In The Jātaka, No. 80 (vol. i, p. 204) there is a story which closely agrees with this. The clever man was a dwarfish Brāhmaṇa who, aware that he would not be employed on account of his small size, joined with a huge ignorant weaver, who received an appointment as archer to the King at Benares. By following the Brāhmaṇa’s instructions the weaver obtained all the credit of killing a tiger and buffalo as in this tale, but becoming proud, he treated his adviser with scorn. Afterwards, when ordered to attack a hostile force he was so overcome with fear that the Brāhmaṇa made him descend from the elephant on which they were riding, and he himself then attacked the enemy’s camp, captured the King, and was loaded with honours.
The despatch of the message attached to the arrow is not mentioned in this story; but in the Jātaka tale No. 181 (vol. ii, p. 62) Prince Asadisa, son of a King of Benares, is represented as scratching a message on an arrow, firing it into the camp of some hostile forces headed by seven Kings who were besieging the city, and thereby scaring these enemies away. A footnote states that in the Mahāvastu the message was wrapped round the arrow.
In two instances in the Mahā Bhārata (Drōna Parva, xcix, and cci) the senders’ names were engraved on arrows.
In the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton’s ed., vol. 4, p. 103), a Prince wrote a letter, set it on the point of an arrow, and shot it into a garden in which a lady was walking.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 519, a young Brāhmaṇa suggested to a Prince that he should receive a daily salary of one hundred gold pieces; this was paid to him. In the same work, vol. ii, p. 251, an unknown man demanded and received five hundred dīnārs (about £250) as his daily wage. In the Hitōpadēśa an unknown Rājput was granted four hundred gold pieces as his daily pay.
While the Sinhalese were besieging the Portuguese in Colombo in A.D. 1588, the Sinhalese King shot into the fort a letter containing a demand for the safe conduct of officials who were to arrange a truce (Pieris, Ceylon, vol. i, p. 243).