In Elakapura there lived several mendicant monks.  One of them, named Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure a post for his hut.  There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it.  Then there came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, “O monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will fall down and die.”  After saying this the travellers went their way.  The monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch broke, and he tumbled down.  He then thought within himself, “Those travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead.”  So he remained on the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he even breathe.  People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could not succeed.  They then sent word to the other monks, saying, “Your associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died.”  Then came the monks in large numbers, and when they saw that he was “dead,” they lifted him up in order to carry him to the place of cremation.  Now when they had gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided itself before them.  Then said some, “We must go to the left,” but others said, “It is to the right that we must go.”  Thus a dispute arose among them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion.  The “dead” monk, who was borne on a bier, said, “Friends, quarrel not among yourselves; when I was alive, I always went by the left road.”  Then said some, “He always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple fact.  Let us therefore take the left road.”  This was agreed upon, and as they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to be present said, “O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive.”  They answered, “Nay, but he is dead.”  Then the bystanders said, “He cannot be dead, seeing that he yet speaks.”  They then set down the bier on the ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the travellers, and how it was fulfilled.  Hereupon the other monks remained quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in inducing them to return to their dwelling.  Dandaka also now stood up and went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.[11]

A diverting story in the Facetiae of Poggius, entitled “Mortuus Loqueus,” from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini and in our old collection Tales and Quicke Answeres, has a near affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of his property.  In the early English jest-book,[12] it is, in effect, as follows: