ANCIENT HUMOR
After careful consideration of all available facts and theories of the earliest mental processes of our race, we must come to the conclusion that mirth had its origin in sorrow; that laughter was the direct product of tears.
Nor are they even yet completely dissevered. Who has not laughed till he cried? Who has not cried herself into hysterical laughter? All theories of humor include an element of unhappiness; all joy has its hint of pain.
And so, when our archæologists hold the mirror up to prehistoric nature, we see among the earliest reflected pictures, a procession or group of evolving humanity about to sacrifice human victims to their monstrous superstitions and, withal, showing a certain festival cheerfulness. Moreover, we note that they are fantastically dressed, and wear horns and painted masks. Surely, the first glimmerings of a horrid mirth are indubitably the adjunct of such celebrations.
Since we have reason to believe that man mimicked before he could talk,—and, observing a baby, we have no difficulty in believing this,—we readily believe that his earliest mimicries aroused a feeling of amusement in his auditors, and as their applause stimulated him to fresh effort, the ball was set rolling and the fun began.
From mimicry was born exaggeration and the horns and painted masks were grotesque and mirth-provoking.
Yet were they also used to inculcate fear, and moreover had significance as expressions of sorrow and woe.
Thus the emotions, at first, were rather inextricably intermingled, nor are they yet entirely untangled and straightened out.
Not to inquire too closely into the vague stories of these prehistoric men, not to differentiate too exactly between Cro-Magnards and Grimaldis, we at least know a few things about the late Palæolithic people, and one indicative fact is that they had a leaning toward paint.
They buried their dead after painting the body, and they also painted the weapons and ornaments that were interred with him.
It is owing to this addiction to paint that scientists have been enabled to learn so much of primordial life, for the pigments of black, brown, red, yellow and white still endure in the caves of France and Spain.
And, since it is known that they painted their own faces and bodies we can scarce help deducing that they presented grotesque appearances and moved their fellows to laughter.
But any earnest thinker or student is very likely to get out of his subject what he brings to it, at least, in kind. And so, archæologists and antiquarians, being of grave and serious nature, have found no fun or humor in these early peoples,—perhaps, because they brought none to their search.
It remains, therefore, for us to sift their findings, and see, if by a good chance we may discover some traces of mirth among the evidential remains of prehistoric man.
It would not be, of course, creative or even intentional humor, but since we know he was a clever mimic, we must assume the appreciation of his mimicry by his fellows.
Moreover, he was deeply impressed by his dreams, and it must have been that some of those dreams were of a humorous nature.
We are told his mentality was similar to that of a bright little contemporary boy of five. This theory would give him the power of laughter at simple things and it seems only fair to assume that he possessed it.
In the beginnings of humanity there was very close connection between man and the animals. Not only did man kill and eat the other animals, but he cultivated and bred them, he watched them and studied their habits.
It is, therefore, not surprising that man’s earliest efforts at drawing should represent animals.
The earliest known drawings, those of the Palæolithic men show the bison, horse, ibex, cave bear and reindeer. The drawing at first was primitive, but later it became astonishingly clever and life-like.
Also, among these primitive peoples, there was some attempt at sculpture, in the way of little stone or ivory statuettes. These incline to caricature, and are probably the first dawning of that tendency of the human brain.
Yet the accounts of these earliest men show little that can be definitely styled humorous, and while we cannot doubt they possessed a sense of mirth, they have left us scant traces of it, or else the solemn archæologists have overlooked such.
The latter may be the case, for a scholar with a sense of humor, Thomas Wright, declares as follows:
“A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are found even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with their fellow men. When, before people cultivated either literature or art, the chieftain sat in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors, they amused themselves by turning their enemies and opponents into mockery, by laughing at their weaknesses, joking on their defects, whether physical or mental, and giving them nicknames in accordance therewith,—in fact, caricaturing them in words, or by telling stories which were calculated to excite laughter. When the agricultural slaves (for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were indulged with a day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained mirth. And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were such as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured his enemy in his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give a more permanent form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by rude delineations on the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface which presented itself to his hand. Thus originated caricature and the grotesque in art. In fact, art itself, in its earliest forms, is caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of features which belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could make themselves understood.”
An early development of humor was seen in the recognition of the fool or buffoon.
It is not impossible that this arose because of the discovery or invention of intoxicating drinks.
This important date is set, not very definitely, somewhere between 10,000 B.C. and 2,000 B.C. Its noticeable results were merriment and feast-making. At these feasts the fool, who was not yet a wit, won the laughter of the guests by his idiocy, or, often by his deformity. The wise fool is a later development.
