102 
HIKAYAT PUSPA WIRAJA. 
pliant. One day Idris goes to court. Bakhtiar insists on accom- 
panying him and unrecognized is given the post of chief vizier to 
his own royal father. The older viziers are jealous and get him 
imprisoned and sentenced to death on a false charge of having an 
amour with one of the king’s mistresses. He postpones his exe- 
cution (for 17 days) by telling (4) tales, the last of which is the 
shorter version of the Hikayaf, Puspa Wiraja. Finally the king 
discovers Bakhtiar is his own son. 
An outline of the Persian Bakhtiar Narnah or “ History of 
the Ten Viziers,” the Muhammadan imitation of the Indian story 
of Sinbad or “ The seven Viziers ” may be read in “ The Encyclo- 
paedia of Islam,” (Houtsma and Arnold, No. X, pp. 602-3) to- 
gether with references to literature on the work. The writer of 
that, article remarks, “ The story was originall 3 r written in Persian, 
and the older Persian version, which we possess, seems to have 
been composed about 600 A.H.” Brandes has constructed a 
stemma codicurn for the Malay version (translated from the 
Arabic) called lit. Gholam (Tijdsc-hrift voor Indische Taal Land 
en-Volkenkunde, Bat. Gen. XXXVIII, p. 191) and he has written 
on the Malay versions termed II\t. Bakh tiar ( ib p. 230 and XLI, 
p. 292). It may be noted that in Ouseley’s later Persian redac- 
tion from India, as also in most well-known editions of the 
“ Arabian Nights,” in the lit. Gjwlam and in the older Malay 
Kalita dan Damm/i, the tale with which the Puspa Wiraja is per- 
haps connected, that of Abu Sabar, is the third inset tale. None 
of these tales of Abu Sabar are so close to the Puspa Wiraja as 
tales to be found in Indian folk-lore. 
In “Folk-Tales of Kashmir” (Knowles, 2nd ed., p. 154) an 
exiled king with consort and two children takes a passage by a 
vessel, which sails away with the queen, leaving her husband and 
children behind. She is sold to a merchant whom she consents to 
marry if she is not reunited with her family for two years. The 
king crossing a .river to fetch his sons is carried away by the stream, 
and is swallowed by a fish : when the fish dies on the bank, he is 
saved bv a potter and trained to that trade. He is selected to be 
king of the potter’s country by a royal elephant and hawk. The 
fisherman who had reared his sons brings them to court and un- 
recognized they become pages. They are set to guard the ship of 
the merchant who had bought their mother. She overheard the 
older telling the younger of their lineage and fate. Persuading the 
merchant to complain to the king of their conduct, she gets the 
chance of revealing her story and the royal family is re-united. 
In Bedding’s “Folklore of the Santal Parganas” (p. 183) 
the same story occurs, with a few minor alterations. 
Two Sinhalese versions, identical in plot but damaged in the 
telling, are lecorded in Parker’s “Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon” 
(vol. Ill, pp. 380-383 and pp. 91-92), an exhaustive collection of 
tales, enriched with references among which are many of those 
quoted in this paper. 
Jour. Straits Branch 
