1861. J 
Notices of new works. 
137 
book of the Republic, as he certainly has utterly failed to reproduce 
a single feature of the central figure of the piece.* 
Notices oe new works relating to Sanskrit Literature. 
Les Avadanas ou Contes et Apologues Indiens inconnus jusqu , ’ a ce. 
jour suivis de fables et de poesies Chinoises, traduction de M. 
Stanislas Julien, 3 vols. Paris, 1860. 
M. Julien has given us a collection of 112 Indian Apologues, from 
various Chinese Buddhist works. They profess to be originally 
derived from Sanskrit authors, and in fact many of the stories in 
their scenery and proper names evidently betray their Indian origin. 
It is, however, not a little remarkable that nearly all these stories seem 
at present unknown to us in the extant Sanskrit literature. 
We have been able to recognize very few among the one hundred 
and twelve as old acquaintances. Thus the 5th story of the enmity 
between the crows and the owls seems taken from the 3rd book of 
the Panchatantra, and the 14th gives us the well known story of the 
geese flying up with their friend the tortoise, which is found in the 
Hitopadesa.f In the 74th we have the Vrihat Katlia legend of the 
founding of Pataliputra and the magic coffer, stick, and shoes ; and 
the 91st gives us the well known ass in the lion’s skin. 
It is somewhat singular that Nos. 32 and 53 give us two versions 
of an allegory of human life, which we have never seen in any 
Sanskrit author, but which is found in several Persian poets, espe- 
cially Jalaluddin,J — we refer to the apologue of the man leaping into 
the well to escape a mad elephant and clinging to a plant which grew 
on the side, when he suddenly perceives that its roots are being 
gnawed by two rats, one white and the other black, representing our 
• 
* I may add that in a former chapter of the Sikandar-ndmah (p. 25) Nizami 
tells the classic story of Midas’ ears and the reeds, — only it is absurdly attri- 
buted to Sikandar, as one of the various ways of accounting for his title zii’ l 
Tcarnain . 
f Jami treats it very poetically in liis Tuhfat ul Ahr&r ; liis lines might hal** 
remind us of Will Waterproof’s cock and the head waiter, 
— He by farmstead, thorpe and spire 
And followed with acclaims, 
A sign to many a staring shire, 
Came crowing over Thames. 
X See von Hammer’s Schonen Redekunste Persiens, p. 183. 
x 2 
