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choose you for my friend, as you are a creature capable of delivering from such calamities." When the mouse saw that crow from the inside of his hole, he said, " Depart ! what friendship can there be between the eater and his prey?" Then the crow said,— " God forbid ! If I were to eat you, my hunger might be satisfied for a moment, but if I make you my friend, my life will be always preserved by you." "When the crow had said this, and more, and had taken an oath, and so inspired confidence in the mouse, the mouse came out, and the crow made friends with him. The mouse brought out pieces of flesh and grains of rice, and there they both remained eating together in great happiness.
And one day the crow said to his friend the mouse: " At a considerable distance from this place there is a river in the middle of a forest, and in it there lives a tortoise named Mantharaka, who is a friend of mine; for his sake I will go to that place where flesh and other food is easily obtained; it is difficult for me to obtain sustenance here, and I am in continual dread of the fowler." When the crow said this to him, the mouse answered,— " Then we will live together, take me there also; for I too have an annoyance here, and when we get there, I will explain the whole matter to you." When Hiranya said this, Laghupátin took him in his beak, and flew to the bank of that forest stream. And there, he found his friend, the tortoise Mantharaka, who welcomed him, and he and the mouse sat with him. And after they had conversed a little, that crow told the tortoise the cause of his coming, together with the circumstance of his having made friends with Hiranya. Then the tortoise adopted the mouse, as his friend on an equal footing with the crow, and asked the cause of the annoyance which drove him from his native place. Then Hiranya gave this account of his experiences in the hearing of the crow and the tortoise.
Story of the Mouse and the Hermit,*[1]:— I lived in a great hole near the city, and one night I stole a necklace from the palace, and laid it up in my hole. And by looking at that necklace I acquired strength, †[2] and a number of mice attached themselves to me, as being able to steal food for them. In the meanwhile a hermit had made a cell near my hole, and he lived on a large stock of food, which he obtained by begging. Every evening he used to put the food, which remained over after he had eaten, in his beggar's porringer on an in-
- ↑ * Cp. Wolff, I, 159, Knatchbull, 201, Symeon Seth, 47, John of Capua, g., 3, b., German translation (Ulm, 1483) M., IV, b., Spanish translation, XXXI, b., Doni, 18, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 273, Livre des Lumières, 211, Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 410, Hitopadeśa (Johnson) Fable V, p. 22. (Benfey, Vol. I, p. 316.)
- ↑ † For jata we must read játa. Cp. for the power given by a treasure the 18th chapter of this work, see also Benfey, Vol. I, p. 320.
