[43] In a Telugu MS., entitled Patti Vrutti Mahima (the
        Value of Chaste Wives), the minister of Chandra Pratapa
        assumes the form of a bird owing to a curse pronounced
        against him by Siva, and is sold to a merchant named
        Dhanadatta, whose son, Kuveradatta, is vicious.  The bird
        by moral lessons reformed him for a time.  They went to a
        town called Pushpamayuri, where the king’s son saw the
        wife of Kuveradatta when he was absent from home.  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.  But the carpenter was a shrewd fellow, and so he makes a figure resembling the goldsmith, dresses it in clothes similar to what he usually wore, and procures a couple of bear’s cubs, which he teaches to take their food from the skirts and sleeves of the effigy.  Thus the cubs conceived a great affection for the figure of the goldsmith.  He then contrives to steal the goldsmith’s two sons, and, when the father comes to seek them at his house, he pretends they have been changed into young bears.  The goldsmith brings his case before the kazi; the cubs are brought into court, and no sooner do they discover the goldsmith than they run up and fondle him.  Upon this the judge decides in favour of the carpenter, to whom the goldsmith confesses his guilt, and offers to give up all the gold if he restore his children, which he does accordingly.[44]