Page:The Dravidian Nights Entertainments.djvu/48

 defeating him, drove him outside the town with his wife and children. The king was much vexed at the calamity that came over him, and cursing his own evil-star, went to another town and was earning his livelihood by begging there in the streets till his elder son was seven years of age and his younger five. Thinking that it was a sin to ruin the boys without giving them their education, he took them to a distant village, where an old learned Brâhman was keeping a school. He gave the sons over to the charge of that village schoolmaster, and addressed him as follows :–

“These two are my sons ; I am extremely poor and so quite unable to pay anything for their education. But if you would kindly educate them, I mean rewarding your pains by presenting you with one of these boys." The schoolmaster agreed to the conditions, and so the king and his queen, after leaving their children there, went away to some other town to pass their days like the lowest of men in begging.

The Brahman teacher appointed the eldest son to the domestic task of grazing the cows and buffalos, and educated with all possible means the second son, who daly learnt the four Vedas, six Sastras, sixty-four varieties of philosophy, the Codes of Manu, and even the objectionable science of jugglery, the magic art of infusing ones own soul into different bodies and other tricks in which his master the old Brahman was a great