It tells the story of a princess who summons into her room a prince named Sobur (Arabic: صَبْر, romanized: ṣabr, lit.
The story contains similarities to the European (French) fairy tale The Blue Bird, and variants have been collected from South Asia (India and Pakistan) and in Eastern Africa.
[2] According to scholar A. K. Ramanujan, tale type ATU 432, "The Prince as Bird", is reported in "over 8 Indian variants", including Bengali, Hindi and Kannada.
One day, he has to travel abroad and asks his daughters what presents they want: the six elders for silk dresses and jewels, and the youngest simply said "Sabr" ("wait").
She dreams he is still in pain and decides to do something about it: she disguises as a male yogi and goes to another jungle, where she hears the a parrot and a "mainá" conversing about the cure to the prince.
[4][5][6] In a variant collected in Western India by Putlibaï Wadia, Prince Sabar, the tale begins with the father, a Sultan, asking their seven daughters what they want him to bring from his journey.
[7] The tale was translated into French by Loys Bruyere,[8] and retold by Indian scholar A. K. Ramanujan, who sourced it from Gujarat.
After a few days, Mahadeo, impressed with her piety, decides to reward her: the princess notices a hole in the ground, digs up and finds a silver and gold stones.
One day, she foolishly reveals the secret to her sisters, who conspire to hurt the prince: they put glass powder on a couch.
[11] Andrew Lang published in his Olive Fairy Book a tale furnished by Major Campbell, originally collected from Punjab.
On the occasion of a visit to Imani, Kupti sprinkles on his bed powdered and splintered glass laced with poison.
[12] In another tale, collected in Mirzapur from an old Muhammadan cookwoman with the title The Princess who got the gift of patience, a king with seven daughters asks them who they have confidence in.
[13] In a tale collected by Sunity Devi, Maharani of Coochbehar, with the title Sabar Karo, a king summons his three daughters to asks them a question.
In this tale, a king summons his daughters and asks them a question: are they aapkarmi or baapkarmi, that is, if their fortunes are determined by their father, or by themselves?
The emissary thinks it is an object and informs the king, who travels abroad and finds the Saboor: an old woman gives him a stone with the same name.
Princess Aapkarmi receives the stone, which cracks open to reveal a fan that summons a prince named Saboor.
Aapkarmi and Saboor live in relative happiness, until the prince is poisoned by her jealous sisters and has to return home.
The king brings back the gifts and delivers the cradle to the youngest princess, who places it in water and suddenly a youth appears to her.
When the sultan sees a blackened mirror, he thinks it belongs to his youngest daughter, and banishes her to a hut near their house.
At any rate, Saburi - himself a jinn - gives the sultan a wooden box and riches and a golden fan inside.
Furious at the discovery, the six sisters convince their youngest to ask about Saburi's only way to die: not bullet, nor fire, nor water, but broken glass.
[18] Professor Lee Haring noted that the Indian story of Prince Sabour also appears in Mayotte and Mauritius.
The next morning, the princess grabs some of the birds' excrement and journeys to Sabour's kingdom, where she introduces herself as a male doctor come to cure the prince.
The princess, as the male doctor, presses the paste against Sabour's skin, and he is healed, then demands the prince marries his daughter.
[25][26] Professor Haring remarks that the Mauritian tale indicates a process of creolization of the immigrant Indian population to the island nation.
[24] In a variant from Mayotte collected by Claude Allibert from teller Mahamudu Abiamri, Swaburi n' Swali, a king has six daughters, the youngest named Fatima.
[29] Mary Stokes recognized the motif of the glass powder on the bed as parallel to the shards on the window of the French tale by d'Aulnoy.
[30] Folklorists Johannes Bolte and Jiří Polívka grouped the Indian variants with other European tales that were classified by Antti Aarne as type 432, Der Königssohn als Vogel ("Prince as Bird").
The Indian tales differ from the international variants in that the heroine's father brings her a fan, which she uses to summon the magical prince.
[33] In the same vein, Marilyn Jurich described the heroine of Prince Sabar as a trickster: she defies her father's system of values and beliefs, and offers him an honest opinion, despite being punished for it.