Note 264 — APPENDIX.

“Cast thy bread upon the waters,” saith the Preacher, “and thou shalt find it after many days” (Eccl. xi, 1); but here the reformed robber finds it—or rather, more than its equivalent—every day. This notion of the loaves he threw daily into the river reappearing to him in the form of two celestial youths is certainly of Buddhist origin, and was, with many other essentially Buddhist ideas, adopted by the Bráhmans after they got the upper hand of their rivals and drove them out of India. In the Hitopadesa (Friendly Counsel), a Sanskrit collection of apologues and tales, Book iii, fab. 10, a pious soldier is directed in a vision by Kuvera, the god of wealth, to stand in the morning behind his door, club in hand, and the beggar who should come into the court knock down with his club, when he will instantly become a pot full of gold. A similar story is found in the Persian Tútí Náma (Parrot Book) of Nakhshabí, where a merchant is thus rewarded who had given away all his wealth to the poor.