It was first collected by ethnologue and clergyman Karekin Servantsians (Garegin Sruandzteants'; Bishop Sirwantzdiants) in Hamov-Hotov (1884) with the title ԱԼԹՈՒՆ ԲԱՇ ԲԱԼԸՂ ("Alt'un Bash Balygh").
[4] In a 1991 article, researcher Suzanna A. Gullakian [hy] noted the fish appears as the helper in Armenian tales of The Grateful Dead.
[11] In another Armenian variant, titled Ոսկե ձուկը (Voske dzuky; English: "Golden-Fish"), the prince is schooled for years and learns his father is going blind.
[12] Azerbaijani scholarship registers a similar tale in the Azerbaijani Tale Corpus, indexed as 507C, Xeyirxah ölü ("The Good Dead"): either the hero ransoms a debtor's corpse from the creditors by paying the dead man's debts, or the king's father gives a snake some water to drink; the hero meets a mysterious helper (the dead man or the snake in human form), and both strike a friendship; they reach a kingdom where a princess is suffering from a strange illness or has killed many suitors at night; after winning the princess for his friend, the hero's companion offers to cut up the girl in two pieces, which causes her to release a snake from her body.
[13] In an Azeri tale titled "Золотой подсвечник" ("The Golden Candlestick"), a shah is going blind and the only cure indicated by his new doctor is the blood from a speckled fish that lives in the White Sea.
The mysterious companion also disenchants the princess by making her vomit snakes, gives the prince the cure for his father and explains he was the red fish.
[33] In his Übersicht über einige Resultate der Märchenforschung, folklorist Kaarle Krohn reported at least one Bulgarian variant of this narrative: the prince releases back into the ocean a "beautiful fish" (the only cure for his father's illness); he is expelled from the kingdom and meets a companion on the way; both liberate a princess from a serpent; the companion reveals he is the fish.
[34] The narrative exists in the Bulgarian Folktale Catalogue under the banner *507C*, "Благодарна риба"[35] or "Der dankbare Fisch"[36] ("The Grateful Fish"), related to the international type ATU 507, "The Monster's Bride".
The boy marries the ruler's daughter and, on the fourth and fifth night after the wedding, the Black Arab kills two serpents that crawled out of the wife's womb.
After killing the snakes and a son is born to him, the boy and the Black Arab receive gifts from the ruler and depart back to the padishah's realm.
While the fisherman goes away to get help, the boy sees that the large fish has disappeared, in its place a small one, with a plea written to return it to the sea.
He places a bedsheet between and begins to tell her stories with a riddle: in the first, a carpenter, a tailor and a sheik each contribute to carve and animate a woman made of wood; in the second, two brothers mistakenly kill each other, their wives pray to Allah to restore them to life, but their heads were placed on each other's bodies; in the third, a woman wants to marry, but has three suitors to choose from, so he sets a challenge for them to find the rarest thing the world.
[49] Kurdologists Ordîxanê Jalîl, Celîlê Celîl and Zine Jalil collected another Kurdish tale in 1972 from informant Morofe Mahmud, a native from Armenia.
Before he leaves, however, the Black man gives the emir the fish's two golden hairs, and instructs him to wipe the king's eyes with them, then dives back into the sea.
Despite the boy's refusal, the sultan proceeds with marriage preparations, and summons his entire court, the ministers and governors for a grand wedding celebration.
The male goldfish takes pity on Amir's plight and decides to help him find a wife, so he changes himself into a human dervish and goes to meet the prince on land.
The dervish insists, despite the prince's words and Aliya's pleas, and poises to strike her in the middle, when the girl opens her mouth in fear and a snake's head appear inside it.
[55] Professor Ulrich Marzolph [de], in his Catalogue of Persian Folktales, listed three variants where the fish appears as the helper, all grouped under type 507C, Der dankbare Tote ("The grateful dead person").
In this tale, titled "Два товарища" ("Two Companions"), an old man is out looking for work, when a fisherman asks him to help him pull a net from the sea, since it caught something heavy.
After a year, Mota tells Moti to beat the daroga drum at the king's palace's entry and say he can cure the princess's muteness.
The flowers then tell another story: three brothers and princes are in love with the same girl and find three presents for her (a rug, a mirror, and a cup of reiving water); the princess dies, and each contribute in reviving her; prompting the question whom she should be with.
[63] In a Gawri (Kalam Kohistani) tale translated as The story of the unlucky prince and his friend, a king has two co-wives that quarrel with each other, and a son by the other wife.
One day, the king falls ill and the royal doctors prescribe "a red kind of fish" as his only cure, which is to be caught, cooked and eaten.
Some time later, the prince decides to search for his friend, and plans to kill his wife for fear of people taking her, but she says she will cut off her hair to pass herself as another youth.
At night, the vizier's son, Kasym, catches a fish with golden head and silver-scaled body, but releases him back into the sea.
In Ting's new system, he located one variant of type 507C, "The Serpent Maiden", published in 1957, wherein the hero's helper is a fish in human form who liberates the princess.
The story features a helper of supernatural origin (an angel in disguise), a hero (boy) on a quest for a remedy for his father, a maiden whose suitors/bridegrooms have died in mysterious circumstances in her bedchamber, and the exorcising of the evil spirits that possessed her.
[87] Sinologist Wilt L. Idema provided another version of this tale: instead of Guanyin, she sends her attendant Shancai to buy the fish (a carp), since the animal is indeed the third son of the Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean.
[88][89] As reported by French missionary Henri Doré [fr], in Chinese folklore the carp (li-yu) is the animal disguise of a marine deity (the Dragon King) or of a member of his court.
Angelopoulou and Brouskou, on the other hand, suggest that the character of the grateful fish harks back to even older times, to the Apkallu of Mesopotamian myth and to a being named Oannes (Uanna), as described by later writer Berossus.