1 82 THE FOX 



jackal has a powerful odour, and hounds as a rule 

 enter readily to the scent. 



The jackal has in the East the same reputation 

 for cunning and knavishness as the fox has with us, 

 and in the Indian fables he takes much the same 

 place as the fox. In fact, as we have seen, many of 

 the stories which are told of the fox by the Greek 

 fabulists are related of the jackal in Indian folk- 

 lore. Although the first idea of the fable took its 

 rise among the Brahmins and found congenial soil 

 amongst the Indian Buddhists, when once the Greeks 

 had the idea they made it their own and repaid 

 the debt, and the jackals of later Indian fable 

 probably were borrowed from the stories of Greek 

 foxes. For wherever there was contact between 

 the Indians and Greeks there was also a reciprocal 

 exchange of ideas. Each borrowed from the other. 



But however this may be, it is evident that the 

 character of the jackal and the fox, as types of 

 cunning, is of very great antiquity ; the former is 

 called in Sanskrit the ' cheater of animals,' and in 

 this description he is found in the Mahabharata. The 

 jackal, the tiger, the wolf, the mongoose, and the 

 mouse — truly, a happy family, to be imagined only 

 by the writer believing in the transmigration of souls — 

 go out hunting together. The jackal persuades the 



