[11] I. e., like an arrow in speed.
[12] For this part of the story see Sicilianische Märchen, No 14, with Dr. Köhler’s note.
[13] In Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII, 855, the dominus asks Mestra, who has been transformed into a fisherman, if she has seen herself pass that way.
[14] Compare the story of “die kluge Else,” the 34th in Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, where the heroine has a doubt about her own identity and goes home to ask her husband, and No. 59 in the same collection. Cp. also Campbell’s Tales from the West Highlands, Vol. II, p. 375, where one man is persuaded that he is dead, another that he is not himself, another that he is dressed when he is naked. See also the numerous parallels given in Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 54., Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 128) mentions a story in which a woman persuades her husband, that he is dead. See also Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen, und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 508. In Prym and Socin’s Syrische Märchen, No. LXII, page 250, the flea believes himself to be dead, and tells every one so.
[15] Cp. Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, Vol. II, p. 167, where Ake makes his wife Wolfriana intoxicated with the object of discovering her secret.
[16] Reading avadishyáma. I find that this is the reading of a MS. in the Sanskrit College.
Chapter XL.
Then, the next morning, when Naraváhanadatta was in Ratnaprabhá’s house, Gomukha and the others came to him. But Marubhúti, being a little sluggish with intoxication produced by drinking spirits, approached slowly, decorated with flowers, and anointed with unguents. Then Gomukha, with face amused at his novel conception of statesman-like behaviour, out of fun ridiculed him by imitating his stammering utterance and staggering gait, and said to him, “How comes it that you, though the son of Yaugandharáyaṇa, do not know policy, that you drink spirits in the morning, and come drunk into the presence of the prince?” When the intoxicated Marubhúti heard this, he said to him in his anger, “This should be said to me by the prince or some superior. But, tell me, who are you that you take upon you to instruct me, you son of Ityaka?” When he said this, Gomukha replied to him smiling, “Do princes reprove with their own mouths an ill-behaved servant? Undoubtedly their attendants must remind him of what is proper. And it is true that I am the son of Ityaka, but you are an ox of ministers,[1] your sluggishness alone would show it; the only fault is that you have no horns.” When Gomukha said this to him Marubhúti answered, “You too, Gomukha, have much of the ox-nature about you; but you are clearly of mixed breed, for you are not properly domesticated.” When all laughed at hearing this, Gomukha said, “This Marubhúti is literally a jewel, for who can introduce the thread of virtue[2] into that which cannot be pierced even by a thousand efforts? But a jewel of a man is a different kind of thing, for that is easily penetrated; as an illustration listen to the story of the bridge of sand.”