But at these feasts also appeared the bards or rhapsodists, who entertained the company by chanting or reciting stories and jokes.
These are called the artists of the ear as the rock painters are called the artists of the eye. And with them language grew in beauty and power. They were living books, the only books then extant. For writing came slowly and was a clumsy affair at best for a long period. The Bards sang and recited and so kept alive folk-tales and jests that remain to this day.
Writing, like most of the inventions of man served every other purpose before that of humor.
At first it was only for accounts and matters of fact. In Egypt it was used for medical recipes and magic formulas. Accounts, letters, name lists and itineraries followed; but for the preservation of humorous thought writing was not used. That was left to the bards, and of course, to the caricaturists.
Therefore, Egyptian art usually presents itself in solemn and dignified effects with no lightness or gayety implied.
Yet we are told by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the early Egyptian artists cannot always conceal their natural tendency to the humorous, which creeps out in a variety of little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave historical pictures on one of the great monuments at Thebes, we find a representation of a wine party, where the company consists of both sexes, and which evidently shows that the ladies were not restricted in the use of the juice of the grape in their entertainments; and, as he adds, “the painters, in illustrating this fact, have sometimes sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature.” Among the females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, “some call the servants to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves from falling on those behind them, and the faded flower, which is ready to drop from their heated hands, is intended to be characteristic of their own sensations.” Sir Gardner observes that “many instances of a talent for caricature, are observable in the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the paintings of the tombs at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of the Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted always to secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the most sacred mysteries of their religion.”
A class of caricatures which dates from a very remote period, shows comparisons between men and the particular animals whose qualities they possess.
As brave as a lion, as faithful as a dog, as sly as a fox or as swinish as a pig,—these things are all represented in these ancient caricatures.
More than a thousand years B.C. there was drawn on an Egyptian papyrus a cat carrying a shepherd’s crook and driving a flock of geese. This is but one section of a long picture, in which the animals are often shown treating their human tyrants in the manner they are usually treated by them.
All sorts of animals are shown, in odd contortions and grotesque attitudes, and not infrequently the scene or episode depicted refers to the state or condition of the human soul after death.
It is deduced that from these animal pictures arose the class of stories called fables, in which animals are endued with human attributes.
And also connected with them is the belief in metempsychosis or the transmission of the human soul into the body of an animal after death, which is a strong factor in the primitive religions.
Indeed, the intermingling of humans and animals is inherent in all art and literature, as, instance the calling of Our Lord a Lamb, or the Holy Ghost, a Dove.
Or, as to this day we call our children lambs or kittens, or, slangily, kids. As we still call a man an ass or a puppy; or a woman, a cat.
An argument for evolution can perhaps be seen in the inevitable turning back to the animals for a description or representation of human types.
At any rate, early man used this sort of humor almost exclusively, and so combined it with his serious thought, even his religions, that it was a permanently interwoven thread.
And the exaggeration of this mimicry of animals resulted in the grotesque and from that to the monstrous, as the mind grew with what it fed on, and caricature developed and progressed.
Also, a subtler demonstration of dawning wit and humor is seen in the deliberate and intentional burlesque of one picture by another.
In the British Museum is an Egyptian papyrus showing a lion and a unicorn playing chess, which is a caricature of a picture frequently seen on ancient monuments. And in the Egyptian collection of the New York Historical Society there is a slab of limestone, dating back three thousand years, which depicts a lion, seated upon a throne as king. To him, a fox, caricaturing a High Priest, offers a goose and a fan. This, too, is a burlesque of a serious picture.
Again, a lion is engaged in laying out the dead body of another animal, and a hippopotamus is washing his hands in a water jar.
One of these burlesque pictures shows a soul doomed to return to its earthly home in the form of a pig. This picture, of such antiquity that it deeply impressed the Greeks and Romans, is part of the decoration of a king’s tomb.
The ancient Egyptians, it may be gathered from their humorous pictures, were not averse to looking on the wine when it was red. Several delineations of Egyptian servants carrying home their masters after a carouse, are graphic and convincing; while others, equally so, show the convivial ones dancing, standing on their heads or belligerently wrestling.
The tombs of the ancient Egyptians abound in these representations of over-merry occasions, and it all goes to prove the close connection in the primitive mind of the emotions of grief and mirth.
Yet, The Book of the Dead that monument of Egyptian literature, and the oldest in the world, contains only records of conquests and a few stories and moral sayings,—not a trace of humor. That, in ancient Egypt is represented solely by the ready and deft pencil of the caricaturist.
