"A cleverer Bear than you told me to come. Because of that I am going,"
she said.
The Bear having said, "Where is there a cleverer Bear than I? Show
me him," went [with her].
Then the Queen, having gone near a well, showed the reflection of
the Bear that was at the bottom of the water. At that time the Bear
which was on the ground sprang into the well in order to bite the
Bear that was in the well. Having sprung in he died.
Then the two brothers, and the Princess, and the two children went
home and stayed there.
North-central Province.
In Le Pantcha-Tantra of the Abbé Dubois, the animals had made an
agreement with a savage lion that one of them should be given to
it each day. When the jackal's turn came he determined to find some
way of destroying their enemy. Seeing his own reflection in a well,
he went to the lion and informed him that another lion was concealed
in a well, and waiting for an opportunity to kill him. When the lion
demanded to be shown him, the jackal led him to the well; showed
him his own reflection, and the lion sprang at it. The jackal then
summoned the other animals, which rolled large stones into the well
and killed the lion.
In the Hitopadesa there is a similar story, the two animals being a
lion and a stag which said another lion had delayed it.
In Indian Fables (Ramaswami Raju), p. 82, the animals were a tiger
and hare.
In Folk-lore of the Telugus (G. R. Subramiah Pantulu), p. 15, they
were a lion and fox (jackal) which stated that another lion had
carried off a fox that it was bringing as the lion's food.
In Indian Nights' Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 4, they were a tiger
and a hare which laid the blame on another tiger for his being late,
saying it claimed the country.
In Old Deccan Days (M. Frere), p. 172, they were a lion and a jackal
and his wife who stated that they had been delayed by another lion.
In The Enchanted Parrot (Rev. B. H. Wortham) this story is
No. XXXI. The animals were a lion and a hare which said he had been
kept a prisoner by a rival lion. This is the form of the tale in the
Katha Sarit Sagara (Tawney), vol. ii, p. 32.
In Folk-Tales from Tibet (O'Connor), p. 51, they were also a lion and
a hare which recommended the lion to eat a large and fierce animal
that lived in a pond, in place of itself.
In Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest (W. Skeat), p. 28,
they were a tiger and a mouse-deer which said it had been stopped by
an old tiger with a flying-squirrel sitting on its muzzle, and so
had been unable to bring it an animal for food. The squirrel which
accompanied the mouse-deer sat on the tiger's muzzle and the deer
on its hind-quarters when it went to drive the other away. The tiger
then sprang at its reflection in the river, and was drowned.