The story is given in Indian Fables (Ramaswami Raju), p. 88. A Crane pretended to carry the fish to a pond, and was killed by a Crab.
In Skeat’s Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest, p. 18, the bird was a Pelican, which was killed by a Crab.
In the Panchatantra (Dubois), a Cormorant came to the fishes at a pool, and allayed their suspicions by putting on an appearance of piety and by alleging that he had become a religious devotee. He informed them that he foresaw a twelve years’ drought, in which the pools would dry up and they would perish, and he offered to transport them to a mountain pool fed by a perennial spring. They were eaten on a rock, and the Crab strangled the bird.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. ii, p. 31, the animals were a Crane and a Makara, which is said by the translator to generally mean a crocodile, though in early carvings in Ceylon and India it is a fabulous animal with two short legs and a tail usually curved upon its back. The bird frightened the fish by saying that a man was coming to catch them with a net, and he offered to convey them to a lake. When the Makara was taken to the rock at which the others were killed, he cut off the Crane’s head.
This story nearly agrees with that in the Hitōpadesa, in which a Crab killed the bird.
[1] Kokkā, a word which also means Egret, and some other large wading birds. [↑]
[2] Lūlā (Ophiocephalus striatus). [↑]