Kalila and Dimna

F ables of Conflict and Intrigue

Kalila and Dimna – Fables of Conflict and Intrigue

Published by
Medina Publishing Ltd
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Copyright © Ramsay Wood 2011

Illustrations © G M Whitworth

ISBN 978-0-9567081-0-6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Kalila and Dimna
F ables of Conflict and Intrigue

Following on from
Kalila and Dimna
F ables of Friendship and Betrayal

Told by

Ramsay Wood

Illustrated by

G M Whitworth

Introduction by

Michael Wood
 v

Author’s Note

Kalila and Dimna are the Arabic names of the two jackal
brothers whose adventures feature only in the first section of
this complex and multicultural arrangement of interconnected
fables. Since 750 ce, however, the popular Middle Eastern
convention has been to entitle the whole book, comprising
four further sections, Kalila and Dimna, although the jackal
brothers never reappear again.
The title of the more ancient (and long lost) Sanskrit original
from which Kalila and Dimna derives, the Panchatantra,
means the “five” (pancha) “parts, treatises, discourses, chapters,
looms or sections” (tantra). This penultimate volume in my
trilogy is a modern reconfiguration of “discourses” four and
five, from English translations of several Arabic, Sanskrit and
Persian arrangements of the fables.
 vii

This book is dedicated to:

scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk (for revitalising oral traditions)

octagonpress.com (for connecting Occident to Orient) and

bookmooch.com (for helping books travel further)

 ix

Introduction
by Michael Wood

Historian, broadcaster and author of

The Story of India (2007), London, 2011

T his is a beautifully told section from one of the greatest story

cycles in human culture, one of India’s enduring contributions
to the literature of the world. India has been called “the chief source
of the world’s fable literature” and the Panchatantra (the “Five
Discourses” from which the stories in this book are drawn) has had
as great an influence as the Arthurian cycles, the Greek myths, or the
tales of Gilgamesh. From Aesop to the Arabian Nights, la Fontaine
and Kipling, they have cast their magical spell. Ramsay Wood’s new
version, which conveys that magic in spades, has developed into the
project of a lifetime. His memorable Kalila and Dimna — Fables
of Friendship and Betrayal was originally published thirty-one years
ago, and his many admirers have eagerly anticipated this sequel.
The wait has been well worth it. Together his two books constitute a
magnificent achievement. They are jewels of story-writing, narrated
with the psychological insight, subtle rhythms and changes of pace
of a veteran. Playful, allusive, richly ambiguous, teasing in their
narrative complexity and yet deceptively clear in their resolutions:
immersing oneself in the world of this trickster is to savour the
pleasure of reading at its most intense.
Before there was civilisation there were stories. Throughout
human history great stories have crossed all cultural boundaries,
sometimes travelling enormous distances in time and space, to
reappear in the most unlikely clothes. Homer’s Circe and Calypso,
brought to life in Ionia in the seventh century BCE, unmistakably
mirror Siduri, the bar girl at the end of the world in Gilgamesh,
a creation from second millennium BCE Iraq. Though set in
x Kalila and Dimna

the Mabinogion’s cloud-cloaked, rain-soaked Arthurian Wales,

the Lady of the Fountain’s sacred tree by its spring in a desert,
guarded by a lion, betrays its origin in Mesopotamian myth. These
transformations are so enticingly human – the power of story is
nothing short of magical.
Like them, the fabulous compendium of the Panchatantra has
also passed cultural borders around the world, far beyond its land
of origin; its narrative forms and devices so clever and so universal
that they have been adapted and transformed everywhere, but still
always recognisable as themselves. Though the folk origin of these
stories has often been discussed, it has never been proved. But it is
surely safe to say that the sensibility behind them, the way of seeing
the world, is as old as Indian culture. The wonderful series of pre-
historic animal paintings from Bhimbetka, with their mysterious
diagrams of the layers of the cosmos shared by humans and animals,
plants and fish, suggest the ancient Indian perception of the unity
of all life forms. In developed Hinduism even the god Vishnu’s early
avatars take animal forms – fish, turtle, boar, then the brute strength
of the primitive half-man half-lion – all before the incarnation of
Rama, the ideal human: as if depicting a kind of Darwinian psycho
history. The mastery of animal languages, too, is common in Indian
legend, as if the boundaries between humans and the animal world
were always permeable and fluid. In traditional India there is a
deep idea that the divine, human and animal worlds cross over: all
life forms possess a soul, which depending on one’s karma can be
reincarnated anywhere in the chain of life, human souls in animals
and vice versa. So naturally animals can speak to each other, and feel
as humans do. For this reason perhaps these tales of transformation
are different from Aesop and other Greek fables, for here animals
talk and act not like animals but like humans.
The narrative device of the Panchatantra is simple: the tales
are told to instruct the king’s three sons – dunces all of them –
about how to live life wisely and justly, how one should conduct
oneself in the world. And that, the tales show us, is by earthy,
 Introduction xi

adaptable worldly wisdom, not by unthinking pious moralising.

