Note 25 — Note to Chapter 60. The fables of Pilpay.

This corresponds to the 21st of the first book in Benfey’s translation, Vol. II, p. 120. Cp. Arabic version (Wolff, I, 98, Knatchbull, 156.), Symeon Seth, 33, John of Capua, e., 4, German translation (Ulm, 1483) H., II, b., Firenzuola, 82, Doni, 113, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 187, Livre des Lumières, 135, Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 353, Robert, Fables inédites, II, 193–196. (Benfey, I, 283). It is the 1st of the IXth Book of La Fontaine’s Fables, Le depositaire infidèle.

This is the 218th Játaka. A gámavásí deposits ploughshares with a nagaravásí who sells them and buys músikavaccam. “Phálá te músike hi kháditá ti músikavaccam dassesi.” The rest much as in our tale. A kulalo is said to have carried off the son. (Fausböll, Vol. II, p 181.) If Plutarch is to be believed, the improbability of the merchant’s son’s story is not so very striking, for he tells us, in his life of Marcellus, that rats and mice gnawed the gold in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.