In Folk-Tales of the Telugus (G. R. Subramiah Pantulu), p. 61, it is repeated with the variation that the Brāhmaṇa had four or five goats which he was leading. Four Śūdras (men of low caste) who wished to get them, in turn asked him why he was taking a number of mad dogs. The last Śūdra suggested that it was unsafe to release them, so he tied them to a tree, whence the four men removed them when he had gone.
In the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton’s ed., vol. iii, p. 200), a thief promised another that he would steal an ass that a man was leading by a halter. He went up to it, quietly took off the halter and placed it on his own head without the ass-owner’s observing it, and his friend led away the ass. When he had gone off with it, the haltered man stood still, and on the ass-owner’s turning to look at his ass, told him that he was really the ass, and that he had been transformed into it because of his mother’s curse when he went home drunk and beat her. She had now relented, and as the result of her prayers he had taken his original form once more. The ass-owner apologised for any bad treatment meted out to him, went home, and told his wife, who gave alms by way of atonement, and prayed to Heaven for pardon. Afterwards, when the owner went to purchase another ass he saw his own in the market, and whispered to it, “Doubtless thou hast been getting drunk again and beating thy mother! But, by Allah, I will never buy thee more.”
[1] Tun-muḷu-Toppiyā, the one with the three-cornered hat. [↑]
[4] Bohoma duraṭa, lit. very far. [↑]
[5] Lit., We having gone, will come. [↑]