M189. Thread the thread through the sink, H506.4. .17.21.22.26.27.29.33.38.

To thread a thread through a spiral shell (a stone with a hole, a horn), the character ties a thread to an ant and lets it through the hole.

Arabic writing tradition, Tibetans, Viets, Koreans, Chinese, Ancient Greece, Kalmyks, Turks, Kurds, Yellow Uighurs, Japanese (Sei Shonagon).

Western Asia. Arabic written tradition (manuscripts from the end of the 1st millennium AD) [noticing the absence of a hoopoe, angry Solomon sends an eagle to find and bring him to him; hoopoe: he was in Saba, the capital of the great power of South Arabia; she is so named after the first king; another name he was Abd-Schems ("servant of the sun"); now the wise queen Balkis, also a sun worshiper, reigns there; sitting behind the curtain on her precious throne, she does justice in her blooming kingdom; S. sends a hoopoe to her with letters and demands; before going to S., B. thinks to test it with gifts, which are combined with a test of wisdom; sends 500 young men dressed as girls and 500 girls dressed as men; according to another legend, 100 girls and boys dressed in the same clothes; S. must distinguish their gender; guess the content of the locked casket where the undrilled were a pearl and a diamond through which a curved well passed; the pearl had to be drilled, a thread was threaded into the curved well; finally, fill the crystal goblet with moisture that was not produced earth, not heaven; S. tells young men and women to wash and guesses their gender by the techniques with which they bathe; telling the queen's sent about the contents of the box, he does it in a pearl a hole with a stone; one demon brought him a silkworm, which slipped through the diamond well and left a silk thread in it; as a reward, S. gives the worm a mulberry tree to a permanent place residence; the crystal goblet is filled with foam from the horse that was driven to gallop - this moisture is neither from the ground nor from the sky; in another edition, the tear is that moisture; convinced of S.'s wisdom, B. herself goes to him; S. steals her throne, she recognizes her throne; demons told S. that B.'s lower body is overgrown with donkey hair and legs; S. tells demons to arrange a crystal floor under which water texla and fish swam; B. decided that it was water and lifted her dress to his knees; S. was convinced that the libel was false; otherwise, he did see B.'s body covered with hair, but the demons gave him a remedy to relieve him this shortcoming; S. marries B.]: Weil 1845:246-267 (retelling in Veselovsky 1872:343-344); Taibah, MacDonald 2016 {there is no stretch of thread in the Quran or the Bible; cf. The Koran, Surah 27; Kings III, 10, 1-13} [a hoopoe flew to Suleiman and reported that in the south in the country of Sava, the beautiful queen Bilquis rules sun worshipers, but they do not know about the true God; S. sent B. an invitation to visit him; her advisers offered to go to war, but B. was frightened and accepted the invitation; she wanted to transfer her throne to S.; one of S.'s genies offered to do so immediately, but the other who accepted true faith, carried the throne even faster; when she entered the crystal palace prepared for her, B. was amazed that her throne was already there; in some versions, the queen asked S. riddles; she sent him an undrilled pearl and a drilled emerald so that S. would drill the pearl and thread a thread through the thin and crooked hole in the emerald; S. called the master to drill the pearl, but how to thread the thread, not knew; then the tiny worm volunteered to do it, took a thread in his mouth and crawled through; S. sent the pearl and the emerald to the queen; she arrived and asked what water was neither earthly nor heavenly; S.: we must drive horses, collect sweat, and it will be water neither from the earth nor from the sky]: 72.

Tibet is the Northeast of India. Tibetans: Ting 1978, No. 851A* [Chinese princess suggests that grooms 1) thread a hole in jade (grease with honey, tie to an ant); 2) identify mothers of 5000 foals (lock up mares and foals in separate pens, and then let the foals see their mothers); 3) which end of the log is closer to the butt (put it in the water); 4) identify the princess among several equally dressed girls (find out signs from the maid); 5) separate children from mothers among 100 ducks (this can be seen from how they eat); 6) slaughter, eat and skins a hundred rams at a time (one hundred people work at the same time)] {number pages in pdf are not visible}; Osipov, Riftin 1962 [(text on this story with all episodes]: 31-37.

