and its being secretly
stolen by one of them. The device of the carpenter in
the foregoing tale of abducting the rascally goldsmith's
two sons, and so on, finds an analogue in the
_Panchatantra_, the celebrated Sanskrit collection of
fables (Book I, Fab. 21, of Benfey's German
translation), where we read that a young man, who had
spent the wealth left to him by his father, had only a
heavy iron balance remaining of all his possessions, and
depositing it with a merchant went to another country.
When he returned, after some time, he went to the
merchant and demanded back his balance. The merchant
told him it had been eaten by rats; adding: "The iron of
which it was composed was particularly sweet, and so the
rats ate it." The young man, knowing that the merchant
spoke falsely, formed a plan for the recovery of his
balance. One day he took the merchant's young son,
unknown to his father, to bathe, and left him in the
care of a friend. When the merchant missed his son he
accused the young man of having stolen him, and summoned
him to appear in the king's judgment-hall. In answer to
the merchant's accusation, the young man asserted that a
kite had carried away the boy; and when the officers of
the court declared this to be impossible, he said: "In a
country where an iron balance was eaten by rats, a kite
might well carry off an elephant, much more a boy." The
merchant, having lost his cause, returned the balance to
the young man and received back his boy.

The Sixth Tale of the Parrot, according to the India Office MS., relates
to

_The Woman Carved out of Wood._

Four men--a goldsmith, a carpenter, a tailor, and a dervish--travelling
together, one night halted in a desert place, and it was agreed they
should watch turn about until daybreak. The carpenter takes the first
watch, and to amuse himself he carves the figure of a woman out of a log
of wood. When it came to the goldsmith's turn to watch, finding the
beautiful female figure, he resolved also to exhibit his art, and
accordingly made a set of ornaments of gold and silver, which he placed
on the neck, arms, and ankles. During the third watch the tailor made a
suit of clothes becoming a bride, and put them on the figure. Lastly,
the dervish, when it