Story of the physician who tried to cure a hunchback.
And a certain Bráhman said to a foolish physician; “Drive in the hump on the back of my son who is deformed.” When the physician heard that, he said; “Give me ten paṇas, I will give you ten times as many, if I do not succeed in this.” Having thus made a bet, and having taken the ten paṇas from the Bráhman, the physician only tortured the hunchback with sweating and other remedies. But he was not able to remove the hump; so he paid down the hundred paṇas; for who in this world would be able to make straight a hunchbacked man?
“So the boastful fashion of promising to accomplish impossibilities only makes a man ridiculous. Therefore a discreet person should not walk in these ways of fools.” When the wise prince Naraváhanadatta had heard, at night, these tales of fools from his auspicious-mouthed minister, named Gomukha, he was exceedingly pleased with him.
And though he was pining for Śaktiyaśas, yet, owing to the pleasure he derived from the stories that Gomukha told him, he was enabled to get to sleep, when he went to bed, and slept surrounded by his ministers who had grown up with him.
[1] See Benfey’s Panchatantra, IIIrd book, page 213, Vol. II. Benfey points out that in the Mahábhárata, Droṇa’s son, one of the few Kauravas that had survived the battle, was lying under a sacred fig-tree, on which crows were sleeping. Then he sees one owl come and kill many of the crows. This suggests to him the idea of attacking the camp of the Páṇḍavas. In the Arabic text the hostile birds are ravens and owls. So in the Greek and the Hebrew translation. John of Capua has “sturni,” misunderstanding the Hebrew. (Benfey, Vol. I, 335). Rhys Davids states in his Buddhist Birth Stories (p. 292 note,) that the story of the lasting feud between the crows and the owls is told at length in Játaka, No. 270.
[2] For Praḍívin the Petersburg lexicographers would read Prajívin, as in the Panchatantra.
[3] Benfey remarks that this fable was known to Plato; Cratylus, 411, A, (but the passage might refer to some story of Bacchus personating Hercules, as in the Ranæ,) and he concludes that the fable came from Greece to India. He compares Æsop, (Furia, 141, Coraes, 113,) Lucianus, Piscator, 32, Erasmus, “Asinus apud Cumanos,” Robert, Fables Inédites, I, 360. (Benfey, Vol. I, p. 463.) I cannot find the fable in Phædrus or Babrius. The skin is that of a tiger in Benfey’s translation, and also in Johnson’s translation of the Hitopadeśa, p. 74 in the original (Johnson’s edition). See also Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 119. It is No. 189 in Fausböll’s edition of the Játakas, and will be found translated in Rhys Davids’ Introduction to his Buddhist Birth Stories, p. v.
[4] Benfey compares Grimm’s Märchen, Vol. III, 246, where parallels to story No. 171 are given; Thousand and one Nights (Weil, III, 923). In a fable of Æsop’s the birds choose a peacock king. (Æsop, Furia, 183, Coraes, 53). (Benfey, Vol. I, p. 347.) See also Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 110, Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, p. 424, De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. II, p. 206. See also p. 246 for an apologue in which the owl prevents the crow’s being made king. See also Rhys Davids’ Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 292. See also Brand’s Popular Antiquities, Vol. III, pp. 196, 197. The story of the crow dissuading the birds from making the owl king is Játaka, No. 270. In the Kosiya Játaka, No. 226, an army of crows attacks an owl.
[5] Cp. Hitopadeśa, 75, Wolff, I, 192; Knatchbull, 223, Symeon Seth, 58, John of Capua, h., 5, b., German translation (Ulm 1483) O., II, Spanish translation, XXXVI, a.; Doni, 36, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 315, Livre des Lumières, 246; Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 437. This fable is evidently of Indian origin. For the deceiving of the elephant with the reflexion of the moon, Benfey compares Disciplina Clericalis XXIV. (Benfey, Vol. I, pp. 348, 349.) See also De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. II, p. 76.