67
friend, I pray, and we will shew him to you." After saying this, the hare led the king of elephants to the lake, and shewed him the reflection of the moon in the water. When the lord of the herd saw that, he bowed before it timidly at a distance, oppressed with awe, and never came there again. And Śilímukha, the king of the hares, was present, and witnessed the whole transaction, and after honouring that hare, who went as an ambassador, he lived there in security.
When the crow had told this story, he went on to say to the birds, " This is the right sort of king, whose name alone ensures none of his subjects being injured. So why does this base owl, who cannot see in the day, deserve a throne? And a base creature is never to be trusted, hear this tale in proof of it."
Story of the bird, the hare, and the cat.*[1]:—Once on a time I lived in a certain tree, and below me in the same tree a bird, named Kapinjala, had made a nest and lived. One day he went away somewhere, and he did not return for many days. In the meanwhile a hare came and took possession of his nest. After some days Kapinjala returned, and an altercation arose between him and the hare, as both laid claim to the nest, exclaiming; " It is mine, not yours." Then they both set out in search of a qualified arbitrator. And I, out of curiosity, followed them unobserved, to see what would turn up. After they had gone a little way they saw on the bank of a lake a cat, who pretended to have taken a vow of abstinence from injury to all creatures, with his eyes half -closed in meditation. They said to one another; " Why should we not ask this holy
- ↑ * This story is found in "Wolff, I, 197, Knatchbull, 226, Symeon Seth, 60, John of Capua, h., 6, b, German translation (Ulm 1483) O., IV, 6, Spanish translation, 36, b, Doni, 38, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 322, Livre des Lumières, 251, Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 442, Baldo Fab. XX, in Edéléstand du Méril, Poesies Inédites, p. 249. Benfey finds three " moments" in the Fable; the first is, the hypocritical cat"; this conception he considers to be "allgemein menschlich" and compares Furia, 14, Coraes, 152, Furia, 15, Coraes, 6, Furia, 67, Coraes, 28, Robert, Fables Inédites, I, 216; also Mahábhárata V. (II, 283) 5421 and ff, where the cat manages to get herself taken to the river, to die, by the rats and mice, and there eats them. The second moment is the folly of litigiousness: here he compares a passage in Dubois's Panchatantra. The third is the object of contention, the nest, for which he compares Phædrus, I, 21. (Benfey, Vol. I, pp. 350-354). I should compare, for the Ist moment, Phædrus, Lib. II, Fabula, IV, (recognovit Lucianus Mueller) Aquila, Feles et Aper, La Fontaine, VII, 16. See also for the "hypocritical cat" Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 121. The cat's tactics are much the same as those of-the fox in Reineke Fuchs (Simrock, Deutache Volksbücher, Vol. I, p. 138.) See also Do Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. II, p. 54. The story is No. CXXV in the Avadánas. From De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, pp. 227-228 it appears that kapinjala means a heath-cock, or a cuckoo. Here tho word appears to be used as a proper name.
