The Ass in the Lion’s Skin. SĪHA-CAMMA JĀTAKA.

(Fausböll, No. 189.)

Once upon a time, while Brahma-datta was reigning in Benāres, the future Buddha was born one of a peasant family; and when he grew up, he gained his living by tilling the ground.

At that time a hawker used to go from place to place, trafficking in goods carried by an ass. Now at each place he came to, when he took the pack down from the ass’s back, he used to clothe him in a lion’s skin, and turn him loose in the rice and barley-fields. And when the watchmen in the fields saw the ass, they dared not go near him, taking him for a lion.

So one day the hawker stopped in a village; and whilst he was getting his own breakfast cooked, he dressed the ass in a lion’s skin, and turned him loose in a barley-field. The watchmen in the field dared not go up to him; but going home, they published the news. Then all the villagers came out with weapons in their hands; and blowing chanks, and beating drums, they went near the field and shouted. Terrified with the fear of death, the ass uttered a cry—the cry of an ass!

Ana when he knew him then to be an ass, the future Buddha pronounced the First Stanza:

“This is not a lion’s roaring, Nor a tiger’s, nor a panther’s; Dressed in a lion’s skin, ’Tis a wretched ass that roars!”

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But when the villagers knew the creature to be an ass, they beat him till his bones broke; and, carrying off the lion’s skin, went away. Then the hawker came; and seeing the ass fallen into so bad a plight, pronounced the Second Stanza:

“Long might the ass, Clad in a lion’s skin, Have fed on the barley green. But he brayed! And that moment he came to ruin.”

And even whilst he was yet speaking the ass died on the spot!

This story will doubtless sound familiar enough to English ears; for a similar tale is found in our modern collections of so-called ‘Æsop’s Fables.’[1] Professor Benfey has further traced it in mediæval French, German, Turkish, and Indian literature.2 But it may have been much older than any of these books; for the fable possibly gave rise to a proverb of which we find traces among the Greeks as early as the time of Plato.3 Lucian gives the fable in full, localizing itvii at Kumē, in South Italy,4 and Julien has given us a Chinese version in his ‘Avadānas.’5 Erasmus, in his work on proverbs,6 alludes to the fable; and so also does our own Shakespeare in ‘King John.’7 It is worthy of mention that in one of the later story-books—in a Persian translation, that is, of the Hitopadesa—there is a version of our fable in which it is the vanity of the ass in trying to sing which leads to his disguise being discovered, and thus brings him to grief.8 But Professor Benfey has shown9 that this version is simply the rolling into one of the present tale and of another, also widely prevalent, where an ass by trying to sing earns for himself, not thanks, but blows.10 I shall hereafter attempt to draw some conclusions from the history of the story. But I would here point out that the fable could scarcely have originated in any country in which lions were not common; and that the Jātaka story gives a reasonable explanation of the ass being dressed in the skin, instead of saying that he dressed himself in it, as is said in our ‘Æsop’s Fables.’

The reader will notice that the ‘moral’ of the taleviii is contained in two stanzas, one of which is put into the mouth of the Bodisat or future Buddha. This will be found to be the case in all the Birth Stories, save that the number of the stanzas differs, and that they are usually all spoken by the Bodisat. It should also be noticed that the identification of the peasant’s son with the Bodisat, which is of so little importance to the story, is the only part of it which is essentially Buddhistic. Both these points will be of importance further on.

The introduction of the human element takes this story, perhaps, out of the class of fables in the most exact sense of that word. I therefore add a story containing a fable proper, where animals speak and act like men.