Though humor came to them later, the earliest records of the Eastern and Oriental countries show little or no traces of the comic.
Indeed eminent authorities state that there is not a single element of the amusing in the art or literature of the Babylonians or Assyrians. It may be that the eminent authorities hadn’t a nose for nonsense, or the statement may be true. We never shall know.
But both these peoples had great skill in drawing and sculpture, and though their records are chiefly historical or religious, we cannot help feeling there may have been some jesting at somebody’s expense.
However, there are no existing records of any sort, and we fear the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians must go down in history as serious-minded folk.
The Hebrews show up much better.
In recent years Renan and Carlyle both declared the Jewish race possessed no sense of humor, but their opinions probably reflected their own viewpoint.
For the early examples of Hebrew Satire and Parody are distinctly humorous both in intent and in effect.
Parody is, of course, the direct outcome of the primeval passion for mimicry. The first laugh-provoker was no doubt an exaggerated imitation of some defect or peculiarity of another. And the development of the art of amusement took centuries to get past that preliminary thought.
The tendency to imitation was the impetus that turned the religious hymns into ribaldry and wine-songs, and the religious or funeral festivals into orgies of grotesque masquerading.
And Hebrew literature is renowned for its parodies of serious matters both of church and state.
With this race, satire sprang from parody and grew and thrived rapidly.
To quote from the learned Professor Chotzner:
“Since the birth of Hebrew literature, many centuries ago, satire has been one of its many characteristics. It is directed against the foibles and follies of the miser, the hypocrite, the profligate, the snob. The dull sermonizer, who puts his congregation to sleep, fares badly, and even the pretty wickednesses of the fair sex do not escape the hawk-eye of the Hebrew satirist. The luxury and extravagance of the ‘Daughters of Zion’ were attacked by no less a person than Isaiah himself; but human nature, especially that of a feminine kind, was too strong even for so eminent a prophet as he was, and there is no reason to suppose that the lady of those days wore one trinket the less in deference to his invective.
“There are, in fact, several incidents mentioned here and there in the pages of the Bible, which are decidedly of a satirical nature. Most prominent among them are the two that refer respectively to Bileam, who was sermonized by his ass, and to Haman who, as the Prime Minister of Persia, had to do homage publicly to Mordecai, the very man whom he greatly hated and despised. Nay, we are told, that, by the irony of fate, Haman himself ended his life on the exceptionally huge gallows which, while in a humorous turn of mind, he had ordered to be erected for the purpose of having executed thereon the object of his intense hatred.
“And again, there are two excellent satires to be found respectively in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, and in the 18th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings. In the first, one of the mighty Babylonian potentates is held up to derision, on account of the ignominious defeat he had sustained in his own dominions, after he had been for a long time a great terror to contemporary nations, living in various parts of the ancient world. Even the trees of the forests are represented there as having mocked at his fall, saying: ‘Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.’ In the second satire, the false prophets of Baal are ridiculed by Elijah for having maimed their bodies, in order to do thereby honour to a deity which is sometimes sarcastically referred to in the Bible as being ‘the god of flies.’
“Delightfully satirical are also the two fables quoted in the Bible in connection with Jotham and Nathan, the Prophet. These are commonly well-known, and no extracts from them need be given here.
“The satirical turn of mind manifested by Hebrew writers living in Biblical times, has been transmitted by them as a legacy to their descendants, who flourished in subsequent ages down to the present day. The first among them was Ben Sira who, in 180 B.C., wrote a book, some of the contents of which are satirical, for there the vanity of contemporary women, and the arrogance of some of the rich in the community are ridiculed with mild sarcasm.
“But much more keen was the sense of the satirical that was possessed by some of the ancient Rabbis, who were among those that brought into existence the vast and interesting Talmudical literature. One of their satires, called ‘Tithes,’ runs as follows:—
“In Palestine there once lived a widow with her two daughters, whose only worldly possessions consisted of a little field. When she began to plough it, a Jewish official quoted to her the words of the lawgiver Moses: ‘Thou shalt not plough with ox and ass together.’ When she began to sow, she was admonished in the words of the same lawgiver not to sow the fields with two kinds of seed. When she began to reap and pile up the stacks, she was told that she must leave ‘gleanings,’ the poor man’s sheaf, and the ‘corner.’
