Page:Tales of the Sun.djvu/320

 Brahman.” When Harisvamin had said this to the good woman, who was beside herself to think what it could all mean, his eyes closed and he died.

Then the Brahman who was engaged in a sacrifice drove his wife out of the house, though she was innocent and hospitable, being enraged with her for the supposed murder of her guest. The good woman, for her part, having incurred groundless blame from her charitable deed, and so become burdened with infamy, went to a holy bathing-place, to perform penance. Then there was a discussion before the superintendent of religion as to which of the four parties, the kite, the snake, and the couple who gave rice, was guilty of the murder of a Brahman; but the question was not decided.

It will be seen that our story differs very considerably from the foregoing, which we must regard as the original. The same story occurs in all the Eastern versions of the Book of Sindibad, but in most of these it is not a traveller who is thus poisoned, but a wealthy man and his guests; having sent a domestic to the market to buy sour curds, which she carried back in an open vessel, poison from a serpent in a stork’s mouth dropped into the curds, of which the master of the house and his guests partook and died. The story is probably more than 2,000 years old.

“Eating up the Protector.”—Akin to this, but with a very different conclusion, is the well-known story of the traveller who released a tiger from a trap into which he had fallen. The Brahman’s fidelity to his pact with the serpent reminds one of the Arabian story of the Merchant and the Genie. In a Tamil tale, a cow having given herself up to a tiger to redeem her owner (it is to be understood, of course, that both animals are human beings re-born in those forms) she obtains leave to go and suckle her calf, after which she returns when the tiger, moved by her fidelity, lets her go free.

The serpent’s emitting gems recalls Shakespeare’s allusion to the popular notion of the “toad, ugly and venomous, which bears a precious jewel in its head.” It is a very ancient and widespread belief that serpents are the guardians of hidden treasure. Preller, in his work on Grecian mythology,