help for it, according to the terms of his father’s
        will.  In his distress he laid his case before an eminent
        lawyer, who told him that his father had adopted this
        plan of leaving his estate in the hands of the churchmen
        in order to prevent its misappropriation during his
        absence.  “For,” said the man of law, “your father, by
        will, has left you the share of his estate which the
        convent should choose (le partie qui leur plairoit),
        and it is plain that what they chose was that which they
        kept for themselves.  All you have to do, therefore, is
        to enter an action at law against the convent for
        recovery of that portion of your father’s property which
        they have retained, and, take my word for it, you will
        be successful.”  The young man accordingly sued the
        churchmen and gained his cause.

* * * * *

And now we proceed to cite one or two of the rabbinical fables, in the proper signification of the term—­namely, moral narratives in which beasts or birds are the characters.  Although it is generally allowed that Fable was the earliest form adopted for conveying moral truths, yet it is by no means agreed among the learned in what country of remote antiquity it originated.  Dr. Landsberger, in his erudite introduction to Die Fabeln des Sophos (1859), contends that the Jews were the first to employ fables for purposes of moral instruction, and that the oldest fable extant is Jotham’s apologue of the trees desiring a king (Book of Judges, ix. 8-15).[87] According to Dr. Landsberger, the sages of India were indebted to the Hebrews for the idea of teaching by means of fables, probably during the reign of Solomon, who is believed to have had commerce with the western shores of India.[88] We are told by Josephus that Solomon “composed of parables and similitudes three thousand; for he spoke a parable upon every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar; and, in like manner, also about beasts, about all sorts of living creatures, whether upon earth, or in the seas, or in the air; for he was not unacquainted with any of their natures, nor omitted inquiring about them, but described them all like a philosopher, and demonstrated his exquisite knowledge of their several properties.”  These fables of Solomon, if they were ever committed to writing, had perished long before the time of the great Jewish historian; but there seems no reason to doubt the fact that the wise king of Israel composed many works besides those ascribed to him in the Old Testament.  The general opinion among European orientalists is that Fable had its origin in India; and the Hindus themselves claim the honour of inventing our present system of numerals (which came into Europe through the Arabians, who derived it from the Hindus), the game of chess, and the Fables of Vishnusarman (the Panchatantra and its abridgment, the Hitopadesa).