THE INDIAN OEIGIN OF MALAY FOLK-TALES. 123 



p. 34:). The entrapping of the bearded lover and producing him 

 before a prince as a captive beast is not found in the Sanskrit 

 originals to which- I here have access : it is the plot of Tale XY 

 of the Batavian recension of the Ht. Abu Nawas (J. R. A. 8., 8. B. 

 No. 81, p. 20.) Many other versions of the Musang Berjanggut 

 occur in addition to those mentioned : one in the Arabic text of 

 the book of Sindibad, one in the c Arabian Nights ', one in the 

 Persian tale of the ' Thousand and One Days \ one in the ' Bahar-i- 

 Danusli ' , one in Mary Stokes' " Indian Fairy Tales ", one from 

 Bengal (G. A. Damant's "Folklore of Bengal" Indian Anti- 

 quary, 1873). Clouston gives an outline of these versions in his 

 chapter on " The Lady and Her Suitors " in his " Popular Tales 

 and Fictions " 3 vol. II, pp. 289-316. It would be interesting to 

 know from what immediate source the composite Malay tale was 

 derived. 



A SOUND FOE A SMELL. 



In J. R. A. #., 8. B. No. 48, 1907, p. 91 Mr. Laidlaw printed 

 the Malay story of how mouse-deer settled the claim of a rich 

 man on a poor fellow who grew fat on the appetite got from the 

 smell of roasting in the rich man's kitchen. He was paid by the 

 chink of 1,000 dollars counted out behind a curtain : " a sound for 

 a smell " was mouse-deer's decree. Exactly the same tale is found 

 among the Laos (Bulletin de L'Ecole Francaise d J Extreme-Orient 

 Tome XVII, 1917, p. 114). A tale by Eabelais (III ch. 37) is 

 identical. Liebrecht (Zur Yolkskunde 503) gives a Japanese re- 

 cension. Many Indian variants of the same central theme exist : — 

 vide "Old Deccan Davs " (Frere) p. 118, "Folk-Tales of the 

 Telugus*' (Pantalu) p. 17, "Tibetan Tales" (Ealston) p. 163, 

 all of which give tales that are a mixture of this Malay tale and 

 the tale in J. R. A. S., 8. B. No. 46, 1906, pp. 85-88, 



In the " Katha Sarit Sagara or Ocean of the Streams of Soma- 

 deva", tr. from the Sanskrit by C. H. Tawney (Calcutta 2 vols. 

 1880-84), a rich man promises to pay a musician for singing but 

 later protests, " You gave a short-lived pleasure to my ears and 

 I gave a short-lived pleasure to yours by promising you money ". 

 Cf . Julien's " Contes et apologues indiens ", Paris 1860, 25, La 

 Promesse vain et le vain Son). In the BMsapupplia-Jataka 392 

 (Francis and Thomas, ' Jataka Tales' p. 263) /the Bhodisatta 

 smells a lotus but is told by a goddess that it is larceny thus to 

 steal perfume. 



MOFSEDEEE TALES. 



A synopsis of Peninsular Mouse-deer Tales will be found on 

 pp. 44-48 of my "Literature of Malay Folk-Lore". A great 

 number of the tales occur in Indian folk-lore. 



(1) Buffaloes release Crocodile whose tail has been pinned 

 by the fall of a tree : Crocodile repays this kindness by 

 seizing one of them by the hind-leg till Mousedeer com- 



R. A. Soc, No. 82, 1920. 



