Note 4 — Chapter LXIV

This story is found, with the substitution of a man for a woman, on p. 128 of Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. 11; he tells us that it is also found in the 17th chapter of Silvestre de Sacy’s Kalila o Dimna (Wolff’s Translation II, 99; Knatchbull, 346,) in the 11th section of Symeon Seth’s Greek version, 14th chapter of John of Capua; German translation Ulm, 1483 Y., 5; Anvár-i-Suhaili, p. 596 Cabinet des Fées, XVIII, 189. It is imitated by Baldo, 18th fable, (Poesics Inédites du Moyen Age by Edéléstand du Méril, p. 244.) Benfey pronounces it Buddhistic in origin, though apparently not acquainted with its form in the Kathá Sarit Ságara. Cp. Rasaváhini, chap. 3. (Spiegel’s Anecdota Paliea). It is also found in the Karma Śataka. Cp. also Matthæus Paris, Hist. Maj. London, 1571, pp. 240–242, where it is told of Richard Cœur de Lion; Gesta Romanorum, c. 119; Gower, Confessio Amantis, Book V; E. Meier Schwäbische Volksmärchen. (Benfey’s Panchatantra, Vol. I, p. 192 and ff.) Cp. also for the gratitude of the animals the IVth story in Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands. The animals are a dog, an otter and a falcon, p. 74 and ff. The Mongolian form of the story is to be found in Sagas from the Far East, Tale XIII. See also the XIIth and XXIInd of Miss Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales. There is a striking illustration of the gratitude of animals in Grimm’s No. 62, and in Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 483. De Gubernatis in a note to p. 129 of Vol. II, of his Zoological Mythology, mentions a story of grateful animals in Afanassief. The hero finds some wolves fighting for a bone, some bees fighting for honey, and some shrimps fighting for a carcase; he makes a just division, and the grateful wolves, bees, and shrimps help him in need. See also p. 157 of the same volume. No. 25 in the Pentamerone of Basile belongs to the same cycle.

See Die dankbaren Thiere in Gaal’s Märchen der Magyaren, p. 175, and Der Rothe Hund, p. 339. In the Saccamkirajatátaka No. 73, Fausböll, Vol. I, 323, a hermit saves a prince, a rat, a parrot and a snake. The rat and snake are willing to give treasures, the parrot rice, but the prince orders his benefactor’s execution, and is then killed by his own subjects. See Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, p. 3, note. See also Ralston’s Tibetan Tales, Introduction, pp. lxiii–lxv.