INTRODUCTION.

In an Appendix to his “Buddhism in Tibet,” Dr. Emil Schlagintweit has given “An alphabetical list of the books and memoirs connected with Buddhism.” Although not completely exhaustive, it occupies thirty-five pages, and contains references to more than a hundred separate works, and a much larger number of essays and other literary articles. Of those books and articles, the titles of about sixty allude to Tibet. To them may be referred readers who wish for detailed information about that country, its literature, and its religion. All that it is proposed to do here is to say a few words about the Tibetan work from which have been extracted the tales contained in the present volume; to give a short account of the enthusiastic Hungarian scholar, Csoma Körösi, who had so much to do with making that work known to Europe; and to call attention to any features which the stories now before us may have in common with European folk-tales. To do more, without merely repeating what has been already said, would require a rare amount of special knowledge; and it may safely be asserted that remarks about Buddhism, made by writers who do not possess such knowledge, are seldom of signal value.

Towards the end of the ninth century, continues Schlagintweit, Buddhism was strongly opposed by a ruler who “commanded all temples and monasteries to be demolished, the images to be destroyed, and the sacred books to be burnt;” and his son and successor is also said to have died “without religion;” but his grandson was favourably inclined towards Buddhism, and rebuilt eight temples. “With this period we have to connect ‘the second propagation of Buddhism;’ it received, especially from the year 971 A.D., a powerful impetus from the joint endeavours of the returned Tibetan priests (who had fled the country under the preceding kings), and of the learned Indian priest Pandita Atisha and his pupil Brom-ston. Shortly before Atisha came to Tibet, 1041 A.D., the Kāla Chakra doctrine, or Tantrika mysticism, was introduced into Tibet, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries many Indian refugees settled in the country, who greatly assisted the Tibetans in the translation of Sanskrit books.” It is probably from this period that the Kah-gyur dates.

“As regards Csoma de Körös, I never think of him without interest and gratitude. I had heard of him, and seen his Tibetan Grammar and Dictionary before leaving England. And one thing that used to make me think a five months’ voyage interminable was my longing to become acquainted with one who had prepared the way for the acquisition of a language of Asia, thought until then almost mythical. For neither Father Georgi’s nor Abel Rémusat’s treatises went very far to clear the mystery.

Speaking of Csoma Körösi’s literary life at Calcutta, M. Pavie says, in the article which has already been cited, “These labours occupied his time for the space of nine years. He had turned his study into a sort of cell, from which he scarcely ever emerged, except to walk up and down the long neighbouring galleries. It was there that, during our stay in Bengal, we very frequently saw him, absorbed in a dreamy meditation, smiling at his own thoughts, as silent as the Brahmans who were copying Sanskrit texts. He had forgotten Europe to live amid the clouds of ancient Asia.”

Early in 1842 Csoma Körösi left Calcutta, with the intention of revisiting Tibet, and of making his way, if possible, to Lhasa, where he was in hopes of discovering rich stores of Tibetan literature as yet unknown to the learned world. On the 24th of March he arrived at Darjíling, in Nepal, where the superintendent of the station, Dr. Archibald Campbell, did all he could to further his views. But on the 6th of April he was attacked by fever, and on the 11th he died, a victim, as Professor Max Müller has said, “to his heroic devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.” His wants, apart from literary requirements, appear to have been as few as those of any monk, whether Christian or Buddhistic. “His effects,” says Dr. Campbell, “consisted of four boxes of books and papers, the suit of blue clothes which he always wore, and in which he died, a few shirts, and one cooking-pot. His food was confined to tea, of which he was very fond, and plain boiled rice, of which he ate very little. On a mat on the floor, with a box of books on the four sides, he sat, ate, slept, and studied; never undressed at night, and rarely went out during the day. He never drank wine or spirits, or used tobacco or other stimulants.”

A few days before he died he gave Dr. Campbell “a rapid summary of the manner in which he believed his native land was possessed by the original ‘Huns,’ and his reasons for tracing them to Central or Eastern Asia.” Dr. Campbell gathered from his conversation that “all his hopes of attaining the object of the long and laborious search were centred in the discovery of the country of the ‘Yoogars.’ This land he believed to be to the east and north of Lassa and the province of Kham, and on the northern confines of China; to reach it was the goal of his most ardent wishes, and there he fully expected to find the tribes he had hitherto sought in vain.” On the way he hoped to make great literary discoveries, and he would dilate in the most enthusiastic manner “on the delight he expected to derive from coming in contact with some of the learned men of the East (Lassa), as the Lamas of Ladakh and Kānsun, with whom alone he had previous communion, were confessedly inferior in learning to those of Eastern Tibet.” He was generally reticent about the benefits which scholars might derive from his contemplated journey, but “What would Hodgson, Turnour, and some of the philosophers of Europe not give to be in my place when I get to Lassa!” was a frequent exclamation of his during his conversations with Dr. Campbell before his illness.

