Chapter XV: The Gold-Giving Serpent

_Source._--_Pantschatantra_, III. v., tr. Benfey, ii. 244-7.

_Parallels_ given in my _Æsop_, Ro. ii. 10, p. 40. The chief points about them are--(1) though the tale does not exist in either Phædrus or Babrius, it occurs in prose derivates from the Latin by Ademar, 65, and "Romulus," ii. 10, and from Greek, in Gabrias, 45, and the prose _Æsop_, ed. Halm, 96; Gitlbauer has restored the Babrian form in his edition of Babrius, No. 160. (2) The fable occurs among folk-tales, Grimm, 105; Woycicki, _Poln. Mähr._ 105; Gering, _Islensk. Ævent._ 59, possibly derived from La Fontaine, x. 12.

_Remarks._--Benfey has proved most ingeniously and conclusively (_Einl._ i. 359) that the Indian fable is the source of both Latin and Greek fables. I may borrow from my _Æsop_, p. 93, parallel abstracts of the three versions, putting Benfey's results in a graphic form, series of bars indicating the passages where the classical fables have failed to preserve the original.

BIDPAI. | PHÆDRINE.

A Brahmin once observed a snake |----A good man had become in his field, and thinking it |friendly with the snake, who the tutelary spirit of the |came into his house and brought field, he offered it a libation |luck with it, so that the man of milk in a bowl. Next day he |became rich through it.----One finds a piece of gold in the |day he struck the serpent, which bowl, and he receives this each |disappeared, and with it the day after offering the libation. |man's riches. The good man tries One day he had to go elsewhere, |to make it up, but the serpent and he sent his son with the |declares their friendship at an libation. The son sees the gold, |end, as it could not forget the and thinking the serpent's hole |blow.---- full of treasure determines to | slay the snake. He strikes at |Phæd. Dressl. VII. 28 (Rom. II. xi.) its head with a cudgel, and the | enraged serpent stings him to | BABRIAN. death. The Brahmin mourns his |A serpent stung a farmer's son son's death, but next morning as |to death. The father pursued the usual brings the libation of |serpent with an axe, and struck milk (in the hope of getting the |off part of its tail. Afterwards gold as before). The serpent |fearing its vengeance he brought appears after a long delay at |food and honey to its lair, and the mouth of its lair, and |begged reconciliation. The declares their friendship at an |serpent, however, declares end, as it could not forget the |friendship impossible, as it blow of the Brahmin's son, nor |could not forget the blow----nor the Brahmin his son's death from |the farmer his son's death from the bite of the snake. |the bite of the snake. | _Pants._ III. v. (Benf. 244-7). |Æsop, Halm 96^b (Babrius-Gitlb. 160). |

In the Indian fable every step of the action is thoroughly justified, whereas the Latin form does not explain why the snake was friendly in the first instance, or why the good man was enraged afterwards; and the Greek form starts abruptly, without explaining why the serpent had killed the farmer's son. Make a composite of the Phædrine and Babrian forms, and you get the Indian one, which is thus shown to be the original of both.