Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/262

 250 Indian Fairy Tales, window and called to the Mahiraji and his servants, who were standing there looking on, to save her. No one said anything to her. " Save me," she cried, " or I shall be burnt to death." <' If you are burnt, what does it matter?" said the Maharaji.- ''You ill-treated my children; you killed them; so, now bum." As soon as she was burnt to death the Maharaja had all her bones collected and put into four dishes, and he gave them to one of his servants to take to Sunkasi Rani's mother. When her mother uncovered dish after dish and found nothing but bones, she asked the servant, "Of what use are bones?" basa Mah4rdja sent them to you. Sunkasi Rani ill-treated and killed his children, and so he burnt her." The rest of the story she pronounced exact {tik). . The b61-tree is the ^gle Marmelos of botanists. . With the different deaths and transformations of the children compare in this book : Phulmatti Rani, pp. 3 and 4 : the Kite's Children, p. 22 : the B^l-Princess, pp. 144, 145, 148 : and in Old Deccan Days Surya Bai, pp. 85, 86. In " Die goldenen Kinder" (Schott's Wallachische Maerchen) the golden children are killed and buried (p. 122). From their hearts spring two apple-trees having golden leaves and apples. The trees are de- stroyed ; but a sheep has eaten an apple and then has two golden lambs. The step-mother kills them at once and sends the maid to wash the entrails in the stream, intending to cook them for her husband to eat (compare the curry in the "Pomegranate King," p. 8; the broth {Suhr) in Grimm's "von dem Machandelboom," Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I, p. 271 ; and the stew in the Devonshire story, " The Rose-Tree," told in Henderson's Folk^ lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 314). A piece of the entrails escapes, and as it floats away it swells and swells. On reaching the opposite bank it bursts, and out of it step the golden children. In a Hungarian story the children, one with a planet and one with a sun on his forehead, and each with a ring on his arm, are killed by a wicked woman who wants her daughter to take their mother's place as queen. They turn first into
 * These are your daughter's bones," said he : " therefore Anar-