Note 127 — APOLLO AND THE MOUSE.
Reading edition
Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 13, quoting Journal Asiatique, 1st series, 3, 307) finds the same myth in Chinese annals. It is not a god, however, but the king of the rats who appears to the distressed monarch in his dream. Rats then gnaw the bowstrings of his enemies. The invaders were Turks, the rescued prince a king of Khotan. The king raised a temple, and offered sacrifice—to the rats? The same story of rats gnawing bowstrings recurs, of all places, in the Migration Legend of the Greeks (Brinton, Philadelphia. 1884).