assorted together by a most simple and ingenious contrivance. But
the great Florentine invented neither his stories nor his " plot," if
we may so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century
(1344-8) when the West had borrowed many things from the East,
rhymes[FN#8] and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and
knight-errantry. Many of the "Novelle" are, as Orientalists well
know, to this day sung and recited almost textually by the
wandering tale-tellers, bards, and rhapsodists of Persia and Central
Asia.

The great kshatriya,(soldier) king Vikramaditya,[FN#9] or
Vikramarka, meaning the "Sun of Heroism," plays in India the part
of King Arthur, and of Harun al-Rashid further West. He is a
semi-historical personage. The son of Gandharba-Sena the donkey
and the daughter of the King of Dhara, he was promised by his
father the strength of a thousand male elephants. When his sire
died, his grandfather, the deity Indra, resolved that the babe should
not be born, upon which his mother stabbed herself. But the tragic
event duly happening during the ninth month, Vikram came into
the world by himself, and was carried to Indra, who pitied and
adopted him, and gave him a good education.

The circumstances of his accession to the throne, as will presently
appear, are differently told. Once, however, made King of Malaya,
the modern Malwa, a province of Western Upper India, he so
distinguished himself that the Hindu fabulists, with their usual
brave kind of speaking, have made him "bring the whole earth
under the shadow of one umbrella,"

The last ruler of the race of Mayura, which reigned 318 years, was