Note 9 — Chapter LXIII

Benfey does not seem to have been aware of the existence of this story in Somadeva’s work. It is found in the Sanskrit texts of the Panchatantra (being the 2nd of the fourth book in Benfey’s translation) in the Arabic version, (Knatchbull, 264, Wolff I, 242,) Symeon Seth, 75, John of Capua, k., 2, b., German translation (Ulm 1483) Q., VII, Spanish translation, XLIV, a, Doni, 61, Anvár-i-Suhaili, 393, Cabinet des Fées, XVIII, 26; Baldo fab. XIII, in Edéléstand du Méril, p. 333; Benfey considers it to be founded on Babrius, 95. There the fox only eats the heart. Indeed there is no point in the remark that if he had ears he would not have come again. The animal is a stag in Babrius. It is deceived by an appeal to its ambition. In the Gesta Romanorum the animal is a boar, which returns to the garden of Trajan, after losing successively its two ears and tail. (Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 430 and ff.) See also Weber’s article in Indische Studien, Vol. III, p. 338. He considers that the fable came to India from Greece. Cp. also De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. I, p. 377. An ass is deceived in the same way in Prym und Socin, Syrische Märchen, p. 279. In Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 92, one of the boys proposes to say that the Glücksvogel had no heart. Rutherford in the Introduction to his edition of Babrius, p. xxvii, considers that the fable is alluded to by Solon in the following words: