358 OCCASIONAL NOTES. 



ness, which stood midmost the splendour. Then he said 

 to himself, 'day after day, from dawn to dusk, toil I among 

 these bamboo-reeds, and this child that abides amidst them 

 I may surely claim as mine own/ So, he put forth his 

 hand and took the tiny being and carried it home and gave 

 it to the goodwife and her women to be nourished." 



In his notes on the text, Mr. DlCKlNS says that a Japanese 

 bibliography (native) published about the year i3oo men- 

 tions several native works as sources from which incidents 

 in the tale of the bamboo-hewer have been derived. From 

 one of these a curious Buddhist legend is cited to the follow- 

 ing effect : — 



"Three recluses, after long-continued meditation, found 

 themselves possessed of the truth and so great was their joy 

 that their hearts broke and they died. Their souls thereupon 

 took the form of bamboos with leaves of gold and roots of 

 precious jade and after a period of ten months had elapsed, 

 the stems of these bamboos split open and disclosed each a 

 beauteous boy. The three youths sat on the ground under 

 their bamboos and after seven days' meditation, they, too, 

 became possessed of the truth, whereupon their bodies 

 assumed a golden hue and displayed the marks of saintliness 

 while the bamboos disappeared and were replaced by seven 

 magnificent temples. The legend is manifestly of Indian 

 origin." 



I have already pointed out the fact of the existence both 

 in Japanese and Malay legends of the main feature of this 

 story, the supernatural development of a young child in the 

 interior of some vegetable production (Notes and Queries, 

 No. 4, issued with No. 17 of the Journal, Straits Branch of 

 the Royal Asiatic Society), and those interested in the Japan- 

 ese romance introduced to English readers by Mr. DlCKlNS 

 will find it curiously paralleled, as to this particular incident, 

 by the Malay legends cited in a paper in the Journal of the 

 Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XIII (N. S.), Part IV. 



W. E. M. 