On this subject I have been favoured with a letter (in English) from the Hungarian linguist and explorer Professor Arminius Vámbéry. In it, after stating that scarcely anything is known in Hungary about the early years of Csoma Körösi, he proceeds to say:—“We only know that it was the study of Oriental languages in Germany which gave him the idea of the possibility of finding a people in Asia speaking our language, and closely connected with us. This, of course, was a mistake, for Hungarian, a mixed tongue consisting of an Ugrian and a Turko-Tatar dialect, has undergone two genetic periods—one in the ancient seat between the Urals and the Volga, and another after the settlement on Pannonia, where also large Slavonic elements inserted themselves. It was thus a sheer impossibility to discover in Asia a language similar to ours, although a considerable amount of affinity can be proved, partly in the Ugrian branch (the Ostyak and the Vogul), partly in the Eastern Turkish, unadulterated by Persian and Arab influence.

“This knowledge, however, is the result of recent investigations, and poor Körösi could have had hardly any notion of it. His unbounded love for science and for his nation drove him to the East without a penny in his pocket, and most curious is the account I heard from an old Hungarian, Count Teleky, regarding the outset of Körösi’s travels. The Count was standing before the gate of his house in a village in Transylvania, when he saw Körösi passing by, clad in a thin yellow nankin dress, with a stick in his hand and a small bundle.

“ ‘Where are you going, M. Körösi?’ asked the Count.

“ ‘I am going to Asia in search of our relatives,’ was the answer.

“And thus he really went … undergoing, as may easily be conceived, all the hardships and privations of a traveller destitute of means, living upon alms, and exposed, besides, to the bitter deception of not having found the looked-for relatives. And still he went on in his unflagging zeal, until, assisted by your noble countrymen, he was able to raise himself a memorial by his Tibetan studies.

“I suppose that, when dying in Ladak … he always had his eyes directed to the steppes north of Tibet, to the Tangus country, where, of course, he would have again been disillusioned.

“Körösi was therefore a victim to unripe philological speculation, like many other Hungarian scholars unknown to the world. But his name will be always a glory to our nation, and I am really glad to hear that [some one] … has devoted time to refresh the memory of that great man.—Yours very sincerely,

“A. Vámbéry.

“Budapest, February 20, 1882.”

The Sanskrit works which Mr. Hodgson so generously presented to the Asiatic Society of Paris were soon turned to good account. From them M. Eugène Burnouf drew the materials for his celebrated “Introduction à l’Histoire du Buddhisme Indien.” But of the Tibetan sacred writings, which were also rendered available to European students, no great use has ever been made except by two scholars. Csoma Körösi, as has been already stated, published an “Analysis of the Tibetan Work entitled the Kah-gyur,” and an “Abstract of the Contents of the Bstan-hgyur;” and M. P. E. Foucaux brought out at Paris in 1847 his “Rgya Tch’er Rol Pa, ou Développement des Jeux, contenant l’Histoire du Bouddha Çakya-Mouni, traduit sur la Version Tibétaine du Bhahhgyour, et Revu sur l’Original Sanskrit (Lalitavistâra).” M. Foucaux’s excellent work is too well known to require more than a passing notice here. But as Csoma Körösi’s Analyses are probably less familiar, it may be well to extract from them a short account of the different sections of the colossal Tibetan collection.

1. Dulvá (“Discipline,” Sanskrit Vinaya). This division occupies thirteen volumes, and deals with religious discipline and the education of persons who adopt the religious life. It is subdivided into seven parts as follows:—

1. “The Basis of Discipline or Education.” 4 vols.

2. “A Sútra on Emancipation.” 30 leaves.

3. “Explanation of Education.” 4 vols.

4. “A Sútra on Emancipation for the Priestesses or Nuns.” 36 leaves.

5. “Explanation of the Discipline or Education of the Priestesses or Nuns, in one volume with the preceding tract.”

