serve a particular object, by the moral, or warning,
which they are supposed to convey; as in the case of the _Book of
Sindibad_, in which a prince is falsely accused by one of his father's
ladies, and defended by the king's seven vazirs, or counsellors, who
each in turn relate to the king two stories, the purport of which being
to warn him to put no faith in the accusations of women, to which the
lady replies by stories representing the wickedness and perfidy of men;
and that of the _Bakhtyar Nama_, in which a youth, falsely accused of
having violated the royal harem, obtains for himself a respite from
death during ten days by relating to the king each day a story designed
to caution him against precipitation in matters of importance. In others
supernatural beings are the narrators of the subordinate tales, as in
the Indian romances, _Vetala Panchavinsati_, or Twenty-five Tales of a
Demon, and the _Sinhasana Dwatrinsati_, or Tales of the Thirty-two
Speaking Statues--literally, Thirty-two (Tales) of a Throne. In others,
again, the relators are birds, as in the Indian work entitled _Hamsa
Vinsati_, or Twenty Tales of a Goose.

Of this last class is the popular Persian work, _Tuti Nama_, (Tales of a
Parrot, or Parrot-Book), of which I purpose furnishing some account, as
it has not yet been completely translated into English. This work was
composed, according to Pertsch, in A.D. 1329, by a Persian named
Nakhshabi, after an older Persian version, now lost, which was made from
a Sanskrit work, also no longer extant, but of which the modern
representative is the _Suka Saptati_, or Seventy Tales of a Parrot.[41]
The frame, or leading story, of the Persian Parrot-Book is to the
following effect:

[41] Ziyau-'d-Din Nakhshabi, so called from Nakhshab, or
Nasaf, the modern Kashi, a town situated between
Samarkand and the Oxus, led a secluded life in Bada'um,
and died, as stated by 'Abdal-Hakk, A.H. 751 (A.D.
1350-1).--Dr. Rieu's _Catalogue of Persian MSS. in the
British Museum_.--In 1792 the Rev. B. Gerrans published
an English translation of twelve of the fifty-two tales
comprised in the _Tuti Nama_, but the work is now best
known in Persia and India from an abridgment made by
Kadiri in the last century, which was printed, with a
translation, at London in 1801.

A merchant who had a very beautiful wife informs her one day that he has
resolved t