Note.
Rohde in his Griechische Novellistik, p. 62, compares with this a story told by Timæus of a Sybarite, who saw a husbandman hoeing a field, and contracted a rupture from it. Another Sybarite, to whom he told his piteous tale, got ear-ache from hearing it. Oesterley in his German translation of the Baitál Pachísí, p. 199, refers us to Lancereau, No. 5, pp. 396–399, and Babington’s Vetála Cadai, No. 11, p. 58. He points out that Grimm, in his Kindermärchen, 3, p. 238, quotes a similar incident from the travels of the three sons of Giaffar. Out of four princesses, one faints because a rose-twig is thrown into her face among some roses, a second shuts her eyes in order not to see the statue of a man, a third says “Go away, the hairs in your fur-cloak run into me,” and the fourth covers her face, fearing that some of the fish in a tank may belong to the male sex. He also quotes a striking parallel from the Élite des contes du Sieur d’Ouville. Four ladies dispute as to which of them is the most delicate. One has been lame for three months owing to a rose-leaf having fallen on her foot, another has had three ribs broken by a sheet in her bed having been crumpled, a third has held her head on one side for six weeks owing to one half of her head having three or four more hairs on it than the other, a fourth has broken a blood-vessel by a slight movement, and the rupture cannot be healed without breaking the whole limb.
Chapter LXXXVI.
(Vetála 12)
Then king Trivikramasena again went to the aśoka-tree, and recovered the Vetála, and placed him on his shoulder, and set out with him again silently, as before. Then the Vetála again said to him from his seat on his shoulder; “King, I love you much because you are so indomitable, so listen, I will tell you this delightful story to amuse you.”