Gaza
The Treasure
A man falls deep into debt, and decides to rob the emperor's treasury with his son. They are successful, but when they return to steal for a second time, the man is caught in a trap made of tar, and is unable to escape. Rather than leaving his father to be discovered and identified by the authorities, the son cuts off his father's head, and escapes, leaving his father's body behind. In order to uncover the headless thief's accomplices, the emperor orders that the body be dragged through the city in humiliation, whereupon the man's daughters cannot contain their cries of distress. Quickly, to hide their guilt and explain his sisters' outcry, the son stabs himself in the thigh, and uses that as an excuse for their tears when they are questioned about their relationship to the unidentitfied thief. (In some versions, the emperor sets additional traps to try to expose the thief, but is repeatedly foiled.)
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Nishimura notes extensive parallels and analogues for this narrative, and its continuations in various versions. They include: Motifs and Types: J1142.4 Thief’s corpse carried through street to see who will weep for him; J1143 Thief detected by building straw fire so that smoke escapes through thief’s entrance; K315.1 Thief enters treasury through passage made by him as architect of the building; K407.1 Thief has his companion cut off his head so that he may escape detection; K407.2.1 Thief’s confederate cuts off own arm to furnish alibi for family’s grief; TU1996 Father and son rob king. Analogies: The earliest record is Herodotus, Historiae, 2.121. Pausanias, Greek Chronicles, 9.37.4-7 (Troponios, who beheaded his brother, is swallowed in a pit when the earth is split open). Fabliau MR97 ‘De Burat det de Haimet ou des trois Larrons [The Tale of the Three Thieves]’ par Jean de Boves. Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Il Pecorone, 9.1 (moves the setting to Venice and ends with the marriage of the Doge’s daughter). Sercambi, Il Novelliere, 88 (brothers, arrested and executed). Bandello, Le Novelle, 1.25 (marries the princess). Grimm’s Fairy Tales, KHM, ‘Der Räuber und seine Söhne’. Kyoritsu Iso, 44.12. Ho’on Jurin, 31.25. Sho-kyo, 2.12. Konponsetsu Issai Ubu Binaya Hasoji, 12 (Taishozo 24, 159b-160c; Chavannes, No. 379). Chu Ko Sen, 1.89 ‘A man who cut off his father’s head and was considered a filial son’. Konjaku Monogatari-shu, 10.32 ‘Story of a Chinese thief who killed his father when he entered the king’s storehouse and stole his treasures’. Kathasaritsagara, ch. 64, ‘146. Story of the Two Thieves Ghata and Karpara’. Saikaku, Saikaku Shokoku Banashi, 3.7 ‘A secret passage of cause and effect’. Shiefner, Tibetan Tales, 4 ‘The clever Thief’. Reference stories, etc.: The motif of evading pursuit by making the mark made on oneself on many others is found in Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, 400 ‘Agilulf und Theudelind’; Decameron, 3.2 (hair cut); Sercambi, Il Novelliere, 103 (ink mark on neck); Ortutay, Hungarian Folktales, 19 ‘The Dreaming Youth’ (mark on coat); Afanasjew, Russian Folktales, 315, ‘Baldak Borisjewitsch’; Arabian Nights (Supplementary Volume), ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ (Small white marker on the doorway). In Kathasaritsagara, chapter 3, ‘1BB. King Brahmadatta’, there is a motif of being arrested with a mark on his clothes. Motifs of drinking and stealing or outwitting things include Shiki [Shiji, History], Chronicles 41 (escaping captivity); Grimm’s Fairy Tales, KHM 192 ‘Der Meinsterdieb’ and Afanasjew, Russian Folktales, 383-390 ‘Der Dieb’ (stealing a horse), etc. As for the black and white horses, in Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, 88 ‘A certain rich man feared greatly his lord…’, there is an example of a white horse symbolizing prosperity, good fortune, and a black horse representing bad luck, misfortune, and disaster. In Nizami, Khosrow and Shīrīn, chapters 46, 60, 63, horses dyed white and black represents day and night, and chapter 99, ‘The Advice of Shireen’, white represents the radiance of good fortune, and black the crowding armies. In Barlaam and Ioasaph, Apologue 4, mice represent also day and night (Apologue 3 in Georgian Version Balavariani). In Le Roman Tristan et Iseut (ed. Bédier), 19 (life and death). Others see my translation of Dolopathos, note 75. The motif of a child recognizing a parent whom the child has not yet seen is in Gesta Romanorum, 201 ‘Des heiligen Laurentius Entführung’ and ‘37. cygni’ (the parent sees the child and feels); Pentamerone, 1.3 and 3.2; Hundred Japanese Folktales, ‘Handless Girl’; Harimakoku Fudoki, ‘The county Taka and the village of Kami’; The same story can also be found in the surviving fragment ‘Yamashiro-no-Fudoki’ (Shrine Kamo). According to Santosu no Gosagyo, p. 293, note 9, the Jews had the custom of not cutting their hair, etc., while the Egyptians shaved their hair and beards every third day. Konjaku Monogatari-shu, 5.3 ‘The Tale of the king who has been stole his night-glowing jade’ (The king tries to trap the suspect, but the thief is not caught, so he appoints him minister and orders him to investigate the criminal. The criminal becomes Half-King). Bibliography: Chauvin VIII225. Landau 47. G. Paris, ‘Le conte du trésor du roi Rhampsinite’, 1907. W.A. Clouston, pp.330-332, 359-360. Campbell, 1907, pp. lxxxv-xc. Penzer, ‘The Origin of the Story of Ghata and Karpara’, in Tawney/Penzer, V, pp.243-286. Takagi Toshio, A Study of Fairy Tales, pp.34-37, 218. Tanaka Otoya, Drunken Flower Collection, ‘Setsuwa no Ruden (Diffusion of Narratives): Egypt to Japan’. Matsubara Hideichi, ‘Chinese and Japanese Versions of Gaza’. Matsubara Hideichi, ‘The Tale of the Treasure Breaker: The Treasure of King Rhampsinitus’, in Medieval European Narrative Stories. Matsumura Junko and Matsumura Hisashi, ‘The Structure and Genealogy of the Treasure Tale of King Rhampsinitos’ and ‘The Structure and Genealogical Addendum of King Rhampsinitos’. Tsukada Takao, Greek-Roman Thieves’ Kitan, pp. 147-157. My translations of Disciplina Clericalis, p. 313, and Dolopathos, translator’s note 75. Nishimura Masami, ‘Parallels of the embedded stories in The King’s Son and the Ascetic’, p. 6 (meaning of white and black). |
| Critical Literature |
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| Nishimura (2001), Runte, Wikeley, Farrell (1984), Runte, Society of the Seven Sages Portal (2014), Brunner (1933), Whitelock (2005) |
| Gaza appears in the following versions and secondary versions |
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| Gaza appears in the following manuscripts |
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