Note.
This story is the same as the 19th of Campbell’s West Highland Tales, The Inheritance, Vol. II, pp. 16–18. Dr. Köhler, (Orient und Occident, Vol. II, p. 317), compares the Story in the 1,001 Nights of Sultan Akschid and his three sons. He tells us that it is also found in the Turkish Tales, called The Forty Vazírs, in the Turkish Tútínámah, and in Johann Andreæ’s Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz. The form of it best known to the general reader is probably the 5th story in the Xth day of Boccacio’s Decameron. The tale is no doubt originally Buddhistic, and the king’s cynical remarks a later addition. Dunlop considers that Boccacio’s story gave rise to Chaucer’s Frankeleyne’s Tale, the 12th Canto of the Orlando Inamorato, and Beaumont and Fletcher’s Triumph of Honour.
[1] The word vajra also means thunderbolt.
Chapter LXXXV.
(Vetála 11.)
Then king Trivikramasena again went and took that Vetála from the aśoka-tree and put him on his shoulder, and set out with him; and as he was going along, the Vetála on his shoulder said to him; “Listen, king; I will tell you an interesting story.”