_Source._--V. Fausböll, _Five Jatakas_, Copenhagen, 1861, pp. 35-8,
text and translation of the _Javasakuna Jataka_. I have ventured
to English Prof. Fausböll's version, which was only intended as a
"crib" to the Pali. For the omitted Introduction, see _supra_.
_Parallels._--I have given a rather full collection of parallels,
running to about a hundred numbers, in my _Æsop_, pp. 232-4. The chief
of these are: (1) for the East, the Midrashic version ("Lion and
Egyptian Partridge"), in the great Rabbinic commentary on Genesis
(_Bereshith-rabba_, c. 64); (2) in classical antiquity, Phædrus, i. 8
("Wolf and Crane"), and Babrius, 94 ("Wolf and Heron"), and the Greek
proverb Suidas, ii. 248 ("Out of the Wolf's Mouth"); (3) in the Middle
Ages, the so-called Greek _Æsop_, ed. Halm, 276 _b_, really prose
versions of Babrius and "Romulus," or prose of Phædrus, i. 8, also the
Romulus of Ademar (fl. 1030), 64; it occurs also on the Bayeux
Tapestry, in Marie de France, 7, and in Benedict of Oxford's _Mishle
Shualim_ (Heb.), 8; (4) Stainhöwel took it from the "Romulus" into his
German Æsop (1480), whence all the modern European Æsops are derived.
_Remarks._--I have selected _The Wolf and the Crane_ as my typical
example in my "History of the Æsopic Fable," and can only give here a
rough summary of the results I there arrived at concerning the fable,
merely premising that these results are at present no more than
hypotheses. The similarity of the Jataka form with that familiar to
us, and derived by us in the last resort from Phædrus, is so striking
that few will deny some historical relation between them. I conjecture
that the Fable originated in India, and came West by two different
routes. First, it came by oral tradition to Egypt, as one of the
Libyan Fables which the ancients themselves distinguished from the
Æsopic Fables. It was, however, included by Demetrius Phalereus,
tyrant of Athens, and founder of the Alexandrian library c. 300 B.C.,
in his _Assemblies of Æsopic Fables_, which I have shown to be the
source of Phædrus' Fables c. 30 A.D. Besides this, it came from Ceylon
in the Fables of Kybises--_i.e._, Kasyapa the Buddha--c. 50 A.D., was
adapted into Hebrew, and used for political purposes, by Rabbi Joshua
ben Chananyah in a harangue to the Jews c. 120 A.D., begging them to be
patient while within the jaws of Rome. The Hebrew form uses the lion,
not the wolf, as the ingrate, which enables us to decide on the Indian
_provenance_ of the Midrashic version. It may be remarked that the use
of the lion in this and other Jatakas is indirectly a testimony to
their great age, as the lion has become rarer and rarer in India
during historic times, and is now confined to the Gir forest of
Kathiáwar, where only a dozen specimens exist, and are strictly
preserved.
The verses at the end are the earliest parts of the Jataka, being in
more archaic Pali than the rest: the story is told by the commentator
(c. 400 A.D.) to illustrate them. It is probable that they were
brought over on the first introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon, c. 241
B.C. This would give them an age of over two thousand years, nearly
three hundred years earlier than Phædrus, from whom comes our _Wolf
and Crane_.