“When the harvest time came, she was informed that it was her duty to give the priest’s share, consisting of the first and second ‘tithes.’ She quietly submitted, and gave what was demanded of her. Then she sold the field, and bought two young ewes, in order that she might use their wool, and profit by their offspring. But, as soon as the ewes gave birth to their young, a priest came, and quoted to her the words of Moses: ‘Give me the first-born, for so the Lord hath ordained.’ Again she submitted, and gave him the young.
“When the time of shearing came, the priest again made his appearance, and said to her that, according to the Law, she was obliged to give him ‘the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maw.’
“In a moment of despair, the widow said: ‘Let all the animals be consecrated to the Lord!’ ‘In that case,’ answered the priest, ‘they belong altogether to me; for the Lord hath said: “Everything consecrated in Israel shall be thine.”’ So, he took the sheep, and went his way, leaving the widow and her two daughters in great distress, and bathed in tears!”
A WIFE’S RUSE
(A Rabbinical Tale)
“There is a Rabbinical law which makes it obligatory upon every Jewish husband to divorce his wife, if after ten years of married life she shall remain childless. Now, there once lived in an Oriental town a man and his wife who were greatly attached to each other, but who had, unfortunately, no children, though they had been married for a considerable time.
“When the end of the tenth year of their marriage was approaching, they both went to the Rabbi, and asked him for his advice. The Rabbi listened with great sympathy, but declared his inability to alter or modify the law in their favour. The only suggestion, he said, that he could make, was, that on the last night before their final separation, they should celebrate a little feast together, and that the wife should take some keepsake from her husband which would be a permanent token of her husband’s unchangeable affection for her.
“Thus, on the last night, the wife prepared a sumptuous meal for the two of them, and, amidst much merriment and laughter, she filled and refilled her husband’s goblet with sparkling wine. Under its influence, he fell into a heavy sleep, and while in this condition, he was carried by his wife’s orders to her father’s abode, where he continued to sleep till the following morning. When he awoke, and was wondering at his strange surroundings, his cunning wife came smilingly into the room, and said: ‘Of, my dear husband, I have actually carried out the Rabbi’s suggestion, inasmuch as I have taken away from home a most precious keepsake. This is your own dear self, without whom it would be impossible for me to live.’
“The husband, moved to tears, embraced her most affectionately, and promised that they should live together to the end. Thereupon they joyfully returned home, and, going again to the Rabbi, they told him what had happened, and asked him for his forgiveness and blessing, which he readily accorded them. And, indeed, the Rabbi’s blessing had an excellent result. For after the lapse of some time, they both enjoyed the happiness of fondling a bright little child of their own.”
Arabian and Turkish thought and speech seem to be tinged with the sense of the bizarre and strange rather than the grotesque. Their earliest folk tales and pleasant stories, from which later grew the Arabian Nights, form a cumulative, though broken chain from ancient to modern times.
Persian humor leans toward the romantic and sentimental, but no ancient fragments are available. From the later writers, as Omar and Sadi, we feel convinced there was an early literature but we can find none to quote.
India shows the oldest and most definite signs of early folk lore and retold tales.
Buddha’s Jatakas produced the stories that later proved the germs of merry tales by Boccaccio and Chaucer. That these later writers put in all the fun is not entirely probable.
Some antiquarians claim to find humor in the hymns of the Rig Vedas, whose date is indefinitely put at between 2,000 and 1,500 B.C. while others of different temperament deny it.
From this example the reader may judge for himself.
THE HYMN OF THE FROGS
“When the first shower of the rainy season
Has fallen on them, parched with thirst and longing,
In glee each wet and dripping frog jumps upward;
The green one and the speckled join their voices.
“They shout aloud like Brahmans drunk with soma,
When they perform their annual devotions:
Like priests at service sweating o’er the kettle,
They issue forth; not one remains in hiding.
“The frogs that bleat like goats, that low like cattle,
The green one and the speckled give us riches;
Whole herds of cows may they bestow upon us,
And grant us length of days through sacrificing.”
The Jatakas of Buddha, though religious writings, and teachings by parables, are not without humor. The one about the silly son who killed the mosquito on his father’s bald head with a heavy blow of an ax, has its funny side. Or the old monarch who had reigned 252,000 years and still had 84,000 years more ahead of him, and went into solitary retirement because he discovered a gray hair in his head. Another shrewd fellow made an enormous fortune out of the sale of a dead mouse.
Of course, the animals figure largely. There is the tale of the monkeys who watered a garden and then pulled up the plants to see if their roots were wet, and the angry crows who tried to drink up the sea.
Riddles, too, must be remembered.
