Note 102 — Introductory material

In a great collection of Indian tales, the "Kathá Sarit Ságara," is a story which may have been the original of that to which this note refers. "Two young Brahmans travelling are benighted in a forest, and take up their lodging in a tree near a lake. Early in the night a number of people come from the water, and having made preparation for an entertainment, retire; a Yaksha, a genie, then comes out of the lake with his two wives, and spends the night there: when he and one of his wives are asleep, the other, seeing the youths, invites them to approach her, and to encourage them, shews them a hundred rings received from former gallants, notwithstanding her husband's precautions, who keeps her locked up in a chest at the bottom of the lake. The Hindu story-teller is more moral than the Arab. The youths reject her advances; she wakes the genie, who is going to put them to death, but the rings are produced in evidence against the unfaithful wife, and she is turned away with the loss of her nose. The story is repeated in the next section with some variation; the lady has ninety and nine rings, and is about to complete the hundredth, when her husband, who is here a Naga, a snake-god, wakes, and consumes the guilty pair with fire from his mouth."—British and Foreign Review, No. xxi. page 266.