Gangadatta and the Snake in the Well

In a certain well lived a frog king named Gangadatta. Once, harassed by his own kinsmen, he caught hold of the rope of the water-wheel bucket and got out of the well.

Outside he thought: "How am I to pay these relatives back? A man who does not repay an injury done to him in his weakness is no man at all."

Thinking so, he saw a black snake going into a hole, and it came to him: "Let me take this snake down into the well and have all my kinsmen destroyed."

He went to the mouth of the hole and called: "Come out, Priyadarshana! Come out!" The snake thought: "Whoever is calling me is not of my kind, for that is no snake's voice; and I have no friendship with anything else. So who is it?" He asked: "Who are you?"

Gangadatta said: "I am Gangadatta, lord of the frogs; I have come to make friends with you." The snake said: "This is not to be believed — how can straw and fire come together? What is another's food does not go near him. Why are you doing this?"

Gangadatta said: "It is true; by nature you are our enemy. But I have come to you because I am injured by my own people." The snake asked: "Where do you live?" — "In a well." — "Then how am I to get there? And once there, where would I stay? Show me a place where I can live and eat your kinsmen."

Gangadatta said: "Come, I shall get you in. Inside the well there is a comfortable hollow; stay in it and eat my kinsmen at your leisure."

The snake thought: "I am old now, and catching frogs has become hard. Here is a living handed to me." And he agreed.

Gangadatta took him down by way of the water-wheel bucket and settled him in the hollow. Then he pointed out the frogs who were his enemies, and the snake ate them one by one — and having finished them, ate the rest as well.

Then Gangadatta said: "Friend! The ones who were my enemies are gone; give me some other food now." The snake said: "Friend, it was you who had your own kinsmen destroyed; there is nothing here left for me to eat. You brought me here — so you must provide." And then he said: "Your son shall be my food."

Gangadatta was stricken: "What have I done? And if I refuse now, he will eat me too." And he had to give up his own son.

At last, when every frog had been eaten and only Gangadatta was left, he said: "Let me go out; I shall fetch frogs from another pond." The snake let him go — and once out, Gangadatta never returned to that well.

The snake sent a lizard who lived in the well to call him back. Gangadatta said: "What sin will a starving creature not commit? The famished become pitiless. Tell Priyadarshana that Gangadatta will not come back to that well again."

यो मित्रं कुरुते भिन्नं वीर्येणाधिकमात्मनः । स करोति न सन्देहं स्वयं हि विषभक्षणम् ॥

Moral: He who makes a friend of one stronger than himself and of another kind is, beyond any doubt, eating poison with his own hand.

From the Panchatantra, Book IV — Loss of Gains.