Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/263

 choice, as in the Tamul version. [In the Hindi version she dies of snake-bite.] She is brought buck to life by a good beating. Tho first suitor opens the grave, the second advises the use of the cudgel, the third carries it out. This method of restoring people, who die suddenly, to life by a good beating, is found in a Persian story, professing to be derived from a book "Post nubila Phœbus," in which the physician bears the name of Kati, and asserts that he learnt the method from an old Arab. The story is found in Epistolæ Turcicæ et Narrationes Persiæ editæ et Latine conversæ a Job. Ury. Oxonii, 1771, 4°, pp. 26 and 27. This collection, which contains not the least hint of its origin, is particularly interesting as it contains the VIIIth story of the Siddhikür; " The Painter and the Wood-carver." [See Sagas from tho Far East, p. 97.] The Episode of the stealing of tho magic book is found, quite separated from the context, in many MS. versions of tho Gesta Romanorum: see Appendix to Oosterley's edition. (Oesterley's Baitál Pachísí, pp. 183-185.)

Then the heroic king Trivikramasena again went to the aśoka-tree, to fetch the Vetála. And he found him there in the corpse, and again took him up on his shoulder, and began to return with him in silence. And as he was going along, the Vetála, who was on his back, said to him, " It is wonderful, king, that you are not cowed with this going backwards and forwards at night. So I will tell you another story to solace you, listen."

Story of the king, and the two wise birds.:— There is on the earth a famous city named Páțaliputra. In it there lived of old time a king named Vikramakeśarin, whom Providence made a storehouse of virtues as well as of jewels. And he possessed a parrot of godlike intellect, knowing all the śástras, that had been born in that condition owing to a curse, and its name was Vidagdhachúdámani. And the prince married as a wife, by the advice of the parrot, a princess of equal birth, of the royal family of Magadha, named Chandraprabhá. That princess also possessed a similar hen-maina, of the name of Somiká, remarkable for knowledge and discernment. And the two, the parrot and the maina, remained there in the same cage, assisting with their discernment their master and mistress.

One day the parrot became enamoured of the maina, and said to her, " Marry me, fair one, as we sleep, perch, and feed in the same cage." But the maina answered him, " I do not desire intimate union with a male, for