Story 63 - The Jackal’s Judgment

AT a village there is a tank. A Crocodile, making a burrow in the [foot of the] embankment, stayed in it. Afterwards the mud having dried and become hard, the Crocodile being unable to get out of the hole was going to die.

As a man was going past to fetch a midwife-mother to attend to his wife, the Crocodile, hearing him, said to the man,

“Somehow or other manage to save me by breaking up the earth so that I may get out.”

The man broke up the earth, and let it out.

After that, as there was no water left in the tank, the man, placing the Crocodile on his shoulder, went to the edge of the river.

Having gone there, after he had placed it in the water the Crocodile seized the arm of that man in order to eat him.

“Why wilt thou eat me ?”

he asked.

“Dost thou not know the help I gave thee ? Yet thou art going to eat me !”

The Crocodile said,

“It is true, indeed, regarding the assistance. It is because I am hungry that I am going to eat thee.”

The man said,

“It is good. Eat thou me. There are my witnesses, two or three persons. First ask them [regarding the justice of it], and then eat me.”

So they went to ask the witnesses about it.

Having met with a Kumbuk tree,^[1] he said to the Kumbuk tree,

“This Crocodile is going to eat me. I ask this one’s opinion of it.”

“What is that about ? ”

The man said,

“This Crocodile was going to die. I saved it. It is now going to eat me. Is that right ?”

Then the Kumbuk tree says,

“O Crocodile-cultivator, do not let that man go. There is no animal so wicked as that man. He stays near the tree in the shade, and having broken off the bark and the leaves he takes them away. At last he cuts down and takes the tree.”

From there he goes and asks it of the Cow.

“O Cow, I saved this Crocodile from death. This Crocodile is now going to eat me. Do you think it right ?”

The Cow says,

“O Crocodile-cultivator, do not let that man go. That man is a wicked man. He takes our milk, and at last kills and eats us. Do not let him go.”

After that he asks it of the Jackal.

The Jackal asks,

“What is it about ?”

He says to the Jackal,

“O Jackal-artificer, without letting this Crocodile die, I saved it. Now it is going to eat me.”

The Jackal-artificer says,

“I cannot give this decision, not having seen what is the meaning of it. You must show me the whole affair from the beginning.”

Then the man, placing the Crocodile on his shoulder, and having gone with it and put it in the house in which the Crocodile was at first, [and closed the entrance], and made the soil hard, the Jackal says,

“Now then, don’t you be afraid. I am on your side.”

Then the man says,

“Jackal-artificer, hear this case.”

“I am both the judge and the witness,”

the Jackal said.

“Now then, taking a cudgel beat thou him until he dies. I saw thy excellence and this one’s wickedness.”

Duraya. North-western Province.

 

Note:

This is one of the best-known of folk-tales. A Malay variant is given in Mr. W. Skeat’s Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest, p. 20. A tiger, being released from a cage-trap by a man, seized him in order to eat him. When appealed to, the road and tree were against him. The Mouse-deer, which in Malaya fills the place of the clever animal in folk-tales, got the tiger to return to the cage, and called the neighbours to kill it.

The tiger story is given in Old Deccan Days (Frere), p. 198 fi., and the appeal was made to a banyan tree, camel, bullock, eagle, and alligator [crocodile], which were against the man. The Jackal settled it in his favour.

In Wide-Awake Stories (Steel and Temple), p. 116— Tales of the Punjab, p. 107—the matter was referred to a pipal (or bo) tree, a road, and the Jackal, who induced the tiger to re-enter the trap, and left him there.

In Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes), p. 16, the matter was not referred to others, but the Jackal told the tiger a good way of eating the man, by getting inside a large bag and having him thrown in to it. When it was inside the bag, the Jackal, a dog who was present, and the man tied it up, and beat the tiger to death.

The Panchatantra (Dubois), as in several other instances, comes nearest to the Sinhalese story. A Brahmana carried a Crocodile in a sack from a stream to the Ganges, and was then seized by it. In reply to his appeal to the Crocodile’s virtue and gratitude, he was told, "  The virtue and gratitude of our days is to devour those who nourish us and who do good to us.” Reference was made to a mango tree, an old cow (both of which agreed with the Crocodile), and a Jackal, who, stating that he wished to get to the bottom of the matter, induced the Crocodile to re-enter the sack, after which the Jackal broke his head with a stone.

In Indian Nights’ Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 134, a boy on his way to fetch his bride, killed a mungus that was attacking a snake, which then turned on him, to eat him, but gave him eight days’ grace to get married. When he returned with his wife she remonstrated with the snake, and was referred to some trees. One had preserved a thief in its hollow interior, but he found sandalwood there, and cut it down ; and now it had become a rule to do evil for good. For the future widow’s protection, the snake gave her magic powder capable of reducing to ashes whatever it fell on, so she applied it to the snake, and burnt it to dust.

The tale is found in West Africa also, in a form which is very close to the South Indian and Sinhalese one. In Contes Soudanais (C. Monteil), p. 53, a child found a tired Crocodile, and carried it back to water. The Crocodile asked if he knew how goodness was rewarded. “By evil,” the child said. The Crocodile was going to eat him, but referred the matter to an old horse and an old ass (both of which recommended it to do so), and lastly to a Hare, which refused to believe that the child could have carried it. When this was proved, and the Crocodile taken back, the Hare said to the child,

“Doesn’t thy father eat Crocodile ?”

“Yes.” “And thy mother ?” “Yes.” “Hast thou not an axe ?” “I have one,” the child replied. “Then break the Crocodile’s head and eat it,” the Hare said. In many West African tales the Hare is the clever animal who outwits the others.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Terminalia glabra.