6. “Miscellaneous Minutiæ concerning Religious Discipline.” 2 vols.

7. The chief text-book (or the last work of the Dulvá class) on education. 2 vols.

2. “Shés-rab-kyi-p’ha-rol-tu-p’hyin-pa (by contraction Shér-p’hyin, pronounced Sher-ch’hin), Sans. Prajná páramitá, Eng. ‘Transcendental wisdom.’ ” This division occupies twenty-one volumes, which all “treat of speculative or theoretical philosophy, i.e., they contain the psychological, logical, and metaphysical terminology of the Buddhists, without entering into the discussion of any particular subject.”

3. “Sangs-rgyas-p’hal-po-ch’hè, or by contraction P’hal-ch’hen, Sans. Buddhāvataṇsaka, … Association of Buddhas, or of those grown wise.” This division contains six volumes, the subject of the whole being “moral doctrine and metaphysics. There are descriptions of several Tathágatas or Buddhas, their provinces, their great qualifications, their former performances for promoting the welfare of all animal beings, their praises, and several legends. Enumeration of several Bodhisatwas, the several degrees of their perfections, their practices or manners of life, their wishes, prayers, and efforts for making happy all animal beings.”

4. “Dkon-mch’hog-brtségs-pa, or by contraction Dkon-brtségs (pronounced kon-tségs). In Sans. Ratna-kúṭa, the ‘Jewel-peak,’ or precious things heaped up, or enumeration of several qualities and perfections of Buddha and his instructions. The subject, as in the former division, still consists of morals and metaphysics, mixed with many legends and collections of the tenets of the Buddhistic doctrine.”

5. “Mdo-sdé (Sans. Sútránta), or simply Mdo (Sans. Sútra), signifying a treatise or aphorism on any subject. In a general sense, when the whole Káh-gyur is divided into two parts, Mdo and Rgyud, all the other divisions except the Rgyud are comprehended in the Mdo class. But in a particular sense there are some treatises which have been arranged or put under this title. They amount to about 270, and are contained in thirty volumes. The subject of the works contained in these thirty volumes is various.… The greatest part of them consist of the moral and metaphysical doctrine of the Buddhistic system, the legendary accounts of several individuals, with allusions to the sixty or sixty-four arts, to medicine, astronomy, and astrology. There are many stories to exemplify the consequences of actions in former transmigrations, descriptions of orthodox and heterodox theories, moral and civil laws, the six kinds of animal beings, the places of their habitations, and the causes of their being born there; cosmogony and cosmography according to the Buddhistic notions, the provinces of several Buddhas, exemplary conduct of life of any Bodhisatwa or saint, etc.” It is the second volume of this section which M. Foucaux has translated.

6. “Mya-n̄an-las-hdas-pa, or by contraction Myang-hdas (Sans. Nirváṇa), two vols. The title of these two volumes is in Sanskrit Mahá parinirváṇa sútra.… A sútra on the entire deliverance from pain. Subject, Shákya’s death under a pair of Sál trees near the city of Kusha or Kámarúpa, in Assam. Great lamentation of all sorts of animal beings on the approaching death of Shákya, their offerings or sacrifices presented to him, his lessons, especially with regard to the soul. His last moments, his funeral, how his relics were divided, and where deposited.”

7. “Rgyud-sdé, or simply Rgyud, Sans. Tantra, or the Tantra class, in twenty-two volumes. These volumes in general contain mystical theology. There are descriptions of several gods and goddesses, instructions for preparing the mandalas or circles for the reception of these divinities, offerings or sacrifices presented to them for obtaining their favour, prayers, hymns, charms, &c., &c., addressed to them. There are also some works on astronomy, astrology, chronology, medicine, and natural philosophy.”

Of the second great division of the Tibetan sacred books Csoma Körösi gives only a brief abstract, “without mentioning the Sanscrit titles of the works” from which its contents have been translated. It will be sufficient to quote the opening lines of his article.

