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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1889.
The stupid neatherd, little suspecting that it was odd that a man should be married on the top of a mountain, promised to open the bag and let him out on condition he would allow him to go into the bag himself, and thus be placed in his happy position.
"Agreed," said the impostor, and so the bag was quickly opened, the ropes round his legs and hands untied, and the neatherd packed ap in his place. Our hero then went to the place where the herd of cows was grazing, and returned home with them. Here he found the old lady of the wood waiting and welcomed her heartily, telling her that all his wealth was hers, and promising to regard her as his own mother, as she had been one to him for six years.
Meanwhile the Musalman and the courtezan had lighted a large fire in the jungle and went for the bag. The neatherd inside kept quite silent for fear, if he spoke, that the change that had taken place would become known. But, instead of being married to a young girl, he was soon thrown into the fire.
"Thus have we killed our impostor," said the friends :-"Now let us go to his house and plunder it." So they returned exulting to the New Street of Madura where our hero was sitting outside his house chewing betel, and expecting them every moment. The thousand and one cows he had obtained were still standing outside. When the pair saw him safely seated outside his own house and smiling welcome to them, their wonder knew no bounds. “We threw you an hour ago in the fire," said they, "and how are you sitting here safe ?"
"Yes, my friends," replied he, " as soon as you threw me into the fire, I went to Kailasa, the world of felicity, and met my father and grandfather. They told me that my time to live in the world was not over and sent me back with these kine."
" Then the same presents will be given to us, too, if we go to that world of heavenly bliss ?" said they.
"Undoubtedly," replied the impostor; and then with their consent he took them to the mountain and threw them into the fire never more to revive and return with presents.
Returning home and relieved for ever from his troublesome friends the Arch-Impostor lived happily, protecting the old woman of the wood, who had protected him in his younger days.
Though the hero has the worst of characters, still the relaters of this story excuse him for his presence of mind in all his hardships, and draw a moral from it that ambition is bad. The Musalmân and the courtezan, even though they repeatedly found out their friend, were always fired with ambition, and at last lost their lives through it.
CORRESPONDENCE. THE DANISH ROYAL ACADEMY'S PRIZE Scythic invasion can be regarded as ancient and REGARDING THE PHILOLOGICAL POSITION
natural, while all the subsequent literature is due OF SANSKRIT IN INDIA.
to a later and artificial development, the work of SIR-It may interest your readers to know the Brahmans, and does not reach to a date earlier that the Académie Royale Danoise des Scien- than the second century A. D. On the other hand ces et des Lettres offers the Gold Medal of the one can scarcely allow that such poems as the Academy as a prize for the best answer to the lyrics and epics of Kalidasa were only written for following question: "What position has Sans- the learned, and that his dramas were not made krit occupied in the general development of to be represented and understood by the ordinalanguages in India P To what extent can we rily educated people of his time, and the case is say that it has been a living language, and at the same with other works written in Sanskrit what period must it be admitted to havo after the Christian era. We should also have dessou to be such P The Academy points out that to explain why Sômadêva, at the beginning of the the inscriptions of Asöka, dating from the middle of 12th century, should have chosen a dead and the 3rd century B. O., were couched in a language purely learned language for composing a work of differing in no small degree from Sanskrit, and light reading, of which the aim was to divert and were spread all over the north of India. On this console the queen of Kasmir who had lost her is founded a theory that Sansksit had already grandson. ceased to be a living language, and that only that Answers may be written in Latin, French, portion of its literature which is anterior to the English, German, Swedish, or Danish. They
