12. Bidasari: Interpreting a Fairytale (Revision)

In this section, I want to introduce to the enchanted Malay fairy-tale entitled "Bidasari". Bidasari is one of my favorite folk tales; I hope you'll enjoy it too. I've paraphrased Frazer's version of the story, but please feel free to read the original in The Golden Bough. Below the story, I have outlined Frazer's analysis and set you some questions in order to revise some other theories of symbols we have covered.

 The story of Bidasari

This is the story of a beautiful young woman called Bidasari and how a beautiful and evil Queen tried to kill her. It's like Snow White. 

“Once upon a time in the city of Indrapura there was a merchant who was rich, but he had no children. One day, as he walked with his wife by the river, they found a baby girl, beautiful like an angel. So they adopted the child and called her Bidasari. The merchant had a golden fish. Using magic, he put the soul of his adopted daughter into the fish. Then he put the golden fish in a golden box full of water. Then he hid the box in a pond in his garden. In time, Bidasari grew to be a lovely woman.

Now the King of Indrapura had a fair young queen. The young queen worried that the king might marry another woman. The young queen heard that Bidasari was beautiful and charming. The young queen decided to kill Bidasari. She started Bidasari. But Bidasari could not die, because her soul was not in her.

But Bidasari could not stand being hit by the queen. She  said to the queen, “If you want to kill me, you must bring the box which is in the pond in my father’s garden.” So the box was brought and opened, and there was the golden fish in the water. Bidasari said, “My soul is in that fish. In the morning you must take the fish out of the water, and in the evening you must put it back into the water. Do not let the fish lie about, but tie it on a string around your neck. If you do this, I shall soon die.”

So the queen took the fish out of the box and tied the fish around her neck; and no sooner had she done so than Bidasari fell into a deep sleep like she was dead. But in the evening, when the fish was put back into the water, Bidasari woke up again.

The queen realized that now she could control Bidasari; she didn’t need to kill Bidasari. So she sent Bidasari home to her adopted parents. To save Bidasari from further being punished by the queen any more, her parents took her away from the city. So in a lonely and remote spot, they built a house and took Bidasari there. There she dwelt all alone. 

Every morning the evil queen took the goldfish out of the box and tied it around her neck. And all day long, while the fish was out of the water, Bidasari remained in a deep sleep. In the evening, when the evil queen put fish back into the water, Bidasari woke up.

One day, the king went out hunting. He came upon the house where Bidasari lay in a deep sleep. He fell in love in love with her immediately; it was love at first sight. But when tried to wake her up, but couldn’t. The next day, towards evening, he came back to the house, but he found her still asleep. Later though, when darkness fell, Bidasari woke up and told the king the secret of her life. So the king returned to the palace, took the fish from the queen, and put it in water to stay there. Bidasari now could live a normal life, and the king married her. And they lived happily ever after. The end. 

Frazer's analysis

To analyze this, let's start at the beginning of modern anthropology, with Frazer. Frazer analyses this story as an instance of the (mistaken) magical belief that the soul is something that can be separated from the body. 

Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a “permanent possibility of sensation” or a “continuous adjustment of internal arrangements to external relations,” the savage thinks of it as a concrete material thing of a definite bulk, capable of being seen and handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to be bruised, fractured, or smashed in pieces.

Even if separated, the soul can still keep the person alive: 

it may be absent from his body and still continue to animate him by virtue of a sort of sympathy or action at a distance. So long as this object which he calls his life or soul remains unharmed, the man is well; if it is injured, he suffers; if it is destroyed, he dies. Or, to put it otherwise, when a man is ill or dies, the fact is explained by saying that the material object called his life or soul, whether it be in his body or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed.

In fact, it might be safer if it is kept separate: 

But there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were stowed away in some safe and secret place.

Frazer thus analyzes the Bidasari fairytale as an instance of the belief in the external soul in inanimate things.

Other analysis

Now you might like to test yourself to see if you can apply the theories accurately. Imagine I wrote the following 7 passages drawing on different theorists for my analysis. Which theorist have I drawn on.  to help, I'll give you a clue: I've used all but one of the following theories: Frazer, Durkheim, Freud, Jung, Levi-Strauss, Geertz, Ortner, and Douglas. Which of these theories is not represented in the following?

