Note 1 — IV. THE CLEVER THIEF.1

Kah-gyur, iv. 132–135. One of the oldest of popular tales is the story told by Herodotus (bk. ii. chap. 121) of the treasury of Rhampsinitus, which its builder’s two sons are in the habit of robbing, until one of the thieves is caught in the snares set for their feet, whereupon the other, to prevent a discovery, cuts off his brother’s head and runs away. The king gives orders to expose the corpse, and to keep watch so as to see whether any one weeps and wails over it. The surviving son, forced by his mother’s threats to look after his brother’s burial, comes to the spot provided with skins of wine, makes the watchmen drunk, shaves off the right side of their beards, and carries away the dead body. Thereupon the king’s daughter is obliged to yield herself to every one who will relate to her the cleverest and most scandalous trick he has ever played in his life. The doer of the deed comes and betrays himself. But when the princess tries to seize him, he leaves in her hold, not his own hand, but that of the dead man. At last the king promises his daughter’s hand to the doer of this deed, so the thief reveals himself and receives the princess. As a like legend is connected with the treasury of Hyrieus in Orchomenus, where Trophonius cut off the head of his brother Agamedes (Pausan. ix. 37), and as according to Charax (Schol. ad Aristoph. Nubes, v. 508) the same story is told also of the treasury of Augeias at Elis, we can easily understand why some commentators, like C. O. Müller, wish to claim the legend for the Greeks, while Buttmann (Mythol. ii. 228) wishes to trace it to the East. See Liebrecht in his edition of Dunlop’s “History of Fiction,” p. 264, and Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen iii. 260.—S. ↑