Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/232

 2 2 2 ^Prentice Pillars :

to be cast headlong from the battlements, either on account of his boast that he could have constructed a yet more wonderful edifice ' which should turn round with the Sun,' or for fear that he might reveal the position of a certain stone, the removal of which would cause the whole building to collapse." ^ According to another Arabian story, quoted by Mr. W. A. Clouston,^ 'Antar, the Bedouin poet-hero, acquired the sword Dham, forged out of a thunderbolt which had killed one of the Chief's camels. When the smith delivered the sword to his patron he said, " This sword is sharp, O Chief of the tribe of Ghaylib — sharp indeed, but where is the smiter for this sword .'' " Quoth the Chief, " As for the smiter, I am he," and he instantly struck off the smith's head, so that there should never be another sword Dham.

Tales of this kind are very common in India : in most of them the successful artist is mutilated or tortured. In one case, that of Tirumala Naik of Madura (a.d. 1623-59), the king is said to have immured in a dungeon and starved to death the builders of his famous palace, so that another building like it should never be erected. He had a bas- relief of the artists made and fixed on the palace walls. Another tale of the same kind is current in Baroda. When the Diamond Gate at Dabhoi was built it was named after the architect who designed it. The Raja was jealous lest the architect might go elsewhere and design a building as good or better. So on the completion of the gate he caused the architect to be buried under the adjoining Kalika Mata temple. His wife, however, managed to keep him alive by passing to him milk and other liquid food through the interstices of the stones. Six years

' K. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907, p. 40. Another version of the story from the Heft Alenzer, or " Seven Faces," of the Persian Abdallah Hatifi, who died A.D. 1520, is quoted by Mr. W. A. Clouston, 7, Notes and Queries, iv. (18S7), p. 141.

"^"J, Notes and Queries, iv. p. 141.