day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, “I will watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and I will find out what creature it is that does this.”  After he had formed this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its horns.  He thought, “This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to heaven with it?” And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands laid hold of the tail behind.  Then the holy bull lifted up, with the utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried him in a moment to its home in Kailasa.[13] There the foolish man lived for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties, sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained.  And seeing that the bull kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny, thought, “I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return in the same way.”  Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned to the surface of the earth.  When he entered the convent, the other blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been, and he told them.  Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of his adventures, made this petition to him:  “Be kind, and take us also there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats.”  He consented, and told them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the tank, and the bull came there.  And the principal fool seized the tail of the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a third in turn took hold of his.  So, when they had formed a chain by hanging on to one another’s feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.  And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool, “Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in heaven?” Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and exclaimed in answer, “So big.”  But in so doing he let go the tail of the bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were killed; and the bull returned to Kailasa; but the people who saw it were much amused.[14]

“Thus,” remarks the story-teller, “fools do themselves injury by asking questions and giving answers without reflection”; he then proceeds to relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that “association with fools brings prosperity to no man”: