Note 396 — KING SHAH BAKHT AND HIS WAZIR AL-RAHWAN.[295] (continued 2)

Mr. Clouston refers for analogies to this tale to his “Oriental Sources of some of Chaucer’s Tales” (Notes and Queries, 1885-86), and he finds the original of The Pardoner’s Tale in one of the Játakas or Bhuddist Birth-stories entitled Vedabbha Jataka. The story is spread over all Europe; in the Cento Novelle Antiche; Morlini; Hans Sachs, etc. And there are many Eastern versions, e.g. a Persian by Faríd al-Dín “’Attar” who died at a great age in A.D. 1278; an Arabic version in The Orientalist (Kandy, 1884); a Tibetan in Rollston’s Tibetan Tales; a Cashmirian in Knowles’ Dict. of Kashmírí Proverbs, etc., etc., etc.