It happened that the chief of a tribe of Tsongols possessed a copy of a part of the Kah-gyur, and this he gave to the appreciative stranger, who rose still higher in the opinion of the natives when they found that he had ordered a silken wrapper to be made for each of the volumes presented to him. He himself was delighted, he says, at becoming “the proprietor of the first Tibetan work of any length which had up to that time passed into the hands of a European.” After all this he was well received wherever he went. A prediction had been made a year before that a foreign convert to Buddhism, destined to spread that religion in the West, was about to visit Mongolia, and this prophecy was interpreted in his favour. The Buriat Lamas even looked upon him as “a Khoubil-ghan, an incarnation of an important personage in the Buddhist Pantheon.” After a time he organised a band of copyists, sometimes twenty in number, who lived in tents in his courtyard, and frequently consumed as much as a hundred pounds of beef in a day, besides much brick tea, a caldron being kept always on the boil for their use. At the end of a year he possessed a collection of Mongol and Tibetan books, containing two thousand works and separate treatises.

Happening to visit the temple of Subulin, he found that the Lamas were manufacturing an enormous prayer wheel. He offered to get the printing of the oft-repeated prayer done for them at St. Petersburg, whereby their machine would be rendered far more efficacious than if they trusted to native typography. They accepted his offer gladly, and to prove their gratitude, presented to him, in the name of the tribe, a complete copy of the Kah-gyur which they possessed, having obtained it from a Mongol Lama. Both parties to this transaction were equally pleased; for when the printed leaves came from St. Petersburg, it was found that each of them contained 2500 repetitions of the sacred formula, and the words were printed in red ink, which is 108 times more efficacious than black; and the paper itself was stamped with the same words instead of bearing the maker’s name. So the Buriates were charmed, and so was the European bibliophile, who had got possession of what he had scarcely hoped ever to obtain, a copy of the Kah-gyur in 101 volumes, printed in the monastery of Nartang in Western Tibet. This copy, after the death of Baron Schilling de Canstadt, was purchased from his heirs by the Emperor Nicholas, and presented to the Academy of Sciences.

Of the Russian scholars who availed themselves of the presence of the two editions of the Kah-gyur at St. Petersburg, the most enthusiastic and industrious was the late Professor Anton von Schiefner. From the Dulvā, the first of the seven divisions of that work, he translated into German the legends and tales, an English version of which is contained in the present volume. His German versions all appeared in the “Mélanges Asiatiques tirés du Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg” (tom. vi.–viii.), with the exceptions of Nos. 2 and 5, which were published in the “Mémoires” of that Society (series vii., tom. xix., No. 6). Professor Schiefner, if he had lived another year, would have doubtless supplied a number of additional notes, and would have written an Introduction to the work. His lamented death on November 16, 1880, has deprived the present volume of what would probably have been one of its most interesting parts. It was at Professor Schiefner’s express wish that the present translation was undertaken. It must be a subject of universal regret that he did not live to witness its appearance in print. The following tribute to his merits as a scholar was contributed, soon after his death, by Professor Albrecht Weber to “Trübner’s Record.”

The edition of the Kah-gyur on which Professor Schiefner worked appears (says M. Vasilief, the author of the “History of Buddhism”) to have been that in 108 volumes, printed at Pekin during the eighteenth century, and presented to the Asiatic Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences by the Asiatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had received it, about the year 1850, from the Russian Mission in China.

A curious parallel to one of the incidents in King Māndhātar’s story is afforded by a Polynesian myth. On the crown of King Utposhadha’s head, according to the Tibetan tale, “there grew a very soft tumour, somewhat resembling a cushion of cotton or wool, without doing him any harm. When it had become quite ripe and had broken, there came forth from it a boy, shapely and handsome.” Mr. Gill tells us in his interesting “Myths and Songs from the South Pacific” (p. 10), that Tangaroa and Rongo were the children of Vātea, the father of gods and men, and his wife Papa. “Tangaroa should have been born first, but gave precedence to his brother Rongo. A few days after the birth of Rongo, his mother Papa suffered from a very large boil on her arm. She resolved to get rid of it by pressing it. The core accordingly flew out; it was Tangaroa! Another account, equally veracious, says that Tangaroa came right up through Papa’s head. The precise spot is indicated by ‘the crown’ with which all their descendants have since been born.” Professor Schiefner mentions that a suggestion has been made to the effect that “the name of Utposhadha may be a transformation of the Greek Hephæstus, though the part which the latter plays in the Greek myth at the birth of Athene is of a different nature.” But this seems to be going unnecessarily far.

