. In the sequel, the parrot betrays the rani, and Rasalu kills
Raja Hodi and causes his heart to be served to the rani for supper.[54]

[54] Captain R. C. Temple's _Legends of the Panjab_, vol. i,
p. 52 ff.; and "Four Legends of Raja Rasalu," by the
Rev. C. Swynnerton, in the _Folk-Lore Journal_, 1883, p.
141 ff.

* * * * *

The parrot is a very favourite character in Indian fictions, a
circumstance originating, very possibly, in the Hindu belief in
metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls after death into other animal
forms, and also from the remarkable facility with which that bird
imitates the human voice. In the _Katha Sarit Sagara_ stories of wise
parrots are of frequent occurrence; sometimes they figure as mere birds,
but at other times as men who had been re-born in that form. In the
third of the Twenty-Five Tales of a Demon (Sanskrit version), a king has
a parrot, "possessed of god-like intellect, knowing all the _shastras_,
having been born in that condition owing to a curse"; and his queen has
a hen-maina "remarkable for knowledge." They are placed in the same
cage; and "one day the parrot became enamoured of the maina, and said to
her: 'Marry me, fair one, as we sleep, perch, and feed in the same
cage.' But the maina answered him: 'I do not desire intimate union with
a male, for all males are wicked and ungrateful.' The parrot answered:
'It is not true that males are wicked, but females are wicked and
cruel-hearted.' And so a dispute arose between them. The two birds then
made a bargain that, if the parrot won, he should have the maina for
wife, and if the maina won, the parrot should be her slave, and they
came before the prince to get a true judgment." Each relates a
story--the one to show that men are all wicked and ungrateful, the
other, that women are wicked and cruel-hearted.

It must be confessed that the frame of the _Tuti Nama_ is of a very
flimsy description: nothing could be more absurd, surely, than to
represent the lady as decorating herself fifty-two nights in succession
in order to have an interview with a young prince, and being detained
each night by the Parrot's tales, which, moreover, have none of them the
least bearing upon the condition and purpose of the lady; unlike the
Telugu story-book, having a somewhat similar frame (see _ante_, p. 127,
_note_), in which the tales related by the bird are about chaste wives.
But the fram