In long-past times there lived in a forest a lioness with her cub and a tigress with her cub. While the lioness was absent one day, her cub, while wandering about, came into the neighbourhood of the tigress. When the tigress saw it, she was going to kill it, but she changed her mind, seeing that the young lion might be a playfellow for her own cub, and so she began to give it suck. The lioness, on her return from her outing, not finding her young one, set to work to look for it, and at length saw the tigress suckling it. When the tigress perceived the lioness, she was frightened and began to run away. But the lioness cried out to the tigress, “O sister, run not away. Let us dwell together, so that, when I go out, you can take care of my young one, and when you go out, I will take care of yours.” So they took to dwelling together, and they called the lion cub Sudaṇshṭhra, and the tiger cub Subāhu. And the two cubs grew up.
After a time the lioness and the tigress fell ill, and when the time for their departure came, they said to the two young beasts, “O children, as ye have both sucked the same dugs, be ye brothers. The world is full of evil calumniators, take heed after our death not to listen to any of them.” [[329]]
Now the young lion was wont to kill gazelles, and to devour their good flesh and lap their good blood, and then, having done this, to betake himself at once to his lair. But the young tiger, when he went out, underwent great fatigue in killing gazelles, and having devoured their flesh and lapped their blood, returned home after a long absence. One day the tiger devoured the remains of a meal which he had hidden away, and then returned quickly home. The lion asked, “How is it that you, who never came back before till after a long time, have returned to-day so soon?” The tiger replied, “I have eaten the stores which I had set aside.” The lion asked, “Do you lay up stores, then?” The tiger said that it did. The lion said, “When I have slain gazelles and eaten their good flesh and lapped their good blood, I am wont to go away without troubling myself further.” The tiger replied, “You are strong. I cannot do like that.” The lion said, “Let us go together.” So they took to going out together.
Now an old, very malicious, remainder-devouring jackal, was in the habit of following after this lion, the king of the beasts. The jackal considered that the tiger was the antagonist of his maw, and that he must set those two animals at variance. So he came into the presence of the lion with drooping ears. The lion said, “O uncle, has any hot wind arisen?”
The jackal replied, “O nephew, a very scorching wind has arisen.”
“What has happened then?”
“This tiger has said, ‘Where has my lion-grass gone? As he leaves me to feed on remnants, I will assuredly kill him.’ ”
The lion replied, “O uncle, our two mothers said to us just before they died, ‘O children, as ye two have sucked the same dugs, be brothers. The world is full of evil calumniators. Take heed that after we are both dead, ye do not listen to any one among them.’ As they have left such a legacy behind them, do not you speak in that way.” [[330]]
The jackal said, “As you will not listen to my well-meant words, you will come to ruin.”
The lion said, “O uncle, what will be the course of events?”