[42] 'Rhetoric,' book ii., chap. xx. [43] 'A variant of it, or something very like it, was discovered twelve years ago by M. Maspero in a fragmentary papyrus, which he dates about the twentieth dynasty (_circa_ 1250 B.C.).'--Jacobs: 'History of the Æsopic Fable,' p. 82. [44] Act I., Scene i. [45] Judges ix. 8-15. [46] Aristotle in his 'Treatise on Rhetoric,' book ii., chap. xx. has horse-leeches as the blood-suckers. [47] Herodotus, i. 141. Cary's translation; Bohn. [48] Aristotle's 'Rhetoric,' book ii., chap. xx. [49] The episode of the eccentric and, alas! well-nigh forgotten politician, John Arthur Roebuck, in his assumption of the character of 'Tearem,' the watch-dog, will recur to readers. CHAPTER XI. HINDOO, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN FABLES.--PILPAY, LOCMAN.--THE 'GESTA ROMANORUM.' 'When to my study I retire, And from books of ancient sages Glean fresh sparks of buried fire Lurking in their ample pages-- While the task my mind engages Let old words new truths inspire.' JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. The 'Panca Tantra' is a collection of Hindoo fables, the supposed author of which was Vishnu Sarman, and this is believed to be the source of 'The Fables of Pilpay' or _Bidpaī_, which are undoubtedly of Indian origin. The transformation which these latter have experienced in their progress down the ages, chiefly by reason of their having been translated into the Arabic in the sixth century under the name of the 'Book of Kalilah and Dimnah,' and afterwards into other Eastern languages, has altered their Indian character, and caused them to assume a Persian vesture and significance. They are rich in ripe wisdom, and prove the insight of their author or authors into human nature, which in those early days, and in those far countries, was much as it is in more westerly communities and in our own times. Taking the Æsopian fable as our model, the bulk of Pilpay's stories are not fables _par excellence_. They are more of the nature of _rencontres_ of adventures, fabulous, it is true, and containing generally an excellent moral, but elaborated and complex for the most part; they are wanting in the terseness, the crispness, and concentration, as well as in the simplicity and spontaneity, of the Greek. At the same time there is a freshness and vigour in these old fables that is not sacrificed by translation, and they are sufficiently striking and admirable as moral stories to justify the repute in which they have always been held. _The Greedy and Ambitious Cat_ is one of the stories in the Bidpaī collection.