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One day Chitránga was behind time, and Laghupátin flew to the top of a tree to look for him, and surveyed the whole wood. And he saw Chitránga on the bank of the river, entangled in the fatal noose, and then he came down and told this to the mouse and the tortoise. Then they deliberated together, and Laghupátin took up the mouse in his beak, and carried him to Chitrauga. And the mouse Hiranya comforted the door, who was distressed at being caught, and in a moment set him at liberty by gnawing his bonds asunder.*[1] In the meanwhile the tortoise Manthara, who was devoted to his friends, came up the bank near them, having travelled along the bed of the river. At that very moment the hunter, who had set the noose, arrived from somewhere or other, and when the deer and the others escaped, caught and made prize of the tortoise. And he put it in a net, and went off, grieved at having lost the deer. In the meanwhile the friends saw what had taken place, and by the advice of the far-seeing mouse, the deer went a considerable distance off, and fell down as if he were dead.†[2] And the crow stood upon his head, and pretended to peck his eyes. When the hunter saw that, he imagined that he had captured the deer, as it was dead, and he began to make for it, after putting down the tortoise on the bank of the river. When the mouse saw him making towards the deer, he came up, and gnawed a hole in the net which held the tortoise, so the tortoise was set at liberty, and he plunged into the river. And when the deer saw the hunter coming near, without the tortoise, he got up, and ran off, and the crow, for his part, flew up a tree. Then the hunter came back, and finding that the tortoise had escaped by the net's having been gnawed asunder, he returned home, lamenting that the tortoise had fled and could not be recovered.
Then the four friends came together again in high spirits, and the gratified deer addressed the three others as follows; " I am fortunate in having obtained you for friends, for you have to-day delivered me from death at the risk of your lives." In such words the deer praised the crow and the tortoise and the mouse, and they all lived together delighting in their mutual friendship.
Thus, you see, even animals attain their ends by wisdom, and they risk their lives sooner than abandon their friends in calamity. So full of
- ↑ * As he does the lion in Babrius, 107.
- ↑ † Benfey compares Grimm R. F. CCLXXXIV, Renart, br. 25, Grimm Kinderund Hausmarchen, 68, (III, 100) Keller, Romans dos sept Sages, CLII, Dyocletian, Einleitung, 48, Conde Lucanoi;, XLIII. (Benfey, Vol. I, p. 333). See also Lafontaine's Fables, XII, 15. This is perhaps the story which General Cunningham found represented on a bas-relief of the Bharhut Stúpa. (See General Cunningham's Stúpa of Bharhut, p. 67.) The origin of the story is no doubt the Birth-story of " The Cunning Deer," Rhys Davids' translation of the Játakas, pp. 221— 223.
