Panjab, vol. i. Chaupur, I should explain, is a game played by two players with eight men, each on a board in the shape of a cross, four men to each cross covered with squares. The moves of the men are decided by the throws of a long form of dice. The object of the game is to see which of the players can first move all his men into the black centre square of the cross (Temple, l. c., p. 344, and Legends of Panjab, i. 243-5). It is sometimes said to be the origin of chess.
Parallels.—Rev. C. Swynnerton, "Four Legends about Raja Rasalu," in Folk-Lore Journal, p. 158 seq., also in separate book much enlarged, The Adventures of Raja Rasalu, Calcutta, 1884. Curiously enough, the real interest of the story comes after the end of our part of it, for Kokilan, when she grows up, is married to Raja Rasalu, and behaves as sometimes youthful wives behave to elderly husbands. He gives her her lover's heart to eat, à la Decameron, and she dashes herself over the rocks. For the parallels of this part of the legend see my edition of Painter's Palace of Pleasure, tom. i. Tale 39, or, better, the Programm of H. Patzig, Zur Geschiclite tier Herzmare (Berlin, 1891). Gambling for life occurs in Celtic and other folk-tales; cf. my List of Incidents, s.v. "Gambling for Magic Objects."
Remarks.—Raja Rasalu is possibly a historic personage, according to Capt. Temple, Calcutta Review, 1884, p. 397, flourishing in the eighth or ninth century. There is a place called Sirikap ka-kila in the neighbourhood of Sialkot, the traditional seat of Rasalu on the Indus, not far from Atlock.
Herr Patsig is strongly for the Eastern origin of the romance, and finds its earliest appearance in the West in the Anglo-Norman troubadour, Thomas' Lai Guirun, where it becomes part of the Tristan cycle. There is, so far as I know, no proof of the earliest part of the Rasalu legend (our part) coming to Europe, except the existence of the gambling incidents of the same kind in Celtic and other folk-tales.
Source.—The Sīha Camma Jātaka, Fausboll, No. 189, trans. Rhys-Davids, pp. v. vi.
Parallels.—It also occurs in Somadeva, Katha Sarit Sagara, ed. Tawney, ii. 65, and; n. For Æsopic parallels cf. my Æsop, Av. iv. It is in Babrius, ed. Gitlbaur, 218 (from Greek prose Æsop, ed. Halm, No. 323), and Avian, ed. Ellis, 5, whence it came into the modern Æsop.
Remarks.—Avian wrote towards the end of the third century, and put into Latin mainly those portions of Babrius which are unparalleled