This realistic sensibility one might add is shared by other early
Indian texts such as the poetry of the Purananuru in South India.
The Panchatantra five big themes, each of which is the title of one
of its “Five Discourses”, are about human behaviour categorised in
a way characteristic of Indian thought, as for example in the Kama
Sutra, or in the akam-puram poetry of “interior/exterior landscapes”
of the ancient Tamils. Like this poetry they are about essential
human situations – the winning and losing of friends, war and
peace, conflict and loss: “how to lose what you have” as Ramsay
puts it – and how easy it is to be heedless in life and “precipitate
calamity” (these last two “Discourses” from the ancient texts
constitute the present volume). Using its core narrative device, the
book is introduced by the author (whom tradition names as Vishnu
Sharma – perhaps symptomatically a Vaishnavaite), who tells the
tales rather like Chaucer‘s narrative voice in the Canterbury Tales.
The “Five Discourses” each use a subsequent main tale as a framing
device which contains several other tales, cunningly wrapped up
inside it, as one character tells another a story. Often these also have
a subsidiary tale, or tales, like Russian dolls, adding to the fun for
the reader. On all this Ramsay Wood has also provided a richly
rewarding Afterword, which plays with the possibilities opened up
by these narrative tricks.
In its present form (though it may derive from a much older
tradition of oral stories) the Panchantra was composed in writing
in Sanskrit in Kashmir around 200 BCE, at the end of the great
era of the Mauryans, (whose rulers intriguingly were the first in the
world to enact legislation to protect animal species.) Subsequently
it became the most frequently translated literary work in India with
many different versions in a dozen of India’s regional languages.
Worldwide there are over 200 versions in over 50 languages as
through the Middle Ages it spread from Java to Iceland. The story of
how it was transmitted to the West is a fascinating tale in itself. The
Panchatantra first went from Sanskrit to its sister language, classical
xii Kalila and Dimna

Persian. From there it passed into Arabic around 750 CE, taking
the title by which it is still known, Kalila wa Dimna. Subsequently
it came to the West seeding an amazing family tree with Spanish,
Hebrew, German, Latin and Italian, from which it was versioned
into muscular Elizabethan English by Sir Thomas North, the great
translator of Plutarch.
Shrewd, practical realistic, never moralising; even (it has been
said) Machiavellian, the Panchatantra since then has influenced
storytelling and story-writing in Europe from the tales of La
Fontaine (who cited them as his chief inspiration) to Kipling’s
Jungle Book, though perhaps in his case not just through the written
word (though Kipling knew the printed stories) but in “everything
I had heard”, as he said of his childhood, brought up for his first
six years by a Hindi-speaking aya in Bombay. It may not be too
fanciful to suggest, too, that the influence of the Panchatantra is
also felt in many modern films and animations, for example in
Disney’s cartoons. Take the fable of the fish in Finding Nemo , where
defenceless creatures cooperate as friends to escape the nets of the
hunter – an archetypal situation of mutual aid first found in the
second discourse of the Panchatantra, and which also inspired the
encyclopaedists of the Brethren of Purity in tenth century Basra.
Such tales were taken as ethical exemplars in the medieval Arab
world, and of course they still work, which is why they are still loved
today. In India these stories still live in children’s books and comics,
are recycled in modern novels, allegories and films – not forgetting,
too, always being in “grandma’s tales”, as an Indian friend put it to
me only recently.
We live in one world today. These stories speak for and belong
to the whole of humanity. Doris Lessing remarked in Ramsay’s first
volume, over thirty years ago, that in 19th century Europe “anyone
with a claim to a literary education” would have been expected to
have heard of them: at least twenty English translations were made
in the hundred years before 1888. But now, she remarked, “most
people in the West will not have heard of it”. Ramsay’s first volume,
 Introduction xiii

so widely printed and reprinted, has helped to change that; and this
sequel continues his achievement. It is no exaggeration to say that
it is a real feat of the imagination, which will bring this magical text
to many new readers across the world. In a humane society each
generation needs to imbibe and reinterpret the classics, and to pass
them on renewed and reinvigorated. What Ramsay has done over
the last thirty years is to have made the version for our time.

