The Crow said, “Our friend went for food; why has he not come?” When he went to look, having seen that he had been tied in the noose, he said to the Rat, “Friend, that friend of ours went to eat food; having been tied in the noose he is unable to come.”
After that, the Rat having gone cut the noose. He said to this Deer, “Remain lying down in the grass field,” he said. (To make it appear to be dead the Crow perched on the body of the Deer.)
When [he saw that] this Crow had perched on the back of the Deer, that Gamarāla says to the Jackal, “To-day indeed he has died.”
When this Gamarāla was going near the Deer, the Deer, having said “Hū,” bounded away. Then the Gamarāla struck the Jackal [with his axe]. The Jackal says, “Not being obedient [to the Precepts], an axe-thunderbolt struck me,” [and died].
Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
In The Jātaka, No. 16 (vol. i, p. 49), a deer that was snared is described as shamming death[5] as in the second of these tales, and escaping when the hunter unfastened the noose.
In the Jātaka tale No. 216 (vol. ii, p. 106), when an antelope, a woodpecker, and a tortoise (turtle) lived near a lake, a hunter caught the antelope in a leather noose. While the tortoise endeavoured to gnaw through the leather, the woodpecker went off to make evil omens and delay the hunter in the early morning. It did this by uttering a cry, flapping its wings, and striking him in the face as he opened the front door of his hut. He thought “Some bird of evil omen has struck me,” so he turned back and lay down for a short time. By repeating this at the back-door the bird made the man remain at home till sunrise. When at last he approached the antelope the tortoise had gnawed through all but one thong; the antelope burst this and escaped. The jackal is not introduced into this version, which being illustrated in the early Bharahat reliefs is of earlier date than 250 B.C.
In Le Pantcha-Tantra of the Abbé Dubois, a crow, a rat, a turtle, and a gazelle formed a friendship together. When the gazelle was caught the rat brought others and gnawed through the nets and saved it. Afterwards when the rat and turtle were likely to be seized, the gazelle led the hunters away, and its friends escaped. The jackal is not mentioned.
In the Hitōpadēśa a crow, a rat, a turtle, and an antelope were friends; a hunter caught the turtle and tied it to his bow in order to take it home. By the rat’s advice the antelope feigned death, the crow perched on it, and while the hunter went with his knife to the antelope the rat gnawed in two the string that held the turtle, which at once plunged into the water; the antelope then ran off. In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. ii, p. 52, a mouse takes the place of the rat.