“Long might the ass,
Clad in a lion’s skin,
Have fed on the barley green.
But he brayed!
And that moment he came to ruin.”
And even whilst he was yet speaking the ass died on the spot!
This story will doubtless sound familiar enough to English ears; for a similar tale is found in our modern collections of so-called ‘Æsop’s Fables.’[1] Professor Benfey has further traced it in mediæval French, German, Turkish, and Indian literature.[2] But it may have been much older than any of these books; for the fable possibly gave rise to a proverb of which we find traces among the Greeks as early as the time of Plato.[3] Lucian gives the fable in full, localizing it at Kumē, in South Italy,[4] and Julien has given us a Chinese version in his ‘Avadānas.’[5] Erasmus, in his work on proverbs,[6] alludes to the fable; and so also does our own Shakespeare in ‘King John.’[7] It is worthy of mention that in one of the later story-books—in a Persian translation, that is, of the Hitopadesa—there is a version of our fable in which it is the vanity of the ass in trying to sing which leads to his disguise being discovered, and thus brings him to grief.[8] But Professor Benfey has shown[9] that this version is simply the rolling into one of the present tale and of another, also widely prevalent, where an ass by trying to sing earns for himself, not thanks, but blows.[10] I shall hereafter attempt to draw some conclusions from the history of the story. But I would here point out that the fable could scarcely have originated in any country in which lions were not common; and that the Jātaka story gives a reasonable explanation of the ass being dressed in the skin, instead of saying that he dressed himself in it, as is said in our ‘Æsop’s Fables.’
The reader will notice that the ‘moral’ of the tale is contained in two stanzas, one of which is put into the mouth of the Bodisat or future Buddha. This will be found to be the case in all the Birth Stories, save that the number of the stanzas differs, and that they are usually all spoken by the Bodisat. It should also be noticed that the identification of the peasant’s son with the Bodisat, which is of so little importance to the story, is the only part of it which is essentially Buddhistic. Both these points will be of importance further on.
The introduction of the human element takes this story, perhaps, out of the class of fables in the most exact sense of that word. I therefore add a story containing a fable proper, where animals speak and act like men.