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f>oint and the book affords very few instances of long and tedious descriptions.
The Hitopadesa—also a store of fables like the Pancha-tantra—is one of the most popular works in India and an easy introduction to the study of Sanskirt. The frame-work of the two books is of the same construction. The Hitopadesa is -divided into four books-. It was probably drawn up at Pali-bothra on the Ganges by its reputed author Vishnusarman. What has been said of the Indian fable literature and its characteristics needs not a re-statement.
The Vetalapanchavirnsatiisagroup of 25 stories. When, ..at the bidding of an ascetic, King Vikrama of Ujjain was silently -carrying a corpse to the grave-yard, a vetala, that had possessed it, tempted him to conversation twenty-five times by relating to him twenty-five tales. The king, at the end of every story, iad to answer some problem suggested by the plot. The composition has remarkable cleverness in it and it has been for nearly a century an object of curious study to many foreign readers.
The Simhasana-dvatrimsika is a collection of fairy tales, -thirty-two in number, related by thirty-two images of Vikrama's throne dug up near Dhar, the capital of King Bhoja. Obviously •the collection -must date from the tenth century A. D.
The Brihatkatha-manjarl of Kshemendra—about one-ihitd as long as the Katha-sarit-sagara—-is obviously an abridg-*tt&tat of Gunadhya's original.
The Kathasaritsagara is a long postical collection of mearly 22000 stainzas, divided into 124 tarangas and eighteen