BOOK I.
have learnt from their father the secret of entering the treasure-house is caught in a trap, placed there by the king when he found his gold and jewels dwindling away. At his own request the elder brother cuts off his head, and the king, astounded at finding a headless body, bids his guards to impale it on a wall, with strict charge to bring before him any one whom they might hear mourning for the dead man. The mother, seeing her son's body thus exposed, threatens to tell the king everything unless the body is brought safely home to her. Loading some asses with skins full of wine, the elder son, as he approaches the guard, loosens the string of two or three wineskins, and the soldiers, rushing up at the sight of wine trickling on the ground, try to soothe the seemingly distracted owner, while they solace themselves by the liquor which they catch in their cups, until at length, overcoming the young man's reluctance, they sit down with him, and drink themselves to sleep. The dead body is then taken away by the brother, who, hearing of the new device by which the king proposed to catch him, crowns his exploits by cheating the king's daughter, and leaving a dead man's hand in hers. His marriage with the princess follows, and he is held in honour as the cleverest man of the cleverest people in the world.[1]
The story of Karpara and Gata.The Hindu version of the story of Rhampsinitos is in every way inferior to the well-pointed legend of Herodotos. It is related by Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmir in his "Ocean of the Streams of Narrative," a professed abridgement of the still older collection called the Vrihat Kathâ. In this tale the elder of the two thieves simply makes a hole through the wall (which would at once betray their mode of entrance) in order to reach the chamber in which the king has placed not only his treasures but his daughter. He remains with her too long, and being caught in the morning, is hanged, but not before he has by signs bidden his brother Gata to carry oif and save the princess. Gata therefore on the next night enters the chamber of the princess, who readily agrees to fly with him. The body of Karpara is then exposed, in order to catch the surviving malefactor, who tricks them much after the fashion of the Egyptian story, the chief difference being that Gata burns the body of his- ↑ Herodotos, ii. 121, &c.; Tales of Ancient Greece, 385.
plexed than Rhampsinitos when they find that the body has been removed, and that thus someone else is possessed of their secret. The spell which opens the cave connects the Arabian story with the vast mass of legends turning on substances which have the power of splitting rocks, and which Mr. Gould has resolved into phrases descriptive of the action of lightning—Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, second series, "Schamir."
The story of Rhampsinitos becomes in the Seven Wise Masters the tale of the "Man who threw his father's head in a muck-heap."
