ON SIAMESE LITERATURE. 



345 



Mahkali phon is stated by Leyden to contain the adventures of the 

 son of a chief who possessed a wonderful cow resembling the Hindu 

 KXmaduha. 



Supha-sit, by the above authority, is a book of moral instructions. 

 It may more properly be designated a compendium of maxims and 

 instructions for conduct in every situation of life, addressed to all 

 ranks. 



Phra Sutvanna liong — Relates to a prince of this name, who dreams 

 of a garland of flowers which entwines round his wrist — out of which crawls 

 a snake. The snake bites him and he dies. On awaking he tells his 

 dream to a soothsayer who gives the following interpretation of it. That 

 the prince would marry a beautiful Princess — be afterwards slain and then 

 re-animated. The prince falls in love with the daughter of a Yak — who 

 suspecting an intrigue lays a spring spear in his path — by which he is 

 mortally Avounded, and just reaches home to expire. The funeral proces- 

 sion is ready to move off, when the princess arrives with a phial of elixir 

 of life which Indra had sent down to her. With a few drops of this liquid 

 her lover is restored to life and her. 



Prang tJidng, according to Leyden, relates to the adventures of .the 

 persons who went to the land of the Yaks or Rakshas in search of the 

 fruit called Prang thang (the hualt sittr of the Malays) for which a certain 

 princess being pregnant had a longing. The Hesperian boon was granted 

 by the Yaks on condition that they should have the child when born. 

 They receive the child — but it is subsequently restored to its parents. 



Nang sip sang. — The twelve Princesses. It is related in this bo k 

 that twelve children were exposed and left in the forest to perish by their 

 parents who were pressed by famine. 



A Yak finds them and educates them (for there are good Yaks, 



although the term implies generally a creature partly human, partly bestial, 



a satyr, or a wood demon or giant.) When grown up there these his proteges 



elope, and being pursued by him they enter the skin of a huge buffalo 



and lie concealed — next in that of an elephant — and after various adven- 



b2 



