Tibetan tales (derived from Indian sources)
by W. R. S. Ralston | 1906 | 134,175 words
This page related the story of “three tales about artists” from those tibetan tales (derived from Indian sources) found in the Kah-gyur (Kangyur or Kanjur). This represents part of the sacred Tibetan canon of Buddhist literature. Many of such stories correspond to similar legends found in the West, or even those found in Polynesia.
Chapter 50 - Three tales about artists
[In S. Beal’s “Romantic Legend of Sākya Buddha,” pp. 93-96, it is related how the son of a man of quality in Vārāṇasī, in order to obtain the hand of a blacksmith’s daughter, applied himself to making fine needles, and made such progress in the art that he included, among the needles which he showed to the smith, one which could float on the surface of water. This tale occurs in a somewhat different shape in the Mākandikāvadāna in the Divyāvadāna, p. 239 of the St. Petersburg MS. A Brahman’s son in a hill-place, entering the house of a smith in order to collect alms, falls in love with the smith’s daughter, but learns that her father will give her to that man only who can equal or surpass him in art. The Brahman youth applied himself to the art of making needles, and then came to the smith’s house, and offered him needles for sale. All the seven needles which he produced as a test of his skill are of such a nature that they float upon water, even the largest among them not being excepted.—S.]
[1. The Ivory Carver and the Painter.]