Source.—V. Fausböll, Five Jãtakas. Copenhagen, 1861. pp. 35-8, text and translation of the Jãvasakuna Jãtaka. I have ventured to English Prof. Fausböll's version, which was only intended as a "crib" to the Pali. For the omitted Introduction, see supra.
Parallels.—I have given a rather full collection of parallels, running to about a hundred numbers, in my Æsop, pp. 232-4. The chief of these are: (1) for the East, the Midrashic version ("Lion and Egyptian Partridge"), in the great Rabbinic commentary on Genesis (Bereshithrabba, c. 64); (2) in classical antiquity, Phædrus, i. 8 ("Wolf and Crane"), and Babrius, 94 ("Wolf and Heron"), and the Greek proverb Suidas, ii. 248 ("Out of the Wolfs Mouth"); (3) in the Middle Ages, the so-called Greek Æsop, ed. Halm, 276 b, really prose versions of Babrius and "Romulus," or prose of Phædrus, i. 8, also the Romulus of Ademar (fl. 1030), 64; it occurs also on the Bayeux Tapestry, in Marie de France, 7, and in Benedict of Oxford's Mishle Shualim (Heb.), 8; (4) Stainhöwel took it from the "Romulus" into his German Æsop (1480), whence all the modern European Æsops are derived.
Remarks.—I have selected The Wolf and the Crane as my typical example in my "History of the Æsopic Fable," and can only give here a rough summary of the results I there arrived at concerning the fable, merely premising that these results are at present no more than hypotheses. The similarity of the Jataka form with that familiar to us, and derived by us in the last resort from Phædrus, is so striking that few will deny some historical relation between them. I conjecture that the Fable originated in India, and came West by two different routes. First, it came by oral tradition to Egypt, as one of the Libyan Fables which the ancients themselves distinguished from the Æsopic Fables. It was, however, included by Demetrius Phalereus, tyrant of Athens, and founder of the Alexandrian library c. 300 B.C., in his Assemblies of Æsopic Fables, which I have shown to be the source of Phædrus' Fables c. 30 A.D. Besides this, it came from Ceylon in the Fables of Kybises—i.e., Kasyapa the Buddha—c. 50 A.D, was adapted into Hebrew, and used for political purposes, by Rabbi Joshua ben Chananyah in a harangue to the Jews c. 120 A.D., begging them to be patient while within the jaws of Rome. The Hebrew form uses the lion, not the wolf, as the ingrate, which enables us to decide on the Indian provenance of the Midrashic version. It may be remarked that the use of the lion in this and other Jatakas is indirectly a testimony to their great age, as the lion has become rarer and rarer in India during
