A similar idea is expressed in a fable of the Pañcatantra (IV. 8) where a dyer, not being rich enough to feed his donkey, puts a tiger’s skin on him. In this disguise the donkey is allowed to roam through all the corn-fields without being molested, till one day he sees a female donkey, and begins to bray. Thereupon the owners of the field kill him.
In the Hitopadeśa (III. 3) the same fable occurs, only that there it is the keeper of the field who on purpose disguises himself as a she-donkey, and when he hears the tiger bray, kills him.
In the Chinese Avadânas, translated by Stanislas Julien (vol. ii. p. 59), the donkey takes a lion’s skin and frightens everybody, till he begins to bray, and is recognized as a donkey.
In this case it is again quite clear that the Greeks did not borrow their fable and proverb from the Pañcatantra; but it is not so easy to determine positively whether the fable was carried from the Greeks to the East, or whether it arose independently in two places.
[12.] Calilah et Dimna, ou, Fables de Bidpai, en Arabe, précédées d’un Mémoire sur l’origine de ce livre. Par Sylvestre de Sacy. Paris, 1816.
[13.] Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Essai sur les Fables Indiennes, et sur leur Introduction en Europe. Paris, 1838.
[14.] Pantschatantra, Fünf Bucher indischer Fabeln, Märchen und Erzählungen, mit Einleitung. Von. Th. Benfey. Leipzig, 1859.
[15.] See Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, vol. ii. p. 84.
[16.] Benfey, p. 60.
[17.] Cf. Barlaam et Joasaph, ed. Boissonade, p. 37.