and your royal pomp: be not undone, but cease from eating man's flesh." The king said, "All this is not dearer to me than man's flesh." "Then depart, sire, from this city and kingdom." "Kalahatthi," he said, "I do not want my kingdom; I am ready to depart, but grant me one favour; let me have my sword and my cook." So they let him take a sword, a vessel for cooking man's flesh and a basket, and giving him his cook they carried out his expulsion from the kingdom. [471] Taking his cook he set out from the city and entered a forest and made his dwelling at the foot of a banyan tree. Living there he would take his stand on the road which led through the forest, and killing men he would bring their bodies and give them to the cook, and he cooked the flesh and served it up and both of them lived after this manner. And when he sallied forth, crying, "Here am I, the man-eating robber!" no one could hold his own, and they all fell to the ground and any one of them that he fancied, he seized, heels upwards or not as it might happen, and gave him to his cook. One day, he did not find any man in the forest, and when on his return the cook said, "How is this, sire?" he told him to put the pot on the brasier. "But where is the meat, sire?" "Oh! I will find some meat," he said. Thought the cook, "I am a dead man," and all of a tremble he made a fire and put the pot on the brasier. Then the man-eater killed him with a stroke of his sword and cooked and ate his flesh. Thenceforth he was quite alone and had to cook his food himself. The rumour spread throughout all India, "The man-eater murders wayfaring men." At that time a certain wealthy brahmin who traded with five hundred waggons was travelling from the east in a westerly direction and he thought, "This man-eating robber, they say, murders men on the road. By a payment of money I will make my way through the forest." So he paid a thousand pieces of money to the people who lived at the entrance of the forest, bidding them convoy him safely through it and set out on the road with them. He placed all his caravan in front of him, and having bathed and anointed himself and put on sumptuous apparel he seated himself in an easy carriage drawn by white oxen, and escorted by his convoy he travelled last of all. The man-eater climbing up a tree was on the look out for men, but though he felt no appetite for any of the rest of the convoy, no sooner did he catch sight of the brahmin than his mouth watered through desire to eat him. When the brahmin came up to him, [472] he proclaimed his name, crying, "Here am I, the man-eating robber," and brandishing his sword, like to one filling men's eyes with sand, he leaped upon them and no man was able to stand up against him, but they all fell prone upon the ground. Seizing the brahmin as he sat in his easy carriage by the foot he slung him on his back, head downwards, and striking his head against his heels so carried him off. The men rising up cried one to another, "Ho! my man, bestir yourself. We received a thousand pieces of money from the