“Melodious bulbul of the long-eared race,” continued the elk, “as the wood-cutter’s dancing was an unpardonable folly which met with the chastisement it deserved, so I fearfully anticipate that your unseasonable singing will become your exemplary punishment.”
His ass-ship listened thus far with reluctance to the admonition of his friend, without intending to profit by it; but arose from the carpet of spinach, eyed his companion with a mortifying glance of contempt, pricked up his long snaky ears, and began to put himself into a musical posture. The nimble, small-hoofed elk, perceiving this, said to himself: “Since he has stretched out his neck and prepared his pitch-pipe, he will not remain long without singing.” So he left the vegetable banquet, leaped over the garden wall, and fled to a place of security. The ass was no sooner alone than he commenced a most loud and horrible braying, which instantly awoke the gardeners, who, with the noose of an insidious halter, to the trunk of a tree fast bound the affrighted musician, where they belaboured him with their cudgels till they broke every bone in his body, and converted his skin to a book, in which, in letters of gold, a múnshí [learned man] of luminous pen, with the choicest flowers of the garden of rhetoric, and for the benefit of the numerous fraternity of asses, inscribed this instructive history.
Magical articles such as the wonderful wishing-bowl of our unlucky friend the Faggot-maker figure very frequently in the folk-tales of almost every country, assuming many different forms: a table-cloth, a pair of saddle-bags, a purse, a flask, etc.; but since a comprehensive account of those highly-gifted objects—alas, that they should no longer exist!—is furnished in the early chapters of my Popular Tales and Fictions, I presume I need not go over the same wide field again.—In the Kathá Sarit Ságara (Ocean of the Streams of Story), a very large collection of tales and apologues, composed, in Sanskrit, by Somadeva, in the 12th century, after a much older work, the Vrihat Kathá (or Great Story), the tale of the Faggot-maker occurs as a separate recital. It is there an inexhaustible pitcher which he receives from four yakshas—supernatural beings, who correspond to some extent with the perís of Muslim mythology—and he is duly warned that should it be broken it departs at once. For a time he concealed the secret from his relations until one day, when he was intoxicated, they asked him how it came about that he had given up carrying burdens, and had abundance of all kinds of dainties, eatable and drinkable. “He was too much puffed up with pride to tell them plainly, but, taking the wish-granting pitcher on his shoulder, he began to dance; and, as he was dancing, the inexhaustible pitcher slipped from his shoulder, as his feet tripped with over-abundance of intoxication, and, falling on the ground, was broken in pieces. And immediately it was mended again, and reverted to its original possessor; but Subadatta was reduced to his former condition, and filled with despondency.” In a note to this story, Mr. Tawney remarks that in Bartsch’s Meklenburg Tales a man possesses himself of an inexhaustible beer-can, but as soon as he tells how he got it the beer disappears.—The story of the Foolish Thieves noisily carousing in the house they had just plundered occurs also in Saádí’s Gulistán and several other Eastern story-books.
In Kádíri’s abridgment of the Parrot-Book, the Elk is taken prisoner as well as his companion the Ass, and the two subordinate stories, of the Foolish Thieves and of the Faggot-maker, are omitted. They are also omitted in the version of the Singing Ass found in the Panchatantra (B. v, F. 7), where a jackal, not an elk, is the companion of the ass, and when he perceives the latter about to “sing” he says: “Let me get to the door of the garden, where I may see the gardener as he approaches, and then sing away as long as you please.” The gardener beats the ass till he is weary, and then fastens a clog to the animal’s leg and ties him to a post. After great exertion, the ass contrives to get free from the post and hobbles away with the clog still on his leg. The jackal meets his old comrade and exclaims: “Bravo, uncle! You would sing your song, though I did all I could to dissuade you, and now see what a fine ornament you have received as recompense for your performance.” This form of the story reappears in the Tantrákhyána, a collection of tales, in Sanskrit, discovered by Prof. Cecil Bendall in 1884, of which he has given an interesting account in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xx, pp. 465-501, including the original text of a number of the stories.—In Ralston’s Tibetan Tales, translated from Schiefner’s German rendering of stories from the Kah-gyur (No. xxxii), the story is also found, with a bull in place of a jackal. An ass meets the bull one evening and proposes they should go together and feast themselves to their hearts’ content in the king’s bean-field, to which the bull replies: “O nephew, as you are wont to let your voice resound, we should run great risk.” Said the ass: “O uncle, let us go; I will not raise my voice.” Having entered the bean-field together, the ass uttered no sound until he had eaten his fill. Then quoth he: “Uncle, shall I not sing a little?” The bull responded: “Wait an instant until I have gone away, and then do just as you please.” So the bull runs away, and the ass lifts up his melodious voice, upon which the king’s servants came and seized him, cut off his long ears, fastened a pestle on his neck, and drove him out of the field.—There can be no question, I think, as to the superiority, in point of humour, of Nakhshabí’s version in Tútí Náma, as given above.
IV
THE COVETOUS GOLDSMITH—THE KING WHO DIED OF LOVE—THE DISCOVERY OF MUSIC—THE SEVEN REQUISITES OF A PERFECT WOMAN.
To quit, for the present at least, the regions of fable and magic, and return to tales of common life: the 30th recital in Kádíri’s abridged text is of
The Goldsmith who lost his Life through his Covetousness.
A soldier finds a purse of gold on the highway, and entrusts it to the keeping of a goldsmith (how frequently do goldsmiths figure in these stories—and never to the credit of the craft!), but when he comes to demand it back the other denies all knowledge of it. The soldier cites him before the kází, but he still persists in denying that he had ever received any money from the complainant. The kází was, however, convinced of the truth of the soldier’s story, so he goes to the house of the goldsmith, and privately causes two of his own attendants to be locked up in a large chest that was in one of the rooms. He then confines the goldsmith and his wife in the same room. During the night the concealed men hear the goldsmith inform his wife where he had hidden the soldier’s money; and next morning, when the kází comes again and is told by his men what they had heard the goldsmith say to his wife about the money, he causes search to be made, and, finding it, hangs the goldsmith on the spot.