Though not many specimens have been preserved, yet we remember Samson’s riddle, so disastrous to the Philistines.
“Out of the eater came forth meat; and out of the strong came forth sweetness.”
And when his susceptibility to cajolery led him to tell his wife the answer, and she tattled, his comment was the pithy; “If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.”
The Sphinx’s riddle is well known. “What animal goes on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at night?”
The answer being: Man, who goes on all-fours in infancy, walks upright in middle life, and adds a staff in old age.
An ancient riddle is ascribed to the problematical personality of Homer, though it was doubtless originated before his time,—if he had a time.
Homer, the tale goes, met some boys coming home from a fishing trip. On his asking them of their luck, they replied, “What we caught we threw away; what we didn’t catch, we have.”
It seems they referred to fleas, not fish, and his inability to guess this so enraged Homer, that he killed himself.
And here is a free translation of an ancient Arabian riddle.
“The loftiest cedars I can eat,
Yet neither paunch nor mouth have I.
I storm whene’er you give me meat,
Whene’er you give me drink, I die.”
The answer is Fire, and as may be seen, the type of riddle is precisely such as are found in the puzzle columns of today’s papers.
Riddles are frequently mentioned in Ancient Literature,— every country or race indulging in them. Josephus tells us that Solomon and Hiram of Tyre were in the habit of exchanging riddles.
So we find that a love of fun or playfulness was inherent in our early ancestors, yet it did not reach a height to be called genuine creative humor.
But there is always the feeling that if more of the translators themselves possessed more humor, they might find more in the originals.
As a rule, translators and antiquarian researchers are so engaged in serious seeking that they would probably pass over humor if they ran across it.
When a man is prospecting for iron or coal, he may easily be blind to indications of wells of natural oil.
More wit and humor of Ancient India has come down to us through the caricatures and grotesque drawings than in words.
The innumerable pictures of the God Krishna are the most humorous of these.
Krishna appears to have been a veritable Don Juan, and his multitude of lady friends numbered up to many thousands.
It is narrated that a friend of his, who had no wife, begged for just one from Krishna’s multiplicity.
“Court any one you wish,” said the light-hearted god, pleasantly.
So the friend went from house to house of Krishna’s various wives, but one and all, they declared themselves quite satisfied with husband, Krishna, and moreover each one was convinced that he was hers alone. The seeker visited sixteen thousand and eight houses, and then gave it up.
The endless pictures of Krishna represent him surrounded by lovely ladies, and a curious detail of these drawings is that in many instances the group of girls is wreathed and twisted into the shape or semblance of a bird or a horse or an elephant, presenting an interesting and not unpleasing effect.
Now, all we have given so far, seems indeed a meager grist for the first division of our Outline. But one may not find what does not exist.
There is no doubt that humor was known and loved from the dawning of independent thought, but as it was not recorded, save for a few drawings, on the enduring rocks, it died with its originators.
Humor was the last need of a self-providing race, and even when found it was a luxury rather than a necessity.
As a fair example of the earliest tales that have lived in various forms ever since their first recital, is appended the bit of ancient Hindoo folk-lore, called
THE GOOD WIFE AND THE BAD HUSBAND
In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity for getting something from this simple woman during her husband’s absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him at once and inquired whence he came. “I am come from Kailása,” said he; “having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of their son and his wife.” “Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva’s mountain?” she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband’s deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from the neighbours. “Do you really come from them?” said the simple woman. “Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress themselves withal?” These and a hundred other questions she put to the rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible, knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return while he was there. So he replied, “Mother, language has no words to describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see them.” The rogue’s pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly believed that he had come down from Kailása, a messenger from the old couple to herself! “Why should they so suffer,” said she, “when their son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?” So saying, she went into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all her own and her husband’s clothes, which she handed to the rogue, desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kailása. She also gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. “But dress and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs,” said the rogue. “Very true; I had forgot: wait a moment,” said the simple woman, going into the house once more. Presently returning with her husband’s cash chest, she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue’s skirt, who now took his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple in Kailása; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone indoors.
Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife’s pleasure at what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kailása, how his parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger from Kailása had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a pipal tree. The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the rogue to come down. “No, I cannot,” said he; “this is the way to Kailása,” and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring tree, and began to climb up the pipal himself. When the rogue observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser’s horse and with his bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the pipal tree slowly, cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a joyous countenance, and cried, “I thought as much: you have sent away your horse to Kailása, to be used by your old father.” Vexed at his wife’s words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his own folly.