Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/55

Rh last he butts at the obnoxious infant with his head, and is then at the mercy of Brer Fox, who all the time has "lain low." Now compare with this the following passage from the Jataka of the Demon with the Matted Hair (Fausböll, i. pt. ii. p. 272) as translated by Professor J. Estlin Carpenter (Three Ways of Salvation, 1884, p. 27). The Bodisat in one of his former births as "Prince Five-Weapons" assails the Demon of the Matted Hair in the midst of a gloomy forest, "And with a resolute air he [the future Buddha] hit him with his right hand, but his right hand and his left hand, his right foot and his left foot, were all caught in turn in the Demon's hair, and when at last he butted at him with his head that was caught too." The situation is so unique and the parallelism so close that we cannot avoid assuming a causal connection between the two versions. Yet if that be so, the Jataka of the Demon of the Matted Hair must have passed from India to Africa with Hindoo merchants or Arab slave-traders, must then have crossed Equatorial Africa before