642 BLOOMFIELD— CHARACTER AND [April i8, 



provisions. Muladeva asked: "Reverend Sir, have you far to go?" 

 He replied : " There is beyond the forest a place called Viranihana ; 

 there is where I am going. And where may you be bound for?" 

 Muladeva said that he was going to Bennayada, and the Doctor then 

 proposed that they should travel together. The two of them started, 

 and, as they marched along, they saw at noon-time a clear pool. The 

 Dhakka proposed that they should rest a while, whereupon they went 

 to the water and washed their hands and feet. Muladeva sat down in 



Cukasaptati 7. The words most frequently imply stinginess. Mahratti 

 thaka, according to Yule, " Dictionary of Anglo-Indian Terms," is the name 

 in that language of the notorious guild of the Thugs (see under that word), 

 and it seems to me likely that we have in all these words the precursors 

 in Hindu hterature of the Thugs, or Phansigars, even though stinginess and 

 roguery, rather than murderousness, are their characteristics in the literary 

 documents referred to. According to Hornle, Uvasagadasao," Appendix ii, 

 note 8, Pali cora-ghataka, German " Raubmorder," is the equivalent of modern 

 thag. I add here the curiously parallel Takka-anecdote from Kathasaritsagara 

 65. 140 fif. : " There lived somewhere a rich but foolish Takka who was a 

 miser. He and his wife were always eating barley-grits without salt, and he 

 never learned the taste of any other food. Once the Creator moved him to 

 say to his wife: 'I have conceived a desire for a milk-pudding; cook me one 

 today.' His wife agreed, and proceeded to cook the pudding, while the Takka 

 remained indoors, concealed in bed, for fear some one should see him, and 

 drop in on him as a guest. In the meantime a friend of his, a Takka who was 

 fond of mischief, came there, and asked his wife where her husband was. 

 And he, lying on the bed, said to her : ' Sit down here, and remain weeping 

 and clinging to my feet, and say to my friend : " My husband is dead." When 

 he is gone we will comfortably consume this pudding.' After he had told her 

 this she began to cry, and the friend came in and asked her what was the 

 matter. She said to him : ' Look my husband is dead.' But he reflected : ' I 

 saw her a moment ago happy enough, cooking a pudding; how comes it that 

 her husband is now dead, tho he has had no illness? No doubt the two have 

 arranged this trick, because they saw that I had come as a guest. So I will 

 not go.' Thereupon the mischievous fellow sat down and began crying out, 

 ' Alas, my friend I Alas, my friend !' Then his relations came in and pre- 

 pared to take that silly Takka to the burning-place, for he still continued to 

 counterfeit death. But his wife came to him and whispered in his ear : ' Jump 

 up, before these relation take you off to the pyre and burn you.' The foolish 

 man answered his wife in a whisper : * No ! that will never do, for this cunning 

 Takka wishes to cat my pudding." The story goes on to tell that the stingy 

 Takka actually allowed himself to be burned, sacrificing his life in order 

 to save his pudding. The story does not, as far as I can see, occur in the 

 two sister-texts of the Kathasaritsagara, namely, Brhatkathamanjarl and 

 Brhatkathaglokasarhgraha. 



