Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/213

 PUNDITS AND MUNSIS 189 also in Sanserit, the most well-known among which is the ‘Suka-saptati’ or ‘Seventy Stories of a Parrot '. We give here a description of the work under review and it is interesting to compare it Description of the with the Sanserit version. A_ wife, work. whose husband is travelling abroad, and who is inclined to run after other men, turns to her husband’s clever talking parrot for advice. The bird while seeming to approve of her wicked plans, warns her of the risks she runs, and makes her promise not to go and meet any paramour unless she can extricate herself from difficulties as so-and-so did. Requested to tell the story, he does no; but in the meantime the story is spun out to such a length that when it is concluded, morning dawns and her plans are postponed till next night. Thus the bird sueceeds in keeping his mistress in the path of rectitude not by pointed injunctions, but by a device similar to that which Shehrazade in the Arabian Nights employs to hinder the Sultan from sacrificing a fresh victim on every sueceeding day. Several days pass in this way, till the husband returns to find the honour of his home inviolate. This is the frame-work which contains the thirty-four stories, some of which are very amusing indeed, although many of them are somewhat coarse. It is written in simple narrative prose, eminently suited to the purpose of the book, and, although eried down for its slight inevitable admixture of Persian especially at the beginning, the language is in no way inferior to that of J//ifopades or Oriental Fabulist and certainly marks great advance in simplicity and natural- ness upon Pralapaditya-charitra or Lipimala. Its literary translated the Bhagabadgita from Sanscrit into Bengali; this work, if published at all, I have not been able to trace.
 * Macdonell, Hist. of Sans, Lit, p. 375,