Gaining Friends

This is the second strategy of Panchatantra known as Gaining Friends beginning with this stanza:

Even without the wherewithal
Learned men and intellectuals
Achieve what they want like
The crow, the rat, the deer and the turtle.

Now the story. There was a city called Mahilaropyam in the south not far off from where was a large banyan tree. Many species of birds came there to eat the tree’s fruit. In the hollow of the great tree lived poisonous reptiles like snakes and scorpions. Travellers found the tree a great shelter in their journeys.

A crow called Laghupatanaka made this tree his home. As he was flying one day towards the city for collecting food, he sighted a hunter carrying a net and approaching the tree like a messenger of death. The crow at once sensed danger and, sure that the hunter came to trap the birds on the tree, told all the birds,