An
illicit amour was about to begin, when the bird
interposed by relating tales of chaste wives, and
detained the wanton lady at home till her husband
returned.
The order of the parrot's tales is not the same in all texts; in
Kadiri's abridgment there are few of the Nights which correspond with
those of the India Office MS. No. 2573, which may, perhaps, be partly
accounted for by the circumstance that Kadiri has given only 35 of the
52 tales that are in the original text. For the general reader, however,
the sequence of the tales is a minor consideration; and I shall content
myself with giving abstracts of some of the best stories, irrespective
of their order in any text, and complete translations of two or three
others. It so happens that the Third Night is the same in Kadiri and the
India Office MS. No. 2573, which comprises the complete text; and the
story the eloquent bird relates on that night may be entitled
_The Stolen Images._
A goldsmith and a carpenter, travelling in company, steal from a Hindu
temple some golden images, which, when they arrive in the neighbourhood
of their own city, they bury beneath a tree. The goldsmith goes secretly
one night and carries away the images, and next morning, when both go
together to share the spoil, the goldsmith accuses the carpenter of
having played him false.
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