am gone, this lion will never attain to the sixteenth part of my personal beauty, nor of my stature and girth, nor of my natural strength and power." Then the lion said to him, "Off with you. He will never speak thus of me." Then the jackal drew nigh to the tiger also, and spoke after the same manner. On hearing him, the tiger hastened to the lion, and asked, "Friend, is it true, that you said so and so of me?" And he spoke the first stanza:--

Is it thus Sudatha speaks of me?
"In grace of form and pedigree,
In might and prowess in the field,
Subahu still to me must yield."

On hearing this Sudatha repeated the four remaining stanzas:--

Is it thus Subahu speaks of me?
"In grace of form and pedigree,
In might and prowess in the field, Sudatha still to me must yield."
If such injurious words are thine,
No more shalt thou be friend of mine.
The man that lends a ready ear
To any gossip he may hear,
Soon picks a quarrel with a friend,
And love in bitter hate will end.
No friend suspects without a cause,
Or carefully looks out for flaws;
[193] But on his friend in trust will rest
As child upon its mother's breast,
And ne'er will by a stranger's word
Be parted from his bosom's lord.

When the qualities of a friend had been thus set forth in these four stanzas, the tiger said, "The fault is mine," and begged pardon of the lion. And they continued to live happily together in the same place. But the jackal departed and fled elsewhere.

The Master, having brought his lesson to an end, identified the Birth:"At that time the jackal was the beggar who lived on broken meats, the lion was Sariputta, the tiger Moggallana, and the deity that dwelt in that forest and saw the whole thing with his own eyes was I myself."

Footnotes

^126:1 Compare no. 349 supra, Tibetan Tales, XXXIII: The Jackal as Calumniator, and Benfey's Introduction to the Panchatantra.

^127:1 Sudatha (strong-tooth) is the lion, Subahu (strong-arm) the tiger.