Hierocles made a famous collection of old stories translated into Greek. Others followed rapidly even before the invention of printing. After that achievement, collections of stories flooded the book mart even as they do today. Selections from various collections follow. Perhaps the oldest collection of tales in the world is that known as the _Fables of Bidpai or Pilpay_. Both author and date of production are unknown, but tradition tells us that they were written in Sanscrit and were the work of one Vishnu Sarma, who wrote them for the advice and edification of certain princes. The book is enormously long and though not of humorous intent shows much of the native wit of the country. FABLES _THE GREEDY AND AMBITIOUS CAT_ There was formerly an old Woman in a village, extremely thin, half-starved, and meager. She lived in a little cottage as dark and gloomy as a fool’s heart, and withal as close shut up as a miser’s hand. This miserable creature had for the companion of her wretched retirements a Cat meager and lean as herself; the poor creature never saw bread, nor beheld the face of a stranger, and was forced to be contented with only smelling the mice in their holes, or seeing the prints of their feet in the dust. If by some extraordinary lucky chance this miserable animal happened to catch a mouse, she was like a beggar that discovers a treasure; her visage and her eyes were inflamed with joy, and that booty served her for a whole week; and out of the excess of her admiration, and distrust of her own happiness, she would cry out to herself, “Heavens! Is this a dream, or is it real?” One day, however, ready to die for hunger, she got upon the ridge of her enchanted castle, which had long been the mansion of famine for cats, and spied from thence another Cat, that was stalking upon a neighbour’s wall like a Lion, walking along as if she had been counting her steps, and so fat that she could hardly go. The old Woman’s Cat, astonished to see a creature of her own species so plump and so large, with a loud voice, cries out to her pursy neighbour, “In the name of pity, speak to me, thou happiest of the Cat kind! why, you look as if you came from one of the Khan of Kathai’s feasts; I conjure ye, to tell me how, or in what region it is that you get your skin so well stuffed?” “Where?” replied the fat one; “why, where should one feed well but at a King’s table? I go to the house,” continued she, “every day about dinner-time, and there I lay my paws upon some delicious morsel or other, which serves me till the next, and then leave enough for an army of mice, which under me live in peace and tranquillity; for why should I commit murder for a piece of tough and skinny mouse flesh, when I can live on venison at a much easier rate?” The lean Cat, on this, eagerly inquired the way to this house of plenty, and entreated her plump neighbour to carry her one day along with her.