This is the 218th Játaka. A gámavásí deposits ploughshares with a nagaravásí who sells them and buys músikavaccam. “Phálá te músike hi kháditá ti músikavaccam dassesi.” The rest much as in our tale. A kulalo is said to have carried off the son. (Fausböll, Vol. II, p 181.) If Plutarch is to be believed, the improbability of the merchant’s son’s story is not so very striking, for he tells us, in his life of Marcellus, that rats and mice gnawed the gold in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.
[26] The argument reminds one of that in “Die kluge Bauerntochter,” (Grimm’s Märchen, 94). The king adjudges a foal to the proprietor of some oxen, because it was found with his beasts. The real owner fishes in the road with a net. The king demands an explanation. He says, “It is just as easy for me to catch fish on dry land, as for two oxen to produce a foal.” See also Das Märchen vom sprechenden Bauche, Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, pp. 83, 84.
Chapter LXI.
Then the minister Gomukha again said to Naraváhanadatta, in order to solace him while pining for Śaktiyaśas; “Prince, you have heard a tale of a wise person, now hear a tale about a fool.”
Story of the foolish merchant who made aloes-wood into charcoal.[1]
A certain rich merchant had a blockhead of a son. He, once on a time, went to the island of Kaṭáha to trade, and among his wares there was a great quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. And after he had sold the rest of his wares, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands, for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of commerce. Then, seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, the fool burnt his stock of aloes-wood and reduced it to charcoal. Then he sold it for the price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his cleverness, and became a laughing-stock to everybody.
“I have told you of the man who burnt aloes-wood, now hear the tale of the cultivator of sesame.”