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These quaint stories were related to me many years ago in India by my faithful bearer Pir Mahomed, and they have always stuck in my memory as splendid examples of the art of parable.

Pir Mahomed was a deeply religious man and spent most of his time when he should have been occupied with my work in reading the Koran. This he did seated on the ground with legs crossed and the holy book on a small wooden stand before him. As he read in a deep monotone he swayed himself slowly backwards and forwards, emitting a sound like the buzzing of a gigantic bumblebee. He admitted to me that he understood very little of the Arabic text, but in all Eastern religions the mere reading from a holy book brings merit.

On stifling evenings of the Indian hot weather I used to sit in a long chair under the punkah in my verandah, and when he seemed in the mood for it I let Pir Mahomed squat by my side and guide my thoughts into the paths of virtue.

The three parables I recount are of course not original, they are known to most Mahomedans and may have their exact counterparts in Christian versions, but as I have never come across them myself I set them down here in the style in which Pir Mahomed narrated them.