Story of the foolish boy that went to the village for nothing.
There was a certain foolish son of a Bráhman, and his father said to him one evening, “My son, you must go to the village early to-morrow.” Having heard this, he set out in the morning, without asking his father what he was to do, and went to the village without any object, and came back in the evening fatigued. He said to his father, “I have been to the village.” “Yes, but you have not done any good by it,” answered his father.
“So a fool, who acts without an object, becomes the laughing-stock of people generally; he suffers fatigue, but does not do any good.” When the son of the king of Vatsa had heard from Gomukha, his chief minister, this series of tales, rich in instruction, and had declared that he was longing to obtain Śaktiyaśas, and had perceived that the night was far spent, he closed his eyes in sleep, and reposed surrounded by his ministers.
[1] For the superstition of water-spirits see Tylor’s Primitive Culture, p. 191, and ff.
[2] Does this throw any light upon the expression in Swift’s Polite Conversation, “She is as like her husband as if she were spit out of his mouth.” (Liebrecht, Volkskunde, p. 495.)
[3] The fact of this incident being found in the Arabian Nights is mentioned by Wilson (Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 146.) See Lane’s Arabian Nights, Vol. I, p. 9. Lévêque (Les Mythes et les Légendes de l’ Inde et de la Perse, p. 543) shews that Ariosto borrowed from the Arabian Nights.
[4] I follow the Sanskrit College MS. which reads rakshatyubhayalokataḥ.
[5] This is the beginning of the fourth book of the Panchatantra. Benfey does not seem to have been aware that it was to be found in Somadeva’s work. It is also found, with the substitution of a boar for the porpoise, in the Sindibad-namah and thence found its way into the Seven Wise Masters, and other European collections. (Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 420.) See also Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, pp. 122, 123. For the version of the Seven Wise Masters see Simrock’s Deutsche Volksbücher, Vol. XII, p. 139. It is also found in the Mahávastu Avadána, p. 138 of the Buddhist Literature of Nepal by Dr. Rajendra Lál Mitra, Rai Bahadúr. (I have been favoured with a sight of this work, while it is passing through the press.) The wife of the kumbhíla in the Varanindajátaka (57 in Fausböll’s edition) has a longing for a monkey’s heart. The original is, no doubt, the Sum̱sumára Játaka in Fausböll, Vol. II, p. 158. See also Mélusine, p. 179, where the story is quoted from Thorburn’s Bannu or our Afghan Frontier.
[6] The Sanskrit College MS. reads cákshipan where Brockhaus reads ca kshipan.
[7] In Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, No. 5, the Lamnissa pretends that she is ill and can only be cured by eating a gold fish into which a bone of her rival had been turned. Perhaps we ought to read sádyá for sádhyá in śl. 108.
[8] For stories of external hearts see Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, pp. 109–115, and the notes to Miss Stokes’s XIth Tale.
[9] Benfey does not seem to have been aware of the existence of this story in Somadeva’s work. It is found in the Sanskrit texts of the Panchatantra (being the 2nd of the fourth book in Benfey’s translation) in the Arabic version, (Knatchbull, 264, Wolff I, 242,) Symeon Seth, 75, John of Capua, k., 2, b., German translation (Ulm 1483) Q., VII, Spanish translation, XLIV, a, Doni, 61, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 393, Cabinet des Fées, XVIII, 26; Baldo fab. XIII, in Edéléstand du Méril, p. 333; Benfey considers it to be founded on Babrius, 95. There the fox only eats the heart. Indeed there is no point in the remark that if he had ears he would not have come again. The animal is a stag in Babrius. It is deceived by an appeal to its ambition. In the Gesta Romanorum the animal is a boar, which returns to the garden of Trajan, after losing successively its two ears and tail. (Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 430 and ff.) See also Weber’s article in Indische Studien, Vol. III, p. 338. He considers that the fable came to India from Greece. Cp. also De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. I, p. 377. An ass is deceived in the same way in Prym und Socin, Syrische Märchen, p. 279. In Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 92, one of the boys proposes to say that the Glücksvogel had no heart. Rutherford in the Introduction to his edition of Babrius, p. xxvii, considers that the fable is alluded to by Solon in the following words:
ὑμέως δ’ εἷς μὲν ἕκαστος ἀλώπεκος ἴχνεσι βαίνει
σύμπασιν δ’ ὑμῖν χοῦρος ἔνεστι νόος·
ἐς γὰρ γλῶσσαν ὁρᾶτε καὶ εἰς ἔπος αἰόλον ἀνδρός,
εἰς ἔργον δ’ οὐδὲν γιγνόμενον βλέπετε.
