Then the man says, “Jackal-artificer, hear this case.”
“I am both the judge and the witness,” the Jackal said. “Now then, taking a cudgel beat thou him until he dies. I saw thy excellence and this one’s wickedness.”
Durayā. North-western Province.
This is one of the best-known of folk-tales. A Malay variant is given in Mr. W. Skeat’s Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest, p. 20. A tiger, being released from a cage-trap by a man, seized him in order to eat him. When appealed to, the road and tree were against him. The Mouse-deer, which in Malaya fills the place of the clever animal in folk-tales, got the tiger to return to the cage, and called the neighbours to kill it.
The tiger story is given in Old Deccan Days (Frere), p. 198 ff., and the appeal was made to a banyan tree, camel, bullock, eagle, and alligator [crocodile], which were against the man. The Jackal settled it in his favour.
In Wide-Awake Stories (Steel and Temple), p. 116—Tales of the Punjab, p. 107—the matter was referred to a pipal (or bō) tree, a road, and the Jackal, who induced the tiger to re-enter the trap, and left him there.
In Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes), p. 16, the matter was not referred to others, but the Jackal told the tiger a good way of eating the man, by getting inside a large bag and having him thrown in to it. When it was inside the bag, the Jackal, a dog who was present, and the man tied it up, and beat the tiger to death.
The Panchatantra (Dubois), as in several other instances, comes nearest to the Sinhalese story. A Brāhmaṇa carried a Crocodile in a sack from a stream to the Ganges, and was then seized by it. In reply to his appeal to the Crocodile’s virtue and gratitude, he was told, “The virtue and gratitude of our days is to devour those who nourish us and who do good to us.” Reference was made to a mango tree, an old cow (both of which agreed with the Crocodile), and a Jackal, who, stating that he wished to get to the bottom of the matter, induced the Crocodile to re-enter the sack, after which the Jackal broke his head with a stone.
In Indian Nights’ Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 134, a boy on his way to fetch his bride, killed a mungus that was attacking a snake, which then turned on him, to eat him, but gave him eight days’ grace to get married. When he returned with his wife she remonstrated with the snake, and was referred to some trees. One had preserved a thief in its hollow interior, but he found sandalwood there, and cut it down; and now it had become a rule to do evil for good. For the future widow’s protection, the snake gave her magic powder capable of reducing to ashes whatever it fell on, so she applied it to the snake, and burnt it to dust.