In Indian Nights’ Entertainment, Panjāb (Swynnerton), p. 83, a weaver got a smith to make a sickle that would cut corn of itself. He laid it beside the standing corn, which he ordered it to cut; but on returning he found no work done, and the sickle ill with fever, through being in the sun. The smith to whom he applied for advice recommended him to tie a string to it, and lower it into a well; this cooled it. When his mother caught fever he treated her in the same way until she died and became cold.
No. 63
The Jackal’s Judgment
At a village there is a tank. A Crocodile, making a burrow in the [foot of the] embankment, stayed in it. Afterwards the mud having dried and become hard, the Crocodile being unable to get out of the hole was going to die.
As a man was going past to fetch a midwife-mother to attend to his wife, the Crocodile, hearing him, said to the man, “Somehow or other manage to save me by breaking up the earth so that I may get out.” The man broke up the earth, and let it out.
After that, as there was no water left in the tank, the man, placing the Crocodile on his shoulder, went to the edge of the river. Having gone there, after he had placed it in the water, the Crocodile seized the arm of that man in order to eat him.
“Why wilt thou eat me?” he asked. “Dost thou not know the help I gave thee? Yet thou art going to eat me!”
The Crocodile said, “It is true, indeed, regarding the assistance. It is because I am hungry that I am going to eat thee.”
The man said, “It is good. Eat thou me. There are my witnesses, two or three persons. First ask them [regarding the justice of it], and then eat me.” So they went to ask the witnesses about it.