Burma - Indochina. Vieta [the king orders to bring him the wisest man; the nobleman to the plowman: how many times a day will your buffalo cross the field; the son of a ploughman: how many steps does your horse take in a day? The king sent the boy three baskets of rice and three male buffaloes: let there be an offspring of six buffaloes in a year; the boy tells his father to arrange a feast for the village; comes to the king and cries: the mother is dead, and the father does not want to give birth to him a brother; the king tells the boy to divide the sparrow into three parts to feed three people; the boy tells the king to forge a knife out of a needle to cut the sparrow; the neighboring king tells thread the thread through the twisted shell; the boy orders to tie it to an ant; the king orders that the boy be placed in adjacent chambers and given the rank of Highly Scientist]: Nikulin 1976:62-66.

China - Korea. Koreans (1898) [Confucius, walking through the valley with his disciples, saw a fruit tree with women sitting on both sides; pointing to the woman on the west side, Confucius said she was beautiful; he was told: "But when you have to thread a thread through a ninety hole studded bead, you will remember not a Western woman, but an oriental woman"; Confucius came to the court of the goddykhan, and he, handing him a barbed bead with ninety holes, said: "If you are really wise, put a thread so that it goes through all these ninety little holes"; Confucius asked a woman on the east side for help; she took a bead, dipped it in honey, then took an ant, tied a silk thread to it and left the ant and the bead; the ant began to eat honey and, crawling into the holes, dragged the thread with it until it passed like this all ninety holes; the woman admitted that she was a servant of heaven and was sent to help Confucius]: Garin-Mikhailovsky 1958, No. 21:476-478.

The Balkans. Ancient Greece [Minos, chasing Daedalus and searching for him all over the world, brought a spiral-twisted shell with him, promising to give a big reward to anyone who could pass through this the sink was a thread; with its help he hoped to find Daedalus; when he arrived in the Sicilian city of Kamik in the courtyard of Cocala, where Daedalus was hiding, Minos showed him the shell; Cocal took it, promising to thread it, and gave it to Daedalus; he tied the shell to the ant and, having made a hole in the sink, let the ant pass through it; when Minos saw that the thread had been threaded through the sink, he immediately knew that Cocal had Daedalus and began to demand his extradition; Cocal promised this and continued to pay attention to Minos as a guest; but when Kokal's daughters bathed Minos in the bath, he died; according to some, Minos died because that they doused him with boiling water]: Apollodorus 1972:77 (Apollod. Epit. I,14-15).

