It is more than probable that several of the tales and apologues in the Panchatantra were derived from Buddhist sources; and the incident of a man with a wheel on his head is found in the Chinese-Sanskrit work entitled Fu-pen-hing-tsi-king, which Wassiljew translates ’Biography of Sakyamuni and his Companions,’ and of which Dr. Beal has published an abridged English translation under the title of the Romantic History of Buddha.  In this work (p. 342 ff.) a merchant, who had struck his mother because she would not sanction his going on a trading voyage, in the course of his wanderings discovers a man “on whose head there was placed an iron wheel, this wheel was red with heat, and glowing as from a furnace, terrible to behold.  Seeing this terrible sight, Maitri exclaimed:  ’Who are you?  Why do you carry that terrible wheel on your head?’ On this the wretched man replied:  ’Dear sir, is it possible you know me not?  I am a merchant chief called Gorinda.’  Then Maitri asked him and said:  ’Pray, then, tell me, what dreadful crime have you committed in former days that you are constrained to wear that fiery wheel on your head.’  Then Gorinda answered:  ’In former days I was angry with and struck my mother as she lay on the ground, and for this reason I am condemned to wear this fiery iron wheel around my head.’  At this time Maitri, self-accused, began to cry out and lament; he was filled with remorse on recollection of his own conduct, and exclaimed in agony:  ‘Now am I caught like a deer in the snare.’  Then a certain Yaksha, who kept guard over that city, whose name was Viruka, suddenly came to the spot, and removing the fiery wheel from off the head of Gorinda, he placed it on the head of Maitri.  Then the wretched man cried out in his agony and said:  ‘O what have I done to merit this torment?’ to which the Yaksha replied:  ’You, wretched man, dared to strike your mother on the head as she lay on the ground; now, therefore, on your head you shall wear this fiery wheel; through 60,000 years your punishment shall last:  be assured of this, through all these years you shall wear this wheel.’”

III

THE SINGING ASS:  THE FOOLISH THIEVES:  THE FAGGOT-MAKER AND THE MAGIC BOWL.

Some of the Parrot’s recitals have other tales sphered within them, so to say—­a plan which must be familiar to all readers of the Arabian Nights.  In the following amusing tale, which is perhaps the best of the whole series (it is the 41st of the India Office MS. No. 2573, and the 31st in Kadiri’s version), there are two subordinate stories: 

The Singing Ass.

At a certain period of time, as ancient historians inform us, an ass and an elk were so fond of each other’s company that they were never seen separate.  If the plains were deficient in pasture, they repaired to the meadows; or, if famine pervaded the valleys, they overleaped the garden-fence, and, like friends, divided the spoil.