With regard to the elephant’s falling into the pool and being unable to get out, the very thing occurred during a severe drought in the North-western Province in 1877. At a small pool in the upper part of a low rock in the forest, a few miles from Maha-Uswaewa, my station at that time, a female elephant and her young one fell into the water, and were unable to escape because of the steep smooth sides. When I heard of it I sent an overseer with some men, to feed them and release them by throwing in a quantity of branches. This succeeded better than we anticipated; by mounting on the heap of branches they managed to escape during the night, so that we did not capture them as we intended. When the narrator of the folk-story described the pool as being “like a tunnel,” he doubtless meant a vertical tunnel or shaft, having steep sides up which the elephant could not ascend.
In The Jātaka, No. 357 (vol. iii, p. 115), this folk-tale is given, with an evident addition at the beginning, so as to adapt it for service as illustrating the goodness of the Bōdhisatta, and the wickedness of Dēvadatta, his rival. The Bōdhisatta, as the leader of a vast herd of elephants, sheltered a quail’s young ones under his body until his herd had passed. Then came a “rogue” elephant (Dēvadatta) and wilfully trampled on them. The quail got a crow, a blue-fly, and a frog to mislead and destroy the animal. The crow pecked its eyes out, the fly laid its eggs in the sockets, and the frog induced the blinded animal to fall over a precipice below which it croaked. This story being illustrated in the carvings at Bharahat must be of earlier date than 250 B.C.
In Le Pantcha-Tantra of the Abbé Dubois, a South Indian version, the same story is given, the bird being a kind of large lark, according to the Abbé’s note. When the bird’s eggs were broken, the jackal summoned a crow, a gadfly, and a frog, and went with them in search of the elephant. The crow pecked its eyes, the gadfly entered one of its ears, the frog sprang into an adjoining well and croaked as loudly as possible. The elephant, rushing in search of water in which it might escape from its tormentors, jumped or fell into the well.
In the Totā Kahānī (Small), p. 204, a pair of birds—“Sugar-eaters”—made a nest in a tree against which an elephant rubbed its back, the shaking thus caused making the eggs fall out of the nest. One of the birds, determined to be revenged, consulted a bird which had a long bill, a bee, and a frog, and obtained their assistance. The bee intoxicated the elephant by its “ravishing hum,” the bird pecked out its eyes, and the frog enticed it to a deep pit into which it fell.
[1] Kaeṭa kirillī, probably a Bush Lark (Mirafra affinis). One or two other species have this name in Sinhalese, but not the Quail. [↑]
Miṭak witara aeti e kaeṭa kirillī
Ætek maerewwā. Harida kirillī?