thy provision-bag some property [or money?] for thy companions." He rejoined: "How could my companions be misguided by property; for I should be a wretched ambassador to them, if I were to come bringing to them [goods] of the world, which they have been verily struggling against till they have overcome it. Thus I would come to them as a foe, and renovate their lust. They have no need to meet an enemy, reminding them of the vanity of the world, because an enemy thereof is an enemy to poverty and destruction, whereas if they do not return thereto, what else are gold and jewels but various kinds of stones, for which we have no need in our [fertile] plain." He asked: "Then whence do you obtain clothes?" He replied: "These are one of our difficulties, and when we find a garment, we hope that it may be the last of our requirements from the world, and it compels us to have recourse to the adherents thereof." He said: "Then take a robe which thou mayest use [or give away]." He rejoined: "We do not renew garments until they are worn out, nor are we in haste to accumulate any for a day which we do not know whether we shall attain it or not." He asked: "Then whence hast thou this garment ?" He replied: "This is a shell to which Satan is accustomed; I have assumed it to meet thee." Then he asked him to show him his dress, whereon he doffed the shell from a black skin stretched over an emaciated trunk [his body having such a black and lean appearance], and he [the king's son] felt pity when he beheld on his body the traces of devotion. He then said: "Accept from me a garment for thy body." He rejoined: "How could I accept for myself what I have declined [to accept] for my companions from affection for them; and, if it were proper, I would have procured them the benefit thereof." He continued: "Then leave with me. these clothes of thine, and take others instead of them, because I should like to possess a pledge to keep from thee." He replied: "My wish to exchange something old for something new will extend my hopes in proportion of the time which each lasts. Then let it be so, but wilt thou give me a garment resembling it in decay?" Then he called for one

of his own garments, which he [the ascetic] took, and gave him a pledge [or promise] that he would return to him before the expiration of the year, in case he should not die or be overcome [or hindered by some accident]. He agreed, took leave of him, gave him his best wishes, and he [the ascetic] departed.

The king's son then secretly addicted himself to devotion, removed his clothes in the night, and donning the said [worn-out] garment [of the ascetic Belavhar] prayed therein till morning. The confidential servant of the king to [watch over] his son, being displeased with the access of Belavhar to the king's son, made use of a stratagem, and informed the king thereof, who then became very angry and sorrowful, but afterwards had recourse to gentleness [or delay] on account of what he hoped [to accomplish] by [the use of] cunning towards his son. He accordingly summoned to his presence an interpreter of dreams, [who was also] a sorcerer, and said: "We have been afflicted by the sting against which we had not ceased to be on our guard, and which we had feared concerning our son; then what is the advice?" The sorcerer replied: "The first advice is to call this man, namely Belavhar, and if we get hold of him, thou wilt strike him with our argument against the professors of asceticism, because they abstain from the food wherewith Allah has bountifully provided them to partake thereof, and to be thankful for it; and because they have cut themselves off from progeny, whereby alone the earth is made habitable, and the praise of Allah is augmented. If we thus attain what will turn the king's son [away from asceticism], and what will make him acquainted with his error, we shall have accomplished our purpose, or else we shall reprove him. Then I shall assume the form of the ascetic [by means of my sorcery ?], in such a manner that the king's son will deny nothing of the covenant of his friend [and will not doubt that I am Belavhar]. Then I shall address him in his own language [according to his own ascetic tenets], by showing him the falseness thereof, and making him confess his aberration in his pretensions to abandon the cultivation

[or society] of the world, and verily this will be his medicine [or rather cure from asceticism], unless thou art of [a different] opinion." Accordingly the king issued a command

[Here the MS. breaks off in the middle of the sentence.]

The opinion of Dr. Fritz Hommel as to the manner of the probable termination of this MS., if the end of it had not been lost, is as follows:

On the leaf (or leaves) that are wanting the information would have been given, how the king intended to get hold of Belavhar and could not find him, but had instead of him captured another ascetic, and caused him to be tortured; and how then the sorcerer's second advice was executed, and the false Belavhar (namely the sorcerer himself) was then introduced to the prince; how then, furthermore, instead of the false ascetic having been able to confound the prince, the latter, on the contrary, had converted the sorcerer to asceticism; how also a second sorcerer (in the Christian romance Theudas, surmised to be Devadatta in the Indian), who desires to seduce the prince by spectral appearances of beautiful women, is likewise by him led to a similar internal transformation; and how then, at last, the king gives to his son one-half of his kingdom, hoping thereby again to turn him to worldly thoughts; how the prince accepts it, but immediately after his father's death surrenders it to another man, in order entirely to withdraw himself into the desert, where he at last finds Belavhar again, and becomes after continuous asceticism and penance a real Buddha.

ART. III.-Adventures of a Japanese Sailor in the Malay Archipelago, A.D. 1764 to 1771. By W. G. ASTON, C.M.G., D.Lit., M.R.A.S.

THE following narrative is abridged from a Japanese book called "Nankai Kibun" (Notes of the Southern Ocean), which records the examination by the officials of Chikuzen in Kiushiu, of a native of that province, named Magotaro, who had been cast away on an island near Mindanao, and, after a captivity of seven years, was ultimately brought back to Japan in a Dutch ship.

I have, as far as possible, substituted the names of places given in our maps for those used by Magotarō.

MAGOTARO'S STATEMENT.

In the 13th year of Hōreki (A.D. 1763) I shipped as sailor on board the Isemaru,' a new junk, owned by a man called Bumpachi, and commanded by his son Jiuzayemon. I was then twenty-one years of age. After several voyages to Ōsaka and Yedo with cargoes of rice, we sailed from Shinagawa in the sixth month of the following year for Tsugaru, to load with timber. We had a fair wind for the north, and were running with sheets slacked out off Kashima, on the eastern coast, when one of the crew named Genzo fell from the deck house into the sea. Sail was shortened, and we threw him gratings and poles, shouting to encourage him. We then lowered a boat, and searched everywhere near the spot where he had fallen overboard, but all was useless. Nothing could be seen of him, so we again made sail and proceeded

1 The roadstead of Yedo.

2 A Japanese junk has one large square sail, and the sheets, of which there are a number, fastened by rings to the deck, also serve the purpose of reefing-points. Slacking out the sheets' is therefore equivalent to'shaking out a reef."