Note

With this story compare the “Palāsa-jātaka,” No. 370, which tells how a Judas-tree was destroyed by the parasitic growth of a banyan-shoot. The general idea is the same in both stories, though I hardly suspect that ours is descended from the Indian. The situation of a tree choked to death by a parasite is such a commonplace in everyday experience, that a moral story based on it might arise spontaneously almost anywhere.