No. 28.— 1884.] first fifty jatakas. 



105 



have hardly point enough to be placed in the first rank of 

 fables. 



The number of comic stories, more or less amusing, is 

 five or six. The lion maintained that the dark half of the 

 month was the cold half, the tiger that it was cold in the 

 moonlight half ; neither seeing, till the Bodhisat told them, 

 that the cold depends on the wind and not on the moon 

 (17); the boy took a hatchet to kill a mosquito on his 

 father's head (44 repeated in 45) ; a simpleton watered the 

 young trees in proportion to their length of roots, and 

 pulled them up to see (46); another put salt in wine 

 because he saw people eat salt with it (47); another simple- 

 ton lost his bride by his attention to the stars (49); and I 

 count with these the story of the King's Valuer, who first 

 appraised a drove of horses at the value of a measure of 

 rice, and then, when bribed by the horse-dealer, explained 

 the value of a measure of rice to be the price of the whole 

 realm of Benares. 



As in part a fairy-tale, I reckon the story of Losaka or 

 Mittavindaka. 



Thus we have about seventeen in all, out of the fifty, 

 which can be classed as fables, comic tales, and fairy-tales. 

 It remains to classify the remainder. 



There are some seventeen, besides some of those already 

 mentioned, of which the main interest lies in the habits 

 of animals and their tricks, and the devices of their hunters 

 and keepers. About deer, dogs, elephants, horses, oxen ; 

 about fish; about birds, the crow, the parrot, the pigeon, 

 the quail, the peacock, —there are facts noted with a good 

 deal of sagacious observation. The crow feeds on meat, 

 the pigeon on seeds, the parrot flies far for food, the peacock 

 struts to attract his mate, the quails lie close in a covey : 

 the slyness of deer, and their tricks ; the points in which * 

 the appearance of their death consists ; hunters entrapping 

 them by scattering sweet things on the grass, scaring 

 them by a line of leaves (the " pavidos formidine cervos 

 terret" of Ovid); the dog eating leather when it is wet ; the 

 attachment of animals to each other ; tire fastidiousness of 

 the high-bred horse, and his superiority in strength and 

 endurance — when it comes to a pinch — to the low-bred 

 animal ; the effect of kindness on oxen and the like,— arc 



