ABSTRACT
THE marvellous story which I am going to tell you, O auspicious King, has so strange an origin that I must begin with that, if you are to understand how it ever became known to me.
In years and ages long ago there was a King of Persia and Khurasan called Kindamir, who was paramount over India, Sind, China, and those peoples who lived in the savage lands beyond the Oxus. He was a man of bravery, a great rider of horses; he could play with the lance, and loved tourneys, hunting and the clash of arms; but, to all other things, he preferred talk with men of intelligence and delicate wit. At his feasts he gave the places of honour near himself to poets and story tellers; and if ever a stranger at the palace told him a new or striking tale, King Kindamir loaded him with benefits and, after satisfying his least desires, sent him back to his own land with a fine retinue of horsemen and slaves. His own story tellers and poets he treated as equal to wazirs and amirs, so that his palace was the favoured home of all who could make verses, construct odes, or cause dead time and vanished things to live in the spoken word.
