“In the town of Devikotta there lived a Brahman of the name of Devasarman. At the feast of the great equinox he received a plateful of rice. He took it, went into a potter’s shop, which was full of crockery, and, overcome by the heat, he lay down in a corner and began to doze. In order to protect his plate of rice, he kept a stick in his hand; and he began to think:‘Now if I sell this plate of rice, I shall receive ten cowries. I shall then, on the spot, buy pots and plates, and after having increased my capital again and again I shall buy and sell betel nuts and dresses till I grow enormously rich. Then I shall marry four wives, and the youngest and prettiest of the four I shall make a great pet of. Then the other wives will be so angry and begin to quarrel. But I shall be in a great rage, and take a stick, and give them a good flogging.’ While he said this, suiting the action to the thought, he laid about him with his stick; the plate of rice was smashed to pieces, and many of the pots in the shop were broken. The potter, hearing the noise, ran in; and when he saw his pots broken, gave the Brahman a good scolding and drove him out of the shop. Therefore I say,‘He who rejoices over plans for the future will come to grief, like the Brahman who broke the pots.’”—MAX MÜLLER. Of the numerous collections of tales and romances, the best known is “the Ocean of the Rivers of Narratives,” the original of that more familiar compilation, the Arabian Nights. HISTORY, GRAMMAR, ETC. Sanscrit is also worthily represented in other departments of literature; on the fine arts we have nothing worthy of notice, but science has not been neglected, while historical, grammatical, and philosophical works, complete the category of its productions. Its chronicles, however, obscured as they are by myths without number, are comparatively valueless; but one deserves the name of history, the Chronicle of Cashmere, or the Stream of the Kings, extending from the fabulous ages to the reign of Akbar, who reduced that province in the 16th century. But in grammar we must certainly award to Sanscrit the very first place. Commentaries on the constructions of the Veda, dating perhaps from 750 B.C., embody the earliest attempts at grammatical and critical investigation with which we are acquainted; and in the digest of Pânini (_pah’ne-ne_) (500 B.C.?) we have the first systematic grammar that the world ever produced—a book remarkable for its completeness, declared by Max Müller to be “the perfection of an empirical analysis of language, unsurpassed—nay, even unapproached, by anything in the grammatical literature of other nations.” In connection with the literature of India, we may also mention inscriptions on monuments, in temples and grottoes, and on plates of marble and copper. These are worthy of study mainly in view of the historical information they may afford.