1879.] G. A. Grierson — Some Further Notes on Kalidasa. 35 



man to her embraces or not, (she will certainly yield) once she has set her 

 foot upon the threshold of the room dedicated to amorous sport." On 

 the way he picked up a man of the Bheriyar or shepherd caste, who was 

 the fattest man ever known. Kalidasa persuaded him to accompany him 

 and to pretend that he was the master, and Kalidasa only the pupil. He 

 further instructed the shepherd on no account to let his voice be heard, 

 promising to do all the talking himself. The shepherd agreed to this, and 

 the two journeyed to king S'ibay Sinh's court. Kalidasa introduced the 

 shepherd as his master, and the weight of the latter immediately told. He 

 was rapidly promoted and soon became the chief pandit in the court. All 

 this time he never opened his lips, Kalidasa officiating on all occasions as 

 his mouth-piece ; and probably the fact of his silence increased his fame, 

 for the legend (unconsciously foretelling the story of Jack and his Parrot) 

 says, that the king considered that as he did not speak, he must think a 

 lot. 



One day, however, the Bheriyar forgot his instructions, and in a full 

 Sabha, in the presence of the king, while the conversation was about the 

 Eamayana, he opened his lips, and pronounced the word T"!*^ when he 

 should have said ^re^.* The whole assembly was electrified at this one 

 word of the Silent Pandit. The king to do him justice saw the mistake, 

 but still it did not shake his faith in the weight of its utterer. So he pro- 

 pounded the following question to the assembly — " I have always heard 

 other pandits pronounce the word as ^'R'^ ; and I have seen the Eamayana, 

 and in it the word is always spelt TT3''!!. How then does it happen that 

 this pandit, who is the greatest pandit at my court, pronounces ^ as *?, 

 and says ?;t*?^ ? Thereupon Kalidasa stood up, and on the spur of the 

 moment repeated the following s'loka : 



" Kumbhakarna (was a Eakshasa, and) his name contains the letter 

 " bh," so does the name of Vibhishana. Rav(bh)ana was the chief of the 

 Kakshasas, and therefore his name should be Eabhana, and not Bavana." 

 This very lame excuse appears to have filled the sabha with admiration for 

 Kalidasa's wisdom, and thenceforth his name became famous throughout 

 the three worlds. 



At King Bhoja's court, the pandit who had the ear of the king was 



* This is evidently an allusion to the local pronunciation of the lower orders. In 

 my notes on the Eangpur Dialect, published in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic 

 Society for 1877, I have shown that similar changes to this exist in at least one pro- 

 vincial dialect of Bengal. 



