Note 3 — Tale II. (continued 2)

The Buddhist idea of the soul is very difficult to define. In other legends given later in the present volume (e. g. the episode of the burying of Vikramâditja’s body and the action of the fourth youth in “Who invented Women?”) we find it, just as in the present one, spoken of as a quite superfluous and fantastic adjunct without which a man was to all intents and purposes the same as when he had it. Spence Hardy affirms as the result of conversations with Buddhists during half a life passed among them in Ceylon, as well as from the study of their writings, that “according to Buddhism there is no soul.”