A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s5.4

c24.s5.4

More definite evidence is adduced by Rohde¹, and by Weber² who holds that we find the *motif* of the *Vāsavadattā*—which, it must be remembered, has no known antecedent in India—in a tale recounted by Athenaios on the authority of Chares of Mytilene, an official of Alexander the Great. This tale of Zariadres and Odatis contains the *motifs* of lovers who see each other in a dream, and are finally united through the intervention of the maiden’s marriage ceremonial in which she enjoys the right of choice. But even if we compare the awakening of Vāsavadattā at her lover’s embrace to the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, and find parallels in the Greek romance for armies which war for the possession of a maiden, we have the fact that the tale admittedly in the Greek version is not Greek, and in point of fact in Firdausī we learn that the daughter of the emperor of Rome sees her lover Gushtasp in a dream and herself claims him as husband. The choice of a husband in this way by a princess is an early Indian practice, and the Persian tale may easily have come from India in the first place.