The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.31

c6.31

VII. No less naively illustrated is the ne-birth as an antelope, *kuruṅga*. On pl. V, 2 we read as plainly as in the text (*Jât.* 206) that there were once an antelope, a tortoise and a wood-pecker, which, united by friendship, lived together on the shores of a lake in the depths of the woods. The antelope has just been caught in a trap : and, whilst the tortoise exerts itself to gnaw through the fetters, the wood-pecker, represented a second time on the right, does all that it can, in its character of bird of ill-omen, to delay the coming of the hunter. Soon — but no room could be found in the picture for this second adventure — the antelope will in its turn deliver the tortoise :