Notes.
This fable appears to be distantly related to the European fable of “The Dog and his Shadow.” More closely connected, however, is an apologue incorporated in a Buddhistic birth-story, the “Culladhanuggaha-jātaka,” No. 374. In this Indian story,—
An unfaithful wife eloping with her lover arrives at the bank of a stream. There the lover persuades her to strip herself, so that he may carry her clothes across the stream, which he proceeds to do, but never returns. Indra, seeing her plight, changes himself into a jackal bearing a piece of meat, and goes down to the bank of the stream. In its waters fish are disporting; and the Indra-jackal, laying aside his meat, plunges in after one of them. A vulture hovering near seizes hold of the meat and bears it aloft; and the jackal, returning unsuccessful from his fishing, is taunted by the woman, who had observed all this, in the first gātha:—
“O jackal so brown! most stupid are you;
No skill have you got, not knowledge, nor wit;
Your fish you have lost, your meat is all gone,
And now you sit grieving all poor and forlorn.”
To which the Indra-jackal repeats the second gātha:—
“The faults of others are easy to see,
But hard indeed our own are to behold;
Thy husband thou hast lost, and lover eke,
And now, I ween, thou grievest o’er thy loss.”
The same story is found in the “Pancatantra” (V, viii; see Benfey, I : 468), whence it made its way into the “Tūtī-nāmeh.” It does not appear to be known in the Occident in this form (it is lacking in the “Kalilah and Dimnah”).
Although the details of our story differ from those of the Indian fable of “The Jackal and the Faithless Wife,” the general outlines of the two are near enough to justify us in supposing a rather close connection between them. I know of no European analogues nearly so close, and am inclined to consider “The Greedy Crow” a native Tagalog tale. From the testimony of the narrator, it appears that the fable is not a recent importation.