Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/129

Rh ever, as to terminology. Captain Temple, in his admirable appendix to Wide-Awake Stories, has suggested a term that will be found useful. I mean Life-index. But he has unfortunately confounded under this name two distinct matters. He makes it include not only Prince Bahman's knife and Prince Perviz' chaplet of pearls (which it properly describes), but also Punchkin's parrot, which was much more than an index to his life; for it was the talisman on the preservation of which his life depended, the casket wherein it was enshrined. A separate phrase must be found for this. Life-casket is not free from objection, but perhaps it may stand in the absence of a better.

FOLK-TALES OF INDIA.

(Continued from page 79.)

.

The Flight of the Beasts.

IN former days, when Brahmadatta reigned at Benares, the Bodhisat was reborn among the lion-kind. He grew up and lived in the forest. At that time, in an island in the Western Ocean, there was a palm-forest containing bilva and other trees. In that forest there dwelt a certain hare that sat under a cocoanut sapling at the root of an over-hanging bilva-tree.

One day on his return, after seeking for food, as he was sitting under the shade afforded by the foliage of the small palm-tree, the hare thought to himself, "If this earth were to come to an end where should I be, I wonder?"