tion, 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 _Tantrakhyana_, 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 Nakhshabi's version in _Tuti
Nama_, 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 Kadiri'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 kazi, but he still persists in denying that he had ever
received any money from the complainant. The kazi was, however,
conv