"Too long, forsooth, I've borne the sight Of these poor chatterers of lies — The refuse-eater and the offal-eater Belauding each other!"
And making himself visible in awful shape, he frightened them away from the place!
It is easy to understand, that when this story had been carried out of those countries where the crow and the jackal are the common scavengers, it would lose its point; and it may very well, therefore, have been shortened into the fable of the Fox and the Crow and the piece of cheese. On the other hand, the latter is so complete and excellent a story, that it would scarcely have been expanded, if it had been the original, into the tale of the Jackal and the Crow.[1]
The next tale to be quoted is one showing how a wise man solves a difficulty. I am sorry that Mr. Fausböll has not yet reached this Jātaka in his edition of the Pāli text; but I give it from a Siŋhalese version of the fourteenth century, which is nearer to the Pāli than any other as yet known.[2] It is an episode in
- ↑ See La Fontaine, Book i. No. 2, and the current collections of Æsop's Fables (e.g. James's edition, p. 136). It should be added that the Jambu-khādaka-saŋyutta in the Saŋyutta Nikāya has nothing to do with our fable. The Jambu-eater of that story is an ascetic, who lives on Jambus, and is converted by a discussion on Nirvāna.
- ↑ The Siŋhalese text will be found in the 'Sidat Saŋgarāwa;' p. clxxvii.
