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 Kalid4sa 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 Siih’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 
Ramayana, he opened his lips, and pronounced the word t1¥#w when he 
should have said traw.* 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 tr¢q ; and I have seen the Ramayana, 
and in it the word is always spelt tray. How then does it happen that 
this pandit, who is the greatest pandit at my court, pronounces 4 as ¥, 
and says tw? Thereupon Kalidasa stood up, and on the spur of the 
moment repeated the following s‘loka : 
FRHU Wasa warcisfa faavtaw | 
Usa FSI TAU | g Wa: Il 
“Kumbhakarna (was a Rakshasa, and) his name contains the letter 
“bh,” so does the name of Vibhishana. Rav(bh)ana was the chief of the 
Rakshasas, and therefore his name should be Rabhana, and not Ravana.” 
This very lame excuse appears to have filled the sahd with admiration for 
Ka4lidasa’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 Rangpur 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, 
