One day, Munglik peers into the mirror, and discovers their father is the padishah, and their mother is buried in a hole in the ground, joined with two hounds.
[7] Similarly, scholars Isidore Levin and Ilse Laude-Cirtautas noted the tale is spread in Turkic traditions, and is also known as an homonymous Kazakh/Kyrgyz epic.
[8] In that regard, Turkish scholarship noted that the Kyrgyz epic Muňluk ve Zarlık shares motifs and plot structure with tales from Turkey, so much so it has been suggested they originate from a common cultural background of the Turkic peoples.
[11] In a version of the tale, published by Uzbek author Mikhail I. Sheverdin [ru], despite being married to 40 wives, the shah still hasn't fathered a son.
[20] In an Uzbek tale titled Parıldama Sırlı Tabak (Yaltıllama Sapal Tavak, "Glittering Enamelled Plate"), a sultan has forty wives, but no child.
The sultan remarries and his fortieth wife soon becomes pregnant, to the co-wives's consternation, who fear they will fall out of favour with their husband as soon as her child is born.
The co-wives bribe a midwife and they set up a trap for the newest queen and take her children, a boy and a girl, as soon as they are born and replace them for puppies.
[21] In the tale "Золотая косичка" ("The Golden-Braided [Boy]"), a padishah and his viziers sight a giant red rose, where three peri women are weaving.
The padeschah's other wives become jealous and order a maidservant to get puppies, place the animals in the newborns' cradles to deceive him, and abandon the twins in the steppe.
The bald man meets a youth on a horse with a magic whip, who helps him defeat the army and lets him take the credit for it.
Vospirokhun is ready to give birth to her twins, a boy and a girl, and the other co-wives promise to bring a kind midwife to look after her: they bribe an old woman, who takes the children as soon as they are born, replaces them for puppies and abandons them in the steppe.
One day, the old woman who delivered the children, who always goes for a walk in the steppe to gather twigs, finds the girl alone at the iron palace and deduces she is Vospirokhun's child.
Sohibkurol assumes the throne after his bald father relinquishes it in his son's favour, and he and his wife Sangil Sopoltosh have three male children.
Sohibkurol and Sangil Sopoltosh's youngest son finds the princess, but is betrayed by his elder brothers and tossed in a ditch to die.
[27][28] In a version of the epos published by Russian translator Sergey L. Severtsev [ru], a ruler named Darapshah has nine wives, but no child.
As for the babies, they survive in the pond, until a slave hired by the co-wives takes them out, but, moved by their beauty, abandons them near a crossroads, until a kingly caravan finds the twins.
The siblings are adopted by Khan Shasuar and his wife Akdaulet, and grow up as fine people: Sharyar a strong warrior and Anzhim a smart and well-read woman.
Years later, the male twin searches for a white apple tree that always bears fruit, a talking parrot and a woman of great beauty named Kulanda.
The king marries Qanşayim and she bears him a boy and a girl,[a] who are replaced for puppies and cast in the "Qazar Sea" by a witch named Mıstan Kempir.
[34] In a Kazakh tale, "Три сестры" ("Three Sisters"), a prince, the khan's son, is looking for a bride, when he stops by a tent, where he hears three womanly voices talking about their marriage wishes: the oldest sister says she will weave a golden carpet for his throne; the middle, that she will cook a feast for everyone with only an egg, and the youngest that she will bear the khan's son a boy with golden head and a girl with silver head.
Kudaibergen is advised by a helpful witch named Zhalmauyz Kempir, who, in regards to the second object (the mirror), tells the youth to seek the aid of the bird Samruk.
The prince, now khan himself, after seeing in the mirror his wife, tending to two dogs in the desert, orders his viziers to bring her back and learns of the whole plot.
Before he leaves on a journey, he asks what his two wives will give him when he returns: the elder co-wife boasts she can build him a palace, while the younger promises to bear him a son and a daughter with a golden "aidar".
She convinces the female twin to send her brother to the pastures of Khan Kelmes, who owns a wild mare that foals colts that become tulpars.
Altyn Aidar sails a boat to go to Khan Kelmes's lands, but a peri appears in the sea and tries to drown him by controlling the waves.
The youth grabs her golden ring and she loses her powers, then reaches the pastures, where he holds a vigil on the herd for someone that is stealing Khan Kelmes's colts: another peri.
Some time later, he walks in the woods and finds a yurt, where two peris are talking to each other about a youth who stole one's ring and the other's colts, but whom they wish to marry.
[37][38] Russian ethnologist Grigory Potanin recorded a variant from Uryankhay Krai, modern day Tuva, with the title "Мынг хонгор атту Тюмендей и его сынъ Ерь Сару".
[41] Taube argued that the old lady character as the ruler of fate was "an ancient element" present in this tale, and compared it to similar motifs and figures of Central Asian faiths.
On the third year, she gives birth to a normal human boy, and the god, seeing that his wife failed in her promise, orders her and the son to be sewn inside a cow's hide and thrown in the sea.