The Panchatantra (Purnabhadra's Recension of 1199 CE)/Book 4/The Ass in the Tiger-Skin
THE ASS IN THE TIGER-SKIN
There was once a laundryman named Clean-Cloth in a certain town. He had a single donkey who had grown very feeble from lack of fodder.
As the laundryman wandered in the forest, he saw a dead tiger, and he thought: "Ah, this is lucky. I will put this tiger-skin on the donkey and let him loose in the barley fields at night. For the farmers will think him a tiger and will not drive him out."
When this was done, the donkey ate barley to his heart's content. And at dawn the laundryman took him back to the barn. So as time passed, he grew plump. He could hardly squeeze into the stall.
But one day the donkey heard the bray of a she-donkey in the distance. At the mere sound he himself began to bray. Then the farmers perceived that he was a donkey in disguise, and killed him with blows from clubs and stones and arrows.
"And that is why I say:
However skilful in disguise, . . . .
and the rest of it."
Now while the monkey was telling these stories to the crocodile, another water-beast came up and said: "Friend crocodile, your wife has starved herself to death."
When the crocodile heard this, he was bewildered in spirit, and lamented: "Oh, what has come upon me, upon hapless me? For the proverb says:
Where a mother does not dwell
And a wife who flatters well,
Better leave the house, and roam
Forests not so wild as home.
Oh, my friend! Forgive my sins toward you. For I have lost her, and I plan to burn myself alive."
When the monkey heard this, he laughed and said: "Come now! I knew from the very beginning that you were henpecked and in leading-strings. And this proves it. You dunderhead! You despair when you ought to be happy. When a wife like that dies, you ought to give a party. For the proverb says:
A wife forever nagging
And falling in a rage,
Is not a wife, say sages,
But premature old age.
Therefore with patient effort
Avoid the very name
Of every earthly woman,
If comfort be your aim.
For what she feels, she does not say;
She speaks and looks a different way;
Far from her looks her actions veer:
Oh, woman, woman! You are queer.
But enough!
One fact suffices. Cite no more!
They kill the children that they bore.
And yet:
Though girls are tasteless, hard, and selfish,
Boys think them sweet and soft and elfish."
"True enough," said the crocodile, "but what am I to do? Two calamities have befallen me. First, my home is ruined. And second, I have quarreled with my friend. Yet so it goes with the unfortunate. You know the stanza:
The cleverness that you have shown,
You naked thing! is twice my own;
Your husband and your lover fair
Are lost. But why this vacant stare?"
"How was that?" asked the monkey. And the crocodile told the story of