say, “One should not pretend to teach Lokman”—­in Persian, “Hikmat ba Lokman amokhtan.”  Three of his apothegms dwell in the public memory:  “The heart and the tongue are the best and worst parts of the human body.”  “I learned wisdom from the blind who make sure of things by touching them” (as did St. Thomas); and when he ate the colocynth offered by his owner, “I have received from thee so many a sweet that ’twould be surprising if I refused this one bitter.”  He was buried (says the Tarikh Muntakhab) at Ramlah in Judaea, with the seventy Prophets stoned in one day by the Jews.  The youngest Lokman “of the vultures” was a prince of the tribe of Ad who lived 3,500 years, the age of seven vultures (Tabari).  He could dig a well with his nails; hence the saying, “Stronger than Lokman” (A.  P. i. 701); and he loved the arrow-game, hence, “More gambling than Lokman” (ibid. ii. 938).  “More voracious than Lokman” (ibid i. 134) alludes to his eating one camel for breakfast and another for supper.  His wife Barakish also appears in proverb, e.g.  “Camel us and camel thyself” (ibid. i. 295) i.e. give us camel flesh to eat, said when her son by a former husband brought her a fine joint which she and her husband relished.  Also, “Barakish hath sinned against her kin” (ibid. ii. 89).  More of this in Chenery’s Al-Hariri p. 422; but the three Lokmans are there reduced to two.

[FN#235] I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47-49.  “To the Gold Coast for Gold.”

[FN#236] I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit Sagara, of which more presently, is the “earliest representation of the first collection.”

[FN#237] The Pehlevi version of the days of King Anushirwan (A.D. 531-72) became the Humayun-nameh ("August Book”) turned into Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite:  the Hitopadesa ("Friendship-boon”) of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the “Panchatantra,” became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhlak-i-Hindi ("Moralities of Ind”) and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli ("Lights of Canopus").  Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers entitle their version Kalilah wa Damnah, or Kalilaj wa Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidya-pati, Lord of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian King Dabishlim.

[FN#238] Diet.  Philosoph.  S. V. Apocrypha.

[FN#239] The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables or beast-apologues to Lokman; they record only “dictes” and proverbial sayings.

[FN#240] Professor Taylor Lewis:  Preface to Pilpay.

[FN#241] In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more numerous, but they can be reduced to two great nuclei; the first in chapter lx. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same book chapters lxii-lxv.  Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata after the fashion of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for this style of composition.