But all turns upon the interpretation of the first line, which Schneidewin renders “Singuli sapitis, cuncti desipitis.”
[10] I have followed the Sanskrit College MS. in reading nirbádhasukham̱.
[11] For parallels to this story compare Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 33, where he treats of the Avadánas, and the Japanese story in the Nachträge. In this a gentleman who had much enjoyed the smell of fried eels, pays for them by exhibiting his money to the owner of the cook-shop. See also p 112 of the same work. M. Lévêque shews that Rabelais’ story of Le Facquin et le Rostisseur exactly resembles this as told in the Avadánas. He thinks that La Fontaine in his fable of L’Huître et les Plaideurs is indebted to the story as told in Rabelais: (Les Mythes et les Légendes de l’Inde, pp. 547, 548.) A similar idea is found in the Hermotimus of Lucian, chapters 80 and 81. A philosopher is indignant with his pupil on account of his fees being eleven days in arrear. The uncle of the young man, who is standing by, being a rude and uncultured person, says to the philosopher—“My good man, pray let us hear no more complaints about the great injustice with which you conceive yourself to have been treated, for all it amounts to is, that we have bought words from you, and have up to the present time paid you in the same coin.” See also Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, p. 370 (note). Gosson in his School of Abuse, Arber’s Reprint, pp. 68–69, tells the story of Dionysius.
[12] There is a certain resemblance between this story and a joke in Philogelos, p. 16. (Ed. Eberhard, Berlin, 1869.) Scholasticus tells his boots not to creak, or he will break their legs.
[13] This corresponds to the 14th story in the 5th book of the Panchatantra, Benfey, Vol. II, p. 360. At any rate the leading idea is the same. See Benfey, Vol. I, p. 537. It has a certain resemblance to the fable of Menenius. There is a snake in Bengal with a knob at the end of his tail. Probably this gave rise to the legend of the double-headed serpent. Sir Thomas Browne devotes to the Amphisbæna Chapter XV of the third book of his Vulgar Errors, and craves leave to “doubt of this double-headed serpent,” until he has “the advantage to behold, or iterated ocular testimony.” See also Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 120, where he treats of the Avadánas. The story is identical with that in our text. M. Lévêque shews that this story, as found in the Avadánas, forms the basis of one of La Fontaine’s fables, VII, 17. La Fontaine took it from Plutarch’s life of Agis.
[14] This story is No. LIX in Sir G. Cornewall Lewis’s edition of the Fables of Babrius, Part II. The only difference is that the tail, when in difficulties, entreats the head to deliver it.
[15] I read hanum, the conjecture of Dr. Kern.
[16] This story appears to have been known to Lucian. In his Demonax (28) he compares two unskilful disputants to a couple, one of whom is milking a goat, the other holding a sieve. So Aristophanes speaks of ὄνου πόκαι and ὀρνίθων γάλα. It must be admitted that some critics doubt Lucian’s authorship of the Demonax. Professor Aufrecht in his Beiträge zur Kenntniss Indischer Dichter quotes a Strophe of Amarasinha in which the following line occurs,
Dugdhá seyam achetanena jaratí dugdháśayát súkarí. Professor Aufrecht proposes to read gardabhí for súkarí.