This is how the Tamil story of The Four Good Sisters begins ("Folk-Lore in Southern India,” Part iii., by Pandit S. M. Natesa Sastri[FN#403]):  In the town of Tanjai there reigned a king named Hariji, who was a very good and charitable sovereign.  In his reign the tiger and the bull drank out of the same pool, the serpent and the peacock amused themselves under the same tree; and thus even birds and beasts of a quarrelsome and inimical disposition lived together like sheep of the same flock.  While the brute creation of the great God was thus living in friendship and happiness, need it be said that this king’s subjects led a life of peace and prosperity unknown in any other country under the canopy of heaven?  But for all the peace which his subjects enjoyed, Hariji himself had no joy:  his face was always drooping, his lips never moved in laughter, and he was as sad as sad could be because he had no son.—­After trying in vain the distribution of charitable gifts which his ministers and the priests recommended, the king resolves to retire into the wilderness and there endeavour to propitiate Mahesvara [i.e.  Siva], hoping thus to have his desire fulfilled.  He appoints his ministers to order the realm during his absence, and doffing his royal robes clothes himself in the bark of trees and takes up his abode in the desert.  After practising the most severe austerities for the space of three years, Siva, mounted on his bull, with his spouse Parvati by his side, appears before the hermit, who is overjoyed at the sight of the deity.  Siva bids him ask any boon and it should be granted.  The royal ascetic desires to have a son.  Then says Siva:  “For thy long penance we grant thy request.  Choose then—­a son who shall always be with thee till death, but shall be the greatest fool in the whole world, or four daughters who shall live with thee for a short time, then leave thee and return before thy death, but who shall be the incarnation of learning.  To thee is left to choose which thou wilt have,” and so saying, the deity gives him a mango fruit for his wife to eat, and then disappears.  The king elects to have the four learned daughters, whose history is very entertaining.

Another tale in the Pandit’s collection (No. 4) informs us that once upon a time in a town named Vanjaimanagar there ruled a king named Sivachar.  He was a most just king and ruled so well that no stone thrown up fell down, no crow pecked at the new-drawn milk, the lion and the bull drank water from the same pond, and peace and prosperity reigned throughout the kingdom.  Notwithstanding all these blessings, care always sat on his face.  His days and nights he spent in praying that God might bless him with a son.  Wherever he saw pipal trees he ordered Brahmans to circumambulate them.[FN#404] Whatever medicines the doctors recommended he was ever ready to swallow, however bitter they might be.  At last fortune favoured Sivachar; for what religious man fails to obtain his desire?  The king in his sixtieth year had a son, and his joy knew no bounds.