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clinging to his tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool; " Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity; how large were those sweet-meats which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and exclaimed in answer, " So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the bull. And accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were killed, and the bull returned to Kailása; but the people, who saw it, were much amused.*[1]
" Fools do themselves an injury by asking questions and giving answers without reflection. You have heard about the fools who flew through the air; hear about this other fool."
Story of the fool who asked his way to the village.:— A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when he asked his way, the people said to him; " Take the path that goes up by the tree on the bank of the river."
Then the fool went and got on the trunk of that tree, and said to himself, " The men told me that my way lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to avoid falling by clinging to it.
While he was clinging to it, there came that way an elephant, that had been drinking water, with his driver on his back. When the fool, who was clinging to the tree, saw him, he said with humble voice to that elephant-driver, " Great Sir, take me down." And the elephant-driver let go the elephant-hook, and laid hold of the man by the feet with both his hands, to take him down from the tree. In the meanwhile the elephant went on, and the elephant-driver found himself clinging to the feet of that fool, who was clinging to the end of the tree. Then the fool said urgently to the elephant-driver, " Sing something quickly, if you know anything, in order that the people may hear, and come here at once to take us down. Otherwise we shall fall, and the river will carry us away." When the elephant-driver had been thus appealed to by him, he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased. And in his desire to applaud him properly, he forgot what he was about, and let go his hold of the tree, and prepared to clap him with both his hands. Immediately he and the elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned, for association with fools brings prosperity to no man.
- ↑ * This resembles the conclusion of the story of the turtle Kambugriva and the swans Vikata and Sankata, Book X, chap. 60, śl. 169, see also Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales, p. 292. A similar story is told in Bartsch's Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 349, of the people of Teterow. They adopted the same smanœuvre to get a stone out of a well. The man at the top then let go, in order to pit on his hands.
