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NARRATIVE TALE IN JAIN LITERATURE
whom the saint had greeted. They ask the saint, and he says: "The most foolish among you." Now they cannot agree as to who is the most foolish among them. So they go to the town, in order to ask the citizens to decide, and each of them relates some piece of stupidity which he has committed. The first one allowed his eyes to be burned out by a lamp, only in order not to disturb his two wives in their sleep. The second let his two bad wives break his legs. The fourth had his cheek pricked through, from fear of his mother-in-law. The third, however, behaved in a fashion similar to the man in Goethe's poem "Gutmann und Gutweib." Once he was lying in bed with his wife. “Then they decided to act on his suggestion, that the one who spoke first must give the other ten sweet cakes. As they were thus lying quietly, a thief entered the house, and stole everything there was to steal. When the thief had already laid hands on the wife's under-garments, the wife said to the husband: “What? Are you going to look on quietly even now?" Then the husband demanded the promised ten cakes, because she had been the first to break the silence."32
As to the marvellous tales à la Munchausen (Münchhausen), we mention only the following : A man sees a beautiful tree and wishes to taste its fruits. But the tree is too tall. So he cuts off his head, throws it on to the tree, where it eats as much fruit as it wants. Then he fastens his head on to his neck again.
32. Mironow, 1.c., p. 21. Cf. R. Pischel, ZDMG 58, 1904, 363 ff.;
Hertel, Ein altindisches Narrenbuch, p. 37 ff. The story frequently recurs in India (e.g. Vetālapañcavimšati, ed. Uhle, 23, 63, and often in modern Indian versions). The earliest known version in the Chinese Tripitaka (E. Huber, BEFEO 4, 1091; cf. Zachriae, ZVV 1966, 136 Note), takes us back as far as the year 492 A.D. The propagation of the anecdote, which is also known in Arabic variants and in Baluchi, has been traced, as far as Europe is concerned, by R. Köhler (Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Litterature 12, 348 ff.) Goethe took the theme from a Scottish ballad.
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