Caucasus - Asia Minor. Kalmyks [Surumzul-Bumba Khan learns from the book that Tala Khan's daughter can only be obtained by his hero Eed-Mergen; after giving a hundred heroes, he sends him for a girl; T. demands that 1) every day drank araks in a bucket and ate a ram; E. puts a hundred tents, each has arak and meat, the heroes enter each tent one by one, fulfill the condition; 2) carry the snow-white hadak through the sink and not get it dirty; E. fed the ant, tied a hadak to it, put sugar and raisins at the small hole of the sink, the ant climbed there, dragging the hadak; 3) recognize her daughter among 500 girls; E. lives with an old woman, she she is afraid to say the girl's signs, because T. learns everything through a magic book; E. tells her to get into the cauldron with feathers, closes her with a lid, puts a pipe to the lid, listens through it, putting the sink; old woman: we must make the girls laugh, the khan's daughter has a six-word prayer written on her upper front teeth; E. guessed it; T. looks at the book, she says that she discovered the secret "on three iron legs, with cast-iron skin, with a clay belt, with a feather body, with a wooden trunk; T. threw the book into the fire; agreed to give his daughter, but did not want to let E. go; sending T.'s daughter and her dowry cattle with her people, E. pretended to be sick; the llama recognizes the disease by a thread tied to the patient, E. tied it to a dead dog, the llama did not understand anything, said that the patient would recover if he ate what he wanted; E. asks give him a human heart filled with blood from a ram's scar and two eyes filled with gold; then explains that man's eye for gold is insatiable, and there is no blood in the ram's scar; drinking the guards, jumps away, catches up with daughter T.; tells her that S. has a leopard's face; tells the khan that his fiancée has a lip like a hare; both believed it because they turned away from each other when they met; but then understood deception; S. ordered to tear E.'s eyes out and drive them away; S. orders to build a palace, but the walls are collapsing; only wise E. knows how to build; E. is sent to his nephew to find out a secret; he says ( a certain horse with a three-year-old boy should be walled up in the base); the nephew runs away, deceiving E. (when he catches up with him, he gives the buckle - as if it contains a stolen secret); the palace is built; E. tells the servant to move the bull that covers the navel of the earth; water gushes from there; E. demands his eyes back, then will stop the flood; the khan and his wife are forced to bring them themselves, E. tells the servant to move the bull back; E. forgave the khan, but did not return to him]: Vatagin 1964:196-210; the Turks [the foreign king gives difficult tasks, otherwise it will conquer the country; one of the tasks is to thread the thread through the pearl (you have to tie a thread to the ant's leg and grease the opposite hole)]: Eberhagd, Boratav 1953, № 197.IIIJ: 231; Kurds [the padishah tells the Vezir to say what food should not be eaten, what horse, not a horse, which person is not a person, otherwise he executes in 40 days; on the road there is a dirty Kechelok named Ismail-Chavish, a vizier He looks at him contemptuously, but the IC teaches him: a cucumber that has grown in the shade is bitter and inedible; a restive horse with white spots is not a horse, a person living in his father-in-law's house is not a person; the vizier confessed who his taught; the Persian Shah demands a daughter, tells her to guess riddles; which of the Shah's three knives, which vizier, which vekil; ICH puts knives in the fire: Shahsky does not turn black, the vizier's knife turned black at the end, the vekil knife is all turned black; which of the mares is the mother and which is the daughter; IC: lock your horses for three days without water - the uterus will run to the water first, and the cub from behind; thread the thread through a 40 m long twisted tube; the HI tied the thread to the ant, he held it through and through; Shah: our horses are laughing here, the offspring of your mares is over from ours, send foals; ICH took people, began to exterminate dogs in Shah's territory: our sheep were attacked by a wolf, and your dogs they did not run; the Persian Shah richly endowed IC, and the padishah gave him a daughter]: Rudenko 1970, No. 13:33-37.

Turkestan. Yellow Uighurs [two brothers tyrant her sister; she dreams that the sun and moon have entered her; she finds a golden spindle in the spring, hides it on her chest, it disappears; so twice; for the third time puts it in her mouth, swallows it; brothers drive her out, giving her a mare, a dog and three goats; all animals immediately brought offspring, the sister gave birth to a boy Gesar; the brothers send a crow, a dog to kill him, G. easy kills them; sends a monster; G. turns into an egg, teaches his mother to advise the monster to swallow it, gets stuck in his throat, grows up, the monster dies; they come by themselves, supposedly with gifts; leaving, alone returns, nails the baby to the cradle, puts a stone on top, lowers him into the river; the mother finds him, cannot move the stone, G. throws it off, gets up unharmed; they live in a hut; two princesses they look at them, thinking of destroying the hut; G. accuses them of stealing marmots, finds marmots in their clothes; the khan will marry the eldest to someone who 1) wins the race (G. overtakes the riders on a bull), 2) will thread a thread through a twisted horn (G. ties it to an ant), 3) will cover the mountain with silk (G. throws a piece of silk, it covers the whole mountain), 4) recognizes the bride among a hundred horsemen (the goose reports that next to her a bee will curl); G. gets a wife]: Stuart, Jhang 1996:40-43.

Japan. Japanese [god Aridoshi's name means "Ant Move"; mikado ordered that anyone over 40 years old be killed; an official with the rank of chujo hid his parents in a cellar; Chinese the emperor was going to conquer Japan, asked difficult tasks; each time the chujo asks his father for advice, tells the mikado a solution; 1) where is the top of the tree and where is the base (throw it into the water, the top will be downstream); 2) which of the snakes is female and who is male (only the male moves his tail if you bring a twig); 3) thread the thread through the stone in which the spiral passage with seven turns (tie the thread to ant, a drop of honey at the exit); mikado asks what reward the chujo wants; he asks for the abolition of the decree on the extermination of old people, mikado agrees]: Sei Shonagon 1975, No. 237:262-265.