Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/129

 which is an animal with four feet and a tail." When the foolish fellows heard this, they let the boy go and said, " So let us go and search again for a cat such as has been now described to us." And the people laughed at those fools.

" Ignorance makes every one ridiculous. You have heard of the fools and their cat, now hear the story of another set of fools."

Story of the fools and the bull of Śiva.:— There was in a certain convent,full of fools, a man who was the greatest fool of the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which was being read out, that a man, who has a tank made, gains a great reward in the next world. Then, as ho had a large fortune, he had made a large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part of that tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, " I will watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed this resolution, be came there early next morning, and watched, until at last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its horns. He thought, " This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to heaven with it?" And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up with the utmost force the foolish man, who was clinging to its tail, and carried him in a moment to its home in Kailása. There the foolish man lived for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties, sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny, thought, " I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned to the surface of the earth.

When he returned to the convent, the other blockheads, who were there, embraced him, and asked him where he had been, and he told them. Then all those foolish men, having.heard the tale of his adventures, made this petition to him; " Be kind and take us also there, enable us also to feast on sweetmeats," He consented, and told them his plan for doing it, and the next day he led them to the border of the tank and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of the bull with his two bauds, and another took hold of his feet, and a third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by clinging on to one another's feet, the bull Hew rapidly up into the air. And while the bull was going along, with all the fools