The story of Kuśa, No. 2, may be linked with the numerous European variants of the tale which we know so well under the title of “Beauty and the Beast.” The principal feature of that tale is the union of a beautiful maiden with a monster of some kind, whose monstrosity is eventually cured by her love and devotion. The Beast with whom the Beauty is linked is generally a supernatural monster, and possesses the power of at times divesting itself of its monstrous or bestial envelope or husk, and appearing in its real form as a fairy prince or other brilliant being. It is, as a general rule, only at night in the dark that this transformation takes place. In some cases, as in the Cupid and Psyche story, the wife is forbidden to look upon her husband. He visits her only in utter darkness. But in many versions of the story she is allowed to see her pseudo-monster in all his brilliant beauty. He is often a deity, whom some superior divinity has degraded from the sky and compelled to live upon earth under a monstrous shape. One day the wife lays her hands on her husband’s monstrous envelope or husk and destroys it. The spell being thus broken, the husband either flies away to heaven or remains living on earth in uninterrupted beauty.

As a specimen of an European variant of the tale may be taken the Russian story of “The Water-King” (“Russian Folk-Tales,” No. 19). In it a prince steals the dress of one of the water-king’s twelve daughters while they are bathing. Her sisters become spoonbills and fly away, but she remains in his power till he restores her dress. Then she also flies away in spoonbill form. When he arrives after a time at her father’s palace, she aids him to accomplish the tasks which are set him. At last the water-king says, “Choose yourself a bride from among my twelve daughters. They are all exactly alike in face, in hair, and in dress. If you can pick out the same one three times running, she shall be your wife; if you fail to do so, I shall have you put to death.” The maiden whose dress he had stolen and restored enables him to succeed in this task also. The recognition of Sudhana by his wife, brought about by means of a ring, is an incident of which frequent use is made in folk-tales. When a demon’s daughter, or a princess who has been enslaved by a demon, has enabled a hero to escape along with her from that demon’s power, she often warns him that he will forget her if he, on his return home, kisses his mother (as in “Two Kings’ Children,” Grimm, No. 113), or does something else which he has been forbidden to do. He always neglects the warning and forgets his wife. But eventually she manages to remind him of her existence, usually by means of a ring. In the similar story of “The Mastermaid” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 11), the recognition is due to a golden apple and two golden fowls which the hero and heroine had carried off from a giant’s palace. In “The Battle of the Birds” (Campbell’s “West Highland Tales,” No. 2), the prince forgets the giant’s daughter after being kissed by “an old greyhound,” but remembers her when he hears a conversation between a golden pigeon and a silver pigeon which spring out of a glass offered to his forgotten love. Similar parallels to this story will be found in most of the large collections of European folk-tales.

Of special interest, as dealing with this kind of worship, is the opening of the Buddhistic legend of Mahākāśyapa and Bhadrā (No. 9). Tree-worship existed long before Buddhism was heard of, and it has succeeded in maintaining its existence in many lands up to the present day. There is no lack of stories relating to it; but it is not often that we obtain so clear an insight into the ideas of tree-worshippers, or are favoured with so detailed an account of the rites which they were wont to celebrate, as are afforded by the description of the childless Brahman’s appeal to the Nyagrodha tree (p. 187). It serves to illustrate the confusion existing in the minds of tree-worshippers between the material tree and its spiritual tenant. The Brahman Nyagrodha, the tree’s namesake, first caused the ground in its neighbourhood to be “sprinkled, cleansed, and adorned.” Then he set up flags and banners, and provided a profusion of perfumes, flowers, and incense. Finally, “he prayed to the tree-haunting deity,” promising to pay that divine being due honour if a son should be born to him, but threatening, in case he should remain childless, to cut down the tree and split it into chips, destined to be consumed with fire. In another passage of the Kah-gyur (vol. vi., p. 280) Professor Schiefner remarks in a note appended to this passage, “Bhagavant gives directions that, in case it is absolutely necessary to fell a tree, the work-masters of the Bhikshus shall draw a circle around it seven or eight days before felling it, offer up perfumes, flowers, and oblations, recite tantras and utter spells, proclaim abhorrence of the path of the ten vices, and moreover say, ‘Let the deity who inhabits this tree find another dwelling. With this tree shall a religious or ecclesiastical work be accomplished.’ Seven or eight days after this the tree may be felled. But if any change be perceptible, it must not be felled. If none is perceptible, then it may be cut down.”

The greater part of No. 9, the account of the ascetic life led by Bhadrā and her husband, belongs to a different world from that of folk-lore, but in the “Acta Sanctorum,” and in some popular legends derived from that source, parallels may be found equally conducive to edification.

