HJKAYAT PUSPA WIRAJA. 
101 
Now as Braudes noticed, the Hikayat Bakhtiar, the II ik ay at 
Gholam, the older Malay version of the Kalila dan Darnina, all 
have a very remote origin in the Persian Bakhtiar-N amah , though 
now they differ from it entirely and variously in framework and 
in tales. That the Malay Ilikayat Bakhtiar is somewhat nearer 
the Persian than the Hikayat Puspa Wiraja may he inferred from 
a conclusion drawn by Clouston (“ Popular Tales and Fictions,” 
vol. II, pp. 166-186). He points out how i’n the India Office copy 
of the Persian Sinbad Namah, written in verse in 1374 A.D., there 
is a story of a cat saving a baby from a cobra, whereas in the 
Panchatantra it is an ichneumon or mongoose, in the Ilitopadem 
a weasel, in a Chinese version a mongoose, in Syriac Greek Hebrew 
and old Castilian versions a dog. Again. Only in the Persian 
version is the babv motherless, its mother having died in child- 
birth. Clouston gives the following abstract of the story as told in 
Sinbad Namah : — 
“ In a city of Cathay there dwelt a good and blameless woman 
and her husband, who was an officer of the king. By-and-by she 
bore him a son and thereupon died and the officer procured a nurse 
to bring up the child. Now he had a. cat of which he was very 
fond, and to which his wife also had been much attached. One 
day he went out on some business and the nurse also left the 
house, no one remaining but the infant and the cat. Presently a 
frightful snake came in and made for the cradle to devour the 
child. The cat sprang upon it, and after a desperate fight suc- 
ceeded in killing it. When the man returned, lie was horrified at 
seeing a mangled mass lying on the floor. The snake had vomited 
so much blood and poison that its form was hidden and the man 
thinking that the cat, which came up to him, rubbing against his 
legs, had killed his son, struck it ,a blow and slew it on the spot. 
Immediately after he discovered the truth of the matter, how the 
poor cat had killed the snake in defence of the boy ; and hiis grief 
knew no bounds.” 
This is very close to the version of the Malay Hikayat Bakh- 
tiar. But unlike this Persian version and the Panchatanira and a 
modern Indian version quoted bv Clouston from “ Past Days in 
India” and a Sinhalese recension collected by Parker (“Village 
Folk-Tales of Ceylon,” vol. Ill, pp. 27-28) and' the versions which 
are current in Europe, both of the Malay recensions mar the plot 
by allowing the snake to kill the child ! 
The main plot of the Hikayat Puspa Wiraja is also with minor 
alterations the framework plot of the Malay Hikayat Bakhtiar. 
In the latter story a king dies leaving two sons, of whom the 
younger plots against the elder. The elder son abdicates and en- 
ters the forest with his queen, who there bears a son she is forced 
in their flight to desert. A childless merchant Idris and his wife 
Siti Sara adopted the infant and call him Bakhtiar. The royal 
wanderers reach a land, whose king has just died without issue; 
and they are selected to succeed to the throne by a sagacious ele- 
R. A. Soc., No. 83, 1921. 
