Note 17 — Note to Chapter 60. The fables of Pilpay.

This corresponds to the 2nd Fable in the IVth book of the Hitopadeśa, Johnson’s translation, page 99. Benfey considers that the fable of Æsop, which we find in Babrius, 115, is the oldest form of it. He supposes that it owes its present colouring to the Buddhists. It appears in the Arabic version (Wolff. I, 91, Knatchbull, 146), Symeon Seth, p. 28, John of Capua d., 5, b., German translation (Ulm., 1483) F., VIII, 6, Spanish translation, XIX a, Firenzuola, 65, Doni 93, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 159, Livre des Lumières, 124, Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 309. (Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, pp. 239, 240). See also Weber, Indische Studien, III, 339. This story is found in the Avadánas translated from the Chinese by Stanislas Julien No. XIV, Vol. I, pp. 71–73, (Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 111.) It is the 3rd in La Fontaine’s tenth book. The original source is probably the Kachchhapa Játaka; see Rhys Davids’ Introduction to his Buddhist Birth stories, p. viii. In Coelho’s Contos Portuguezes, p. 15, the heron, which is carrying the fox, persuades it to let go, in order that she may spit on her hand. (A similar incident on page 112 of this volume.) Gosson in his School of Abuse, Arber’s Reprints, p. 43, observes, “Geese are foolish birds, yet, when they fly over mount Taurus, they shew great wisdom in their own defence for they stop their pipes full of gravel to avoid gagling, and so by silence escape the eagles.”