The story (No. 13) of the actor who dramatises the life of Buddha, and is punished for his audacity in making fun of the Six Bhikshus, soars high above the region of folk-lore. And there is but little in European popular fiction which can be likened to the legend of “The Dumb Cripple” (No. 14), who pretended to be unable to speak or walk, in order that he might not be made a king, reflecting that, “if he were to be invested with sovereign power, this would not be a good thing, seeing that in consequence of a sixty years’ reign which he had accomplished in a previous state of existence, he had been born again in hell, and that he now ran the risk of going to hell a second time.” The same remark holds good of the not very edifying history of Ṛshyaśringa or Gazelle Horn (No. 15), the ascetic who, out of spite, prevents rain from falling until his asceticism and his magic power collapse together.

The story of a charitable monarch, whose uprightness and generosity are put to a severe test by a deity, occurs as a folk-tale in Miss Maive Stokes’s “Indian Fairy Tales” (No. 13). It properly belongs to literature, in which it has assumed various forms, one of which has been made known to English readers by the late Sir Mutu Coomāra Swāmy in his “Arichandra, or the Martyr of Truth; a Drama translated from the Tamil.” The story as told by an Indian ayah takes this form. There was a king named Harchand, who “used to pray a great deal to God, and God was very fond of him,” but thought fit to test his goodness. So one day, when he had promised an ascetic “two pounds and a half of gold,” all his wealth was turned into charcoal. In order to keep his word, Harchand was obliged to sell his wife and child for a pound and a half of gold, and then he sold himself for the other pound. Having become the property of “a Dom, that is, a man of a very low caste, who kept a tank into which it was his business to throw the bodies of those who died,” he was charged with the care of the tank, and ordered to take a rupee in payment for each adult corpse, eight annas for a dead child, or a piece of cloth, in case the bearers of the body had no money. One day his wife arrived, bearing the corpse of his son, who had died. She had no money, but she said to herself, “I know that man is my husband, so he will not take any money for throwing his child into the water.” But he was so honest, in the interests of his master, that he insisted upon a fee, which had to be paid at the expense of his wife’s single covering. Eventually all went well, the dead boy was restored to life, and when the reunited royal family returned home, “the garden was in splendid beauty; the charcoal was turned back into gold, and silver, and jewels; the servants were in waiting as usual, and they went into the palace and lived happily for evermore.”

The principal theme of “The Fulfilled Prophecy” (No. 17) is one that often occurs in popular tales, many of which are devoted to proving how impossible it is for a man, whatever crimes he may commit, to escape from his destiny. The “Two Brothers” (No. 18) is one of the great cycle of moral tales in which goodness is contrasted with badness, to the temporary advantage but eventual discomfiture of the latter. The blinding of the good brother by the bad is an incident suggestive of the opening of the well-known folk-tales of “True and Untrue” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 1), the “Two Wanderers” (Grimm, No. 107), and a great number of similar stories, to many of which references are given in vol. iii. p. 189, of Grimm’s collection.

Of the rest of the stories, the greater part belong to the class of animal fables. Many of them are old acquaintances under a new guise. “The Ungrateful Lion” (No. 27), for instance, which tells how a woodpecker extracted a bone from a lion’s throat, and was supposed by the lion to be sufficiently paid for his trouble by its escape from his jaws, closely resembles the fable of the wolf which paid in similar coin its long-billed benefactor. “The Wolf and the Sheep” (No. 29) is the familiar fable of “The Wolf and the Lamb,” but the final argument of the wolf is different. The story of the ass which insists upon singing at the wrong time, and so is caught trespassing, and is punished (No. 32), has made its mark in European literature. The jackal which acts as arbiter between the two otters (No. 34), and takes as its share the main part of the fish they catch, leaving only the head and tail for them, closely resembles the well-known legal eater of the disputed oyster and presenter of the oyster-shells to the two claimants who had referred their dispute to his decision. The moral of the tale in which the lion is saved by the jackal (No. 35) is the same as that of the fable of the netted lion which the mouse rescued by gnawing its bonds. The blue-stained jackal (No. 36) is one of the disguised animals about which many fables are current in the West, such as the ass in the lion’s hide, or the cat which fell into a shoemaker’s tub, and afterwards played the part of a nun. And the monkeys which see the reflection of the moon in a well, and think that it has fallen out of the sky into the water, and form themselves into a chain whereby to draw it out (No. 45), are closely related to the foolish persons of the Wise Men of Gotham class, to whom various similar follies are attributed in many lands.