of the description which we call "light literature," and the ancestral
tale-teller never collects a larger purse of coppers than when he
relates the worst of his "aurei." But this looseness, resulting from
the separation of the sexes, is accidental, not necessary. The
following collection will show that it can be dispensed with, and
that there is such a thing as camparative purity in Hindu literature.
The author, indeed, almost always takes the trouble to marry his
hero and his heroine, and if he cannot find a priest, he generally
adopts an exceedingly left-hand and Caledonian but legal rite
called "gandharbavivaha.[FN#2]"

The work of Apuleius, as ample internal evidence shows, is
borrowed from the East. The groundwork of the tale is the
metamorphosis of Lucius of Corinth into an ass, and the strange
accidents which precede his recovering the human form.

Another old Hindu story-book relates, in the popular fairy-book
style, the wondrous adventures of the hero and demigod, the great
Gandharba-Sena. That son of Indra, who was also the father of
Vikramajit, the subject of this and another collection, offended the
ruler of the firmament by his fondness for a certain nymph, and
was doomed to wander over earth under the form of a donkey.
Through the interposition of the gods, however, he was permitted
to become a man during the hours of darkness, thus comparing
with the English legend -

Amundeville is lord by day,
But the monk is lord by night.

Whilst labouring under this curse, Gandharba-Sena persuaded the