1. Bidasari expresses unconscious desires. This is why we enjoy telling and hearing the story. The Oedipus story expresses the male's desire for union with his mother and resentment of the father as an intruder into his relationship. In the Bidasari story, by contrast, the young girl desires her father and resents the mother. She projects evil feelings towards her mother, in the figure of the wicked step-mother/queen. The King is a substitute for Bidasari's actual merchant father. 
2. Bidasari expresses the unique status of the goldfish. My analysis holds that the golden fish that lives in a pond in the Bidasari tale is clearly a goldfish. The object of comparative interest in Malay culture, the goldfish does not fit into Malay symbolic categories. Malays have categories for fish that belong in the ocean; as well as, lakes and streams. But all of these are wild. The goldfish, by contrast, has been bred, domesticated, and can even be trained for hand feeding. It defies the normal categories of 'fish' in the Malay world. In all cultures, objects that do not fit into set categories may be attributed with supernatural powers. The goldfish for Malays could thus be compared to the frog figure in European fairy tales; an animal that belongs neither to land or water and yet possesses magical capabilities. 
3. Bidasari expresses universally held tendencies to produce symbols of women with dual characteristics of evil (the King's first wife) or good (Bidsari, the King's second wife). 
4.  Bidasari expresses an ancient belief that the soul can be safely stored in another object. The same motif of the soul of the priest/King can be stored in a tree 'branch' that occurs in the story of Balder the Beautiful. 
5. Bidasari generates meaning from symbolic contrasts between life and death; human and animal, being childless and being fertile; night and day; being asleep and being awake. While the Queen has the fish, Bidasari is neither dead nor fully alive, but in a kind of zombie state. Bidasari is part human and part animal, in as much as her soul resides in a goldfish. Being adopted; she is part daughter and part not-daughter. She sleeps during the day and wakes during the night--which contradicts the usual association of sleep with night and being awake with the day.  
6. Bidasari should not be read as an instance of 'savage', mistaken belief. In fact, in contemporary America, many people believe that the soul is something that can be separated from the body. Most who profess life after death hold onto some form of this 'doctrine of the soul' identified by Frazer. The soul does not refer to scientific reality, but rather a deeper reality. It's not a reality that can be tested through experiment. It is a reality that you must first believe in, then you will see. All cultures possess this deeper version of reality. It is one of the ways we make sense of life. 
7. To understand the Bidasari story, we really need to turn to its social function. Who tells the story and where? How does the telling of the story assist in creating social connections in maintaining society? Just hearing the story out of context tells us nothing about Malay society. 

For more on this fairytale, you might want to read Bidasari: Jewel of Malay Muslim Culture.

Further Study: Bidasari & Snow White

You probably noticed similarities between the stories of Bidasari and Snow White. These include:

1. Both are beautiful young maidens
2. Both have lost their birth mother
3. Both are hated for their beauty by an evil queen
4. Both fall into a deep slumber.
5. A ruler (king and prince) falls in love with, rescues, and marries both.

The two stories are recounted in different parts of the world. Snow White is a fairytale from Europe while Bidasari is from Malay areas of Southeast Asia. How do we account for these and other similarities?

It could be a coincidence that the two stories are similar.

It could be that the Bidasari story spread to Europe or the Snow White story spread to the Malay world. (This explanation would be an instance of what we call "diffusionism".)

It could be that an older story from our prehistoric ancestors tens of thousands of years ago has stayed with us as we humans spread from Africa to Europe and Southeast Asia. (This explanation views culture and language--including stories, beliefs etc.--as survivals of the past)

It could be that both stories serve a specific use in each society--if they didn't the stories would have disappeared. (This would be an instance of the functionalist approach)

In fact, we could turn to all of the theories we have studied in this course to try to explain the apparent similarities. Your job as a student is to understand the theories and make up your own mind about which fi any theories can apply. If none of the theories seem suitable, then your challenge is to come up with a new one!