Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/169

 complete master of the situation. Thanks to his advice, king Wadihirah proves invincible, and finally marries Jiran's daughter, and has by her a son Juhan Pahlawan, who succeeds him on the throne.

The attractiveness of this book lies not so much in the occurrences it narrates as in the ingenious solution of the various riddles and problems propounded.

Pha Suasa (XXXIV).

Raja Ahmat, the king of Baghdad (Boreudat) has seven wives. It is foretold him in a dream that he will have a son with silver and a daughter with golden (or rather "suasa" thighs. One day as the king is walking on the bank of a stream, he finds a fig, which he picks up and throws away in sport. Again and again, as he hurls it from him, it comes back to him of its own accord. He takes this marvellous fruit home and gives it to his wives, in the hope that she who eats it will become the mother of the promised children. Only one of the seven, Jaliman, has the courage to taste the fig. She thus becomes the mother of Prince Silver-thigh and Princess Golden-thigh (Pha Suasa); the other six, consumed with envy immediately plot against the life of the twins. Shortly after their birth, the children are changed into flowers and Jaliman to save them from harm, gives them in charge to a cock. The latter, owing to the cunning devices of the envious wives, finds himself compelled to entrust them to the protection of a goat, and in like manner they are thus passed on to a bull, a buffalo and an elephant, and finally to a tiger.

One day this tiger resolves to devour them but while crossing a river in pursuit of the children he is slain by a crocodile. The infants are found by Pawang Kuala on the river-bank; he takes them up and tends them till they are adopted by the childless Raja of Parisi. Princess Pha Suasa, the admiration of all who behold her, makes acquainance with a prince of the aerial kingdom, the son of Raja Diu, who is doing tapa (penance) upon earth in the guise of a bird; she secretly promises him her hand.