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This story forms the 17th of the Twenty-five Tales of a Demon (Vetala Panchavinsati), according to the Sanskrit version found in the Katha Sarit Sagara; but its great antiquity is proved by the circumstance that it is found in a Buddhistic work dating probably 200 years before our era—­namely, Buddhaghosha’s Parables.  “Dying for love,” says Richardson, “is considered amongst us as a mere poetical figure, and we can certainly support the reality by few examples; but in Eastern countries it seems to be something more, many words in the Arabic and Persian languages which express love implying also melancholy; madness, and death.”  Shakspeare affirms that “men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”  There is, however, one notable instance of this on record, in the story (as related by Warton, in his History of English Poetry) of the gallant troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, who died for love—­and love, too, from hearsay description of the beauty of the Countess of Tripoli.

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On the 14th Night the Parrot entertains the Lady with a very curious account of

The Discovery of Music.

Some attribute, says the learned and eloquent feathered sage (according to Gerrans), the discovery to the sounds made by a large stone against the frame of an oil-press; and others to the noise of meat when roasting; but the sages of Hind [India] are of opinion that it originated from the following accident:  As a learned Brahman was travelling to the court of an illustrious raja he rested about the middle of the day under the shade of a mulberry tree, on the top of which he beheld a mischievous monkey climbing from bough to bough, till, by a sudden slip, he fell upon a sharp-pointed shoot, which instantly ripped up his belly and left his entrails suspended in the tree, while the unlucky animal fell, breathless, on the dust of death.  Some time after this, as the Brahman was returning, he accidentally sat down in the same place, and, recollecting the circumstance, looked up, and saw that the entrails were dried, and yielded a harmonious sound every time the wind gently impelled them against the branches.  Charmed at the singularity of the adventure, he took them down, and after binding them to the two ends of his walking-stick, touched them with a small twig, by which he discovered that the sound was much improved.  When he got home he fastened the staff to another piece of wood, which was hollow, and by the addition of a bow, strung with part of his own beard, converted it to a complete instrument.  In succeeding ages the science received considerable improvements.  After the addition of a bridge, purer notes were extracted; and the different students, pursuing the bent of their inclinations, constructed instruments of various forms, according to their individual fancies; and to this whimsical accident we are indebted for the tuneful ney and the heart-exhilarating rabab, and, in short, all the other instruments of wind and strings.