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78 items · showing 1–24
A lion kills far more than he can eat, so the animals agree to send him one of their own each day. Then it is a rabbit's turn.
Two geese carry their friend the tortoise to a new lake, gripping a stick in their beaks. He has to do just one thing: keep his mouth shut.
A king had three sons who would not open a book. An eighty-year-old teacher promised to make them wise in six months — using nothing but stories.
A brahmin carries a fat goat home on his shoulder. Three strangers, one after another, stop him to say that it is not a goat at all.
A mongoose raised beside a baby kills the snake that came for the cradle, and runs out to show his mother what he has done.
A washerman throws a dead tiger's skin over his starving donkey and turns him loose in the barley fields at night. The guards keep their distance.
A son carries his blind parents on a shoulder-pole across every pilgrimage in India — and one arrow, loosed at a sound, changes the course of the Ramayana.
One herb had to be found before sunrise. Hanuman could not tell which one it was — so he carried back the entire mountain.
A five-year-old prince is pushed off his father's lap, walks into the forest, and ends up as the one star that never moves.
A clever monkey outwits a crocodile who wants to take his heart — a Panchatantra fable on quick thinking.
A jackal reads the pawprints at his own front door: a lion has gone in, and has not come out. So he stands outside and talks to the cave.
Carpenters left a beam half-sawn, with a wedge holding the cut open. A monkey sat down on it and decided to find out what the wedge was for.
A sage catches a falling mouse and turns her into a daughter. When it is time to marry her, the sun, the cloud, the wind and a mountain are all offered.
A prince wastes away with a serpent living inside him. His wife, standing behind a tree, overhears two snakes giving away each other's secrets.
A thief comes for the brahmin's oxen and a demon comes for the brahmin. Waiting outside his hut, the two begin arguing about who goes first.
A fowler catches a bird whose droppings turn to gold, and decides the safest thing is to give it to the king. Then a minister offers his opinion.
A jackal lures a washerman's worn-out donkey to a wounded lion with talk of emerald meadows. It takes two attempts, and two different lies.
A king takes the savage scar on a newcomer's forehead for a war wound and honours him above all his warriors. Then, on the eve of battle, he asks how he got it.
A lioness nurses an orphaned jackal cub as her own third son. He grows up between two lion brothers, never told what he is — until an elephant appears.
A booming voice from an empty battlefield sends a starving jackal running — until he stops and asks himself what is actually making the noise.
A young camel enjoys straggling behind the herd with his bell ringing as he comes. The other camels explain what a bell can call.
A jackal finds a dead elephant whose hide he cannot break. Then a lion arrives, and a tiger, and a leopard, and a rival jackal.
A famine drives a dog to a rich city, where the food is wonderful, the kitchens are careless, and the local dogs bite him every single day.
Pushed around by his own relatives, a frog king climbs out of the well and invites a snake back down to settle the score for him.