The Panchatantra (Purnabhadra's Recension of 1199 CE)/Book 4/King Joy and Secretary Splendor
KING JOY AND SECRETARY SPLENDOR
There was once a king named Joy, lord of the sea-girdled earth, whose power and manliness were famed afar, whose footstool was reticulated with interlacing beams of light from the diadems of uncounted hosts of kneeling princes, whose glory was unspotted as the autumn moonbeams. He had a secretary named Splendor, who had absorbed the total truth of all the scientific textbooks, but whose wife pouted in a lovers' quarrel.
"Belovèd," said her husband, "tell me the means of appeasing you. I will adopt it without fail." And it cost her a struggle to say: "If you will shave your head and fall at my feet, then I will think of relenting." When he did so, she did so.
Now Joy's wife became angry in just the same way, and would not be appeased though he begged her pardon. Then he said: "Belovèd, I cannot live a moment without you. I will fall at your feet and beg your pardon." She said: "If you hold a bit in your mouth and let me climb on your back and drive you, and if, when driven, you neigh like a horse, then I will relent." And this was done.
Next morning Splendor came before the king as he sat in council. And the king asked, when he saw him: "Good Splendor, why is your head shaved at this odd time?" And Splendor answered:
What will not man for woman do,
When heads are shorn—at odd times, too?
What will not man for woman say,
When those who are not horses, neigh?
"You simpleton! You, too, are henpecked just like Joy and Splendor. You tried to find a means of killing me, because your wife asked it. But you were betrayed by your own speech. Yes, the proverb is right:
The parrots and the grackle birds
Are caged because they utter words:
The stupid herons go scot-free—
For silence is a master-key.
And again:
However skilful in disguise,
However frightful to the eyes,
Although in tiger-skin arrayed,
The ass was killed—because he brayed."
"How was that?" asked the crocodile. And the monkey told the story of