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78 items · showing 49–72
A jackal talks a camel into offering himself up, then talks his fellow jackal away from the meat, then frightens the lion off it as well.
Freezing monkeys find glossy red berries that look exactly like embers, and settle down to blow on them. A bird keeps explaining that they are berries.
From a warm dry nest in the rain, a sparrow asks the soaking monkey below why he never got around to building himself a house.
Two partners bury their earnings under a tree. One digs them up alone at night — and then produces a witness who can speak from inside the trunk.
A crab kindly explains to the herons how to get rid of the snake that eats their chicks. The cure turns out to be worse than the snake.
A king's pet monkey fans him while he sleeps. A fly keeps settling on the royal chest, and the monkey reaches for a sword.
Caught in a storm, a bird-catcher begs for shelter under the very tree whose dove-hen is in the cage on his hip.
A farmer's barren field starts returning a gold coin a day once he begins leaving milk at an anthill. Then his son does the arithmetic.
A huge snake ignores his own wide burrow and forces his way out through a narrow hole. He comes out into the daylight bleeding.
A rich merchant has a palace sweeper thrown out of a wedding feast. The sweeper needs no weapon — only a few words muttered near a sleeping king.
Two animals quarrel over who owns an empty burrow and go looking for a judge. By the river they find one reciting scripture, eyes half closed.
A thirsty elephant herd tramples a rabbit colony flat on its way to water. One rabbit climbs a rock and announces that he is the Moon's envoy.
Owls empty a banyan of crows night after night. The crows' oldest minister offers a plan that begins with his own people beating him.
A jackal's wife is certain that something is about to drop off the bull any day now. The two of them follow him for fifteen years.
A weaver good enough to clothe kings never earns more than his food and clothes. Twice he makes a fortune abroad, and twice it disappears on the road home.
A hunter and a boar kill each other in one exchange. A jackal arrives to find days of food — and decides to begin with the bowstring.
A woman offers husked sesame in exchange for unhusked — plainly a good bargain for whoever takes it. One boy asks why she would offer it at all.
A mouse can leap to any height and raid a monk's hanging begging bowl every night. A visiting monk works out why, and the leaping stops.
A merchant says mice ate the heavy iron scales left in his safekeeping. The owner agrees that the world is impermanent — and then asks to borrow his son.
The king of elephants fought on his own strength for years — and help arrived the moment he stopped and called out.
Half a lesson, heard before he was born — and the day a sixteen-year-old stood alone inside a maze of seven gates.
Vyasa needed a scribe who would never stop writing. Ganesha agreed — and set a condition of his own.
The gopis of Gokul arrive with the same complaint every morning, and Mother Yashoda loses the argument every time.
A boy given only sixteen years of life spent his sixteenth year holding on to a Shiva linga.