SHORT HISTORY OF THE ^ESOPIC FABLE xvii 



the Fables were associated with the name of a mythical 

 sage, Kasyapa. These were appropriated by the early 

 Buddhists by the simple expedient of making Kasyapa the 

 immediately preceding incarnation of the Buddha. A 

 number of his itihdsas or Tales were included in the sacred 

 Buddhistic work containing the Jatakas or previous-births 

 of the Buddha, in some of which the Bodisat (or future 

 Buddha) appears as one of the Dramatis Personam of the 

 Fables ; the Crane, e.g., in our Wolf 'and Crane being one of 

 the incarnations of the Buddha. So, too, the Lamb of our 

 Wolf and Lamb was once Buddha ; it was therefore easy 

 for him — so the Buddhists thought — to remember and tell 

 these Fables as incidents of his former careers. It is obvious 

 that the whole idea of a Fable as an anecdote about a man 

 masquerading in the form of a beast could most easily arise 

 and gain currency where the theory of transmigration was 

 vividly credited. 



The Fables of Kasyapa, or rather the moral verses (gathas) 

 which served as a memoria technlca to them, were probably 

 carried over to Ceylon in 241 B.C. along with the Jatakas. 

 About 300 years later (say 50 a.d.) some 100 of these were 

 brought by a Cingalese embassy to Alexandria, where they 

 were translated under the title of c< Libyan Fables" (Aoyot 

 AvfiiKoi), which had been earlier applied to similar stories that 

 had percolated to Hellas from India ; they were attributed to 

 " Kybises." This collection seems to have introduced the 

 habit of summing up the teaching of a Fable in the Moral, 

 corresponding to the gatha of the Jatakas. About the end 

 of the first century a.d. the Libyan Fables of " Kybises ' 

 became known to the Rabbinic school at Jabne, founded by 



