d so returned
to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other
blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been,
and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of
his adventures, made this petition to him: "Be kind, and take us also
there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats." He consented, and told
them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the
tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of
the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a
third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by
hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.
And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its
tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool,
"Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats
which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in
heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in
hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and
exclaimed in answer, "So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the
bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were
killed; and the bull returned to Kailasa; but the people who saw it were
much amused.[14]

"Thus," remarks the story-teller, "fools do themselves injury by asking
questions and giving answers without reflection"; he then proceeds to
relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with
fools brings prosperity to no man":

A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when
he asked the way, the people said to him, "Take the path that goes up by
the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the
trunk of that tree, and said to himself, "The men told me that my way
lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the
bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to
avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came
that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on
his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down."
The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to
take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the
driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fo