Note 8 — Chapter LXII

This story is found in Wolff, I, 197, Knatchbull, 226, Symeon Seth, 60, John of Capua, h., 6, b, German translation (Ulm 1483) O., IV, 6, Spanish translation, 36, b, Doni, 38, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 322, Livre des Lumières, 251, Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 442, Baldo Fab. XX, in Edéléstand du Méril, Poesies Inédites, p. 249. Benfey finds three “moments” in the Fable; the first is, the “hypocritical cat”; this conception he considers to be “allgemein menschlich” and compares Furia, 14, Coraes, 152, Furia, 15, Coraes, 6, Furia, 67, Coraes, 28, Robert, Fables Inédites, I, 216; also Mahábhárata V. (II, 283) 5421 and ff., where the cat manages to get herself taken to the river, to die, by the rats and mice, and there eats them. The second moment is the folly of litigiousness: here he compares a passage in Dubois’s Panchatantra. The third is the object of contention, the nest, for which he compares Phædrus, I, 21. (Benfey, Vol. I, pp. 350–354). I should compare, for the 1st moment, Phædrus, Lib. II, Fabula, IV, (recognovit Lucianus Mueller) Aquila, Feles et Aper, La Fontaine, VII, 16. See also for the “hypocritical cat” Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 121. The cat’s tactics are much the same as those of the fox in Reineke Fuchs (Simrock, Deutsche Volksbücher, Vol. I, p. 138.) See also De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. II, p. 54. The story is No. CXXV in the Avadánas. From De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, pp. 227–228 it appears that kapinjala means a heath-cock, or a cuckoo. Here the word appears to be used as a proper name. There is a very hypocritical cat in Prym und Socin, Syrische Märchen, p. lx. See especially p. 242, and cp. p. 319.