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he went in his agitation and brought all the ornaments from his house, and showed them to the merchants. When they saw them, they said that all of them were composed of sham jewels in the same way; but the chaplain, when he heard that, was, so to speak, thunderstruck. And immediately the fool went off and said to Śiva, " Take back your ornaments and give me back my own wealth." But Śiva answered him, " How can I possibly have retained your wealth till now? Why it has all in course of time been consumed in my house." Then the chaplain and Śiva fell into an altercation, and went, both of them, before the king, at whose side Mádhava was standing. And the chaplain made this representation to the king: " Śiva has consumed all my substance, taking advantage of my not knowing that a great treasure, which he deposited in my house,*[1] was composed of skilfully coloured pieces of glass and quartz fastened together with brass." Then Śiva said, " King, from my childhood I have been a hermit, and I was persuaded by that man's earnest petition to accept a donation, and when I took it, though inexperienced in the ways of the world, I said to him. ' I am no connoisseur in jewels and things of that kind, and I rely upon you,' and he consented saying, ' I will be your warrant in the matter.' And I accepted all the donation and deposited it in his hand. Then he bought the whole from me at his own price, and we hold from one another mutual receipts; and now it is in the king's power to grant me help in my sorest need." Śiva having thus finished his speech, Mádhava said, " Do not his, you are honourable, but what fault have I committed in the matter? I never received anything either from you or from Śiva; I had some wealth inherited from my father, which I had long deposited elsewhere; then I brought that wealth and presented it to a Bráhman. If the gold is not real gold, and the jewels are not real jewels, then let us suppose that I have reaped fruit from giving away brass, quartz, and glass. But the fact that I was persuaded with sincere heart that I was giving something, is clear from this, that I recovered from a very dangerous illness." When Mádhava said this to him without any alteration in the expression of his face,the king laughed and all his ministers, and they were highly delighted And those present in court said, laughing in their sleeves, " Neither, Mádhava nor Śiva has done anything unfair." Thereupon that chaplain departed with downcast countenance, having lost his wealth. For of what calamities is not the blinding of the mind with excessive greed the cause? And so those two rogues Śiva and Mádhava long remained there, happy in having obtained the favour of the delighted king.
"Thus do rogues spread the webs of their tongue with hundreds of intricate threads, like fishermen upon dry land, living by the net. So you may be certain, my father, that this Bráhman is a case in point. By falsely
- ↑ * Perhaps we ought to read dattvá for tatra.
