Annuli – The Anklet, or, The Woman who Outwitted her Father-in-Law
Once there was a pious man who had a beautiful wife. One day, while her husband is away, the wife decides to sit on her rooftop terrace. A young man walking by the He is struck by her beauty, and immediately falls in love. When the woman notices him, she makes obscure gestures (shaking her head, and tapping her face and her breast), which the young man does not understand. Confused, the young man consults an old woman, famous for her trickery, who lives nearby, asking for her advice. The old woman explains that the married woman's gestures were indicating that he should not approach her himself, but should said a young woman in his stead. The young man therefore sends a girl to the woman's house, carrying a token of his affections. The wife responds with performative displeasure, makes the girl blacken her face, and then sends her out by the water-way that flows from the garden into the canal. She reports this treatment to the young man, who in turn relates it to the old woman. Once more, the old woman interprets for him, explaining that his beloved was sending him a message: that he should approach her house in the blackness of night, by the water-way. That night, when the young man approaches the garden from the canal, the woman is there to welcome him, and the two make love under the trees, then fall asleep. While they sleep, the woman's father-in-law happened to step out into the garden, and seeing his son's wife in the arms of another, decides to take one of the anklets that she always wears off of her feet as evidence. Soon the wife awakes, and realises what has happened. She dismisses her young lover, and sneaks back into the house to lie beside her sleeping husband. After a while, she wakes him, and tells him she wants to sleep out in the garden instead. He agrees, and the two lie down in the same place where she had met her lover. The next morning, the wife asks her husband why his father had taken off one of her anklets in the middle of the night. When he approaches his father, the old man explains that he had caught the wife in the arms of a lover in the garden - but his son, furious, tells him that he was mistaken: his wife had been beside him all night, and the two had slept in the garden. His father, ashamed, made apologies to his son and to the wife.
[From Clouston's edition of Sindbadnama, added by Jane Bonsall]
Note
Nishimura notes the following:
Analogues: Jinadasa, Āvaśyakacūrṇi, 2. Seventy Tales of a Parrot, Textus ornatior, 24 and Textus simplicior, 15 (Textus simplicior followed by ‘65. iusiurandum’) = Hemacandra, Parisishtaparvan, 2.8, 446-545 ‘The cunning woman with the anklet…’. Der persische Dekameron, 5 ‘Die Frau des Krämers’. Heptaméon, 45 (especially the second half) = La Fontaine, Contes, 2.6 ‘La Servante justifiée’. Cardonne, Mélanges de littérature orientale, ‘Die Geschichte von der gerechtfertigen Frau’ (followed by ‘65. iusiurandum’, pp. 279-284).
Reference stories, etc.: Riddles and obscure messages are found in Arabian Nights, Nights 112-129, ‘‘Aziz and ‘Aziza’; Le Jardin Parfumé, 9 ‘The Story of Al-Ju‘aidi’; and Twenty-five Stories of the Corpse, 1 = Kathasaritsagara, ch. 75, 163G(1). Spending time on the roof is found in ‘171D(1). The Grateful Monkey’ and ‘171D(3). The Merchant Dhanadatta who lost his Wife’, in Kathasaritsagara, chapter 123. The wife's instructions to her lover are echoed in Decameron, 3.3 and Saikaku’s Koshoku Seisui-ki, 5.1 ‘A happy minister because of a widow’. Sercambi, Il Novelliere, 106; Masuccio, Il Novellino, 30.
Additional Bibliography: Landau 5. Tanaka Otoya, India: The Structure of Love Affairs, pp. 108-113, ‘The Tales of Passing through the Crotch’. Shorin Kanwa, p. 117.Critical Literature
Annuli appears in the following versions and secondary versions
| Has Language Of Version | Has Branch Of Tradition | Is Adapted From | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Persian Sindbadnama | Persian | Book of Sindbad |
Annuli is narrated in the following occurrences
| Narrator | Pages |
|---|---|
| Fifth Master | Persian Sindbadnama, Zahiri al Samarqandi, Sindbadnama |
Annuli appears in the following manuscripts
| Has Language | Has Siglum Of The Version Of The Seven Sages | Has Language Group Within Version |
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