"Not sal, acacia, not mare's-ear , much less a shrub is good;
There is a tree they call plassey, and there's your best wheel-wood."

The man was pleased to hear this, and thought, "A happy day it was brought me into the woodland. Here's a creature in the shape of a beast to tell me what wood is good for the wheelwright! Hey, but that's fine!" So he questioned the Lion in the fourth stanza:

"What is the fashion of the leaves, what sort the trunk to see,
Come tell me true, I ask of you, that I may know that tree?"

In reply the Lion repeated two stanzas:

"This is the tree whose branch you see droop, bend, but never break;
This is the plassey, on whose roots my standing-place I take.

"For spoke or felloe, pole of car, or wheel, or any part,
This plassey tree will do for thee in making of a cart."

After this declaration, the Lion moved aside, joy in his heart. The wright began to fell the tree. Then the tree-deity thought, "I never dropt anything on that beast; he fell in a rage out of season, and now he

is for destroying my home, and I too shall be destroyed. [210] I must find some way of destroying his majesty." So assuming the shape of a woodman, he came up to the wright, and said to him, "Ho man! a fine tree you have there! what will you do with it when it is down?"--"Make a cart wheel."--"What! has any one told you that tree is good for a cart?" "Yes, a black Lion."--"Very good, well said black Lion. You can make a fine cart out of that tree, says he. But I tell you that if you flay off the skin from a black lion's neck, and put it around the outer edge of the wheel, like a sheath of iron, just a strip four fingers wide, the wheel will be very strong, and you will gain a great deal by it."--"But where can I get the skin of a black lion?"--"How stupid you are! The tree stands fast in the forest, and won't run away. You go and find the lion who told you about this tree, and ask him in what part of the tree you are to cut, and bring him here. Then while he suspects nothing, and points out this place or that, wait till he sticks his jaw out, and smite him as he speaks with your sharpest axe, kill him, take the skin, eat the best of the flesh, and fell the tree at your leisure." Thus he indulged his wrath.

To explain this matter, the Master repeated the following stanzas:

"Thus did at once the plassey tree his will and wish make clear:
"I too a message have to tell: O Bharadvaja, hear!

"'From shoulder of the king of beasts cut off four inches wide,
And put it round the wheel, for so more strong it will abide."

"So in a trice the plassey tree, indulging in his ire,
On lions born and those unborn brought down destruction dire."