the shoe is left be- 
hind, the foot is hurt” — a simile found also in the XVIth cen- 
tury Malay version of tire Persian “ Tales of a Parrot” (7 Tikayat 
Bayan Budimon, p. 31, ed. Winstedt). They fled into the 
forest and at dawn rested under a tree by the side of. a river three 
miles broad. In the tree was a parroquet’s nest, in which were 
two young parroquets twittering for their mother. The young 
princes begged for the birds, though their father warned them 
that to separate nestlings from the mother bird was unlucky. 
However lie gave them to the boys and a little later restored them 
to the nest; when their mother returned, she detected the smell 
•of man’s hands on her offspring and pecked them. The prince 
carried his consort across the river, leaving his two sons to be 
fetched next. Before he can return, they are found and taken 
away and adopted by two fishermen. While he is searching for 
them, a sea-captain carries off his consort from the opposite bank. 
The prince is left desolate and wanders on, till one day he comes 
to a small pavilion outside a city and climbs into it and falls 
asleep. Now the king of that country had been dead three days 
leaving no heir. So the chiefs harnessed an elephant with the 
royal trappings and let him loose to choose a king. The elephant 
went straight to the pavilion wherein Puspa Wiraja slept and lifted 
him up on his back. Slo he became king of S'amanta Pura Negara. 
One day the fishermen who had adopted the two little princes they 
found beside the river determined to take them to court and offer 
their services to this new just king. They are rewarded and the 
boys, who they swear are sons of their loins and not adopted, be- 
come royal heralds: — (in this part of the story apparently only one 
B. A. Soc„ No. 83, 1921. 
