Notes.
This fable appears to be distantly related to the European fable of “The Dog and his Shadow.” More closely connected, however, is an apologue incorporated in a Buddhistic birth-story, the “Culladhanuggaha-jātaka,” No. 374. In this Indian story,—
An unfaithful wife eloping with her lover arrives at the bank of a stream. There the lover persuades her to strip herself, so that he may carry her clothes across the stream, which he proceeds to do, but never returns. Indra, seeing her plight, changes himself into a jackal bearing a piece of meat, and goes down to the bank of the stream. In its waters fish are disporting; and the Indra-jackal, laying aside his meat, plunges in after one of them. A vulture hovering near seizes hold of the meat and bears it aloft; and the jackal, returning unsuccessful from his fishing, is taunted by the woman, who had observed all this, in the first gātha:—
“O jackal so brown! most stupid are you;
No skill have you got, not knowledge, nor wit;
Your fish you have lost, your meat is all gone,
And now you sit grieving all poor and forlorn.”
To which the Indra-jackal repeats the second gātha:—
“The faults of others are easy to see,
But hard indeed our own are to behold;