CHAPTER VI
In describing the adventures of the Prince of India during his search for the greatest rarity on earth, we are confronted not by a lack but by a superabundance, a prolixity, an extraordinary embarrassment of too much material in which we have to separate the chaff from the wheat, and vice versa. For the contemporary accounts by Hindu poets, theologians, and historians, written in the most classic and most elegant Sanskrit, fill over seven thousand enormous tomes, twisted and baroque with Oriental parlance and imagery and illustrated with countless charming miniatures. Therefore, having read and digested every last one of them, we have decided to give here only the gist of the shortest of these accounts, which begins, piously and properly:
"Rung hao! Hail to the gods! Greetings, salutations, and genuflections to Surya, the Sun; Vayu, the Wind; Yama, the Judge of
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