PREFACE.
In offering these few Indian tales to the public, I cannot refrain from adding a few words at the beginning to express to Pandit Natêśa Sástrî my gratitude for the great assistance he has given me in collecting them, assistance without which they would never have seen the light in the shape of a complete volume. When I began writing down these tales, my only means of collecting them was through my native servants, who used to get them from the old women in the bazaars; but the fables they brought me were as full of corruptions and foreign adaptions as the miscellaneous ingredients that find their way into a dish of their own curry and rice, and had it not been for Mr. Sástrî’s timely aid, my small work would have gone forth to the world laden with inaccuracies.
Mr. Sástrî not only corrected the errors of my own tales, but allowed me to add to them many