Michael Wood
July 2011
 xv

Contents
The Story So Far 1

Bidpai Tells “How to Lose What You Have” 3

Snaggletooth and Spackleface 5

Flopears, Smiley and Squinteye the Lion 19
Scarface the Potter 28
The Jackal Adopted by Lions 33
Soapsuds and Lovejoy 39
Bleeding Dead Men 44

Mimosa Tells “How to Be Heedless and Precipitate Calamity” 46

The Golden Monk 51

Snake and Mongoose 60
The Seeker Who Broke his Honeypot 61
Rat and Cat 74
The Cat Who Declared Peace 82
The Vegetarian Jackal 93
Flies in Honey 95
Elath and His King 119

Prince Leonides Interrupts 120

Elath and His King (continued) 124
The Treasure Hunters 129
Chickpea Monkey 137
The Three Wise Idiots 139
The Stupid Weaver 144
The Crow Who Wished to Walk Like a Rooster 146
The Ram in Dog’s Clothing 151
The Monkey’s Revenge 159
The Blind Man, the Hunchback and Princess Thripple 179
Rough Stuff and the Nun 181

Acknowledgments 196
Afterword: Extraordinary Voyages of the Panchatantra 199
Appendix 227
Selected Bibliography & Further Acknowledgements 239
 1

The Story So F ar

Once upon a time long ago in India there lived a tyrannical

young king named Dabschelim who knew hardly anything
at all. He assumed he did, of course, because his parents had
told him that he was the most wonderful child ever born.
So Dabschelim felt free to pursue any whim that caught
his fancy, tormenting, even torturing his subjects if it pleased
him to do so. Things continued like this until Dabschelim
reached his mid-twenties, when an old storyteller named
Bidpai happened to visit the court. Bidpai spoke out about
what he saw, his polite preamble culminating in fierce words
that shocked everyone:
“Are you blind to the suffering right in front of your eyes?”
the old man asked. “Are you a king or some kind of melon? Is
something the matter with your brain or your eyes?”
The enraged Dabschelim had Bidpai flung into a dungeon,
effectively condemning the storyteller to death.
Yet within weeks, because of a mysterious dream that
led to an incredible treasure, King Dabschelim reinstated
Bidpai, begging his forgiveness and pampering the old
man and his wife in private rooms at the palace. Why this
change of fortune? Because nestling among heaps of jewels
and precious metals in that incredible treasure was an ancient
handwritten letter from a long-dead king called Houschenk,
addressed across the generations directly to Dabschelim and
also mentioning Bidpai.
2 Kalila and Dimna

King Houschenk admonished King Dabschelim to

conduct himself wisely, urging him to listen to Bidpai’s fables,
which together, as a clustered group called Kalila and Dimna,
with lions and leopards and jackals and snakes and crows and
rabbits and fish and the adventures of every other kind of
creature you can imagine, acted as a type of medicine to cure
leadership of heedlessness.
Sincere humility, combined with enough resolve to
proceed towards self-awareness, enabled Dabschelim to listen
to the storyteller’s surprising fables over a number of days
in private at the palace. The result of this experience was a
gracious friendship, each man giving to the other generously.
But as soon as Bidpai had finished telling his final fable, he
insisted on taking his leave, explaining that he could not see
Dabschelim again until the time was ripe for another dose.
This news was devastating to the king, yet in a strange way it
made perfect sense. Had he not been given enormous wealth
already? And, what, if anything would he do with it?
The decades flew by. King Dabschelim tried to practice
what he remembered from the fables he had heard, trying to
improve the pattern of his life, and especially his rule. And
slowly things did improve in the kingdom. His dungeons
were almost empty and the populace became as happy as the
earthly balance between pain and pleasure permits.
Dabschelim meanwhile sired three lively children:
two princes and a princess, now teenagers. Sometimes he
fantasised that Bidpai might reappear to tell more fables,
helping everyone make more sense of their lives. He even
harboured the faint hope that somehow, if Bidpai did return,
he might persuade the old man to collect them into a ‘book’
– the cutting-edge data storage device of his day.
 3

idpai Tells ‘How to

Lose What you Have’

T he sudden arrival of the grizzled storyteller, a thin, spry

man despite his white beard, was neither expected nor
discounted. King Dabschelim’s standing instructions to palace
guards were: “If someone calling himself Bidpai arrives, grant
him immediate access to the Chamberlain. We do not expect
Bidpai to appear. But he might. Remember!”
Years ago, before the storyteller took his leave, he said:
“Your Majesty, the formula for all human unhappiness is
simple yet almost universally ignored: ‘Expectation, non-
delivery!’ If you expect me – or anyone else, for that matter –
or some delightful event or desired object to materialise, you
will be miserably disappointed when nothing happens. So let
us assume we shall never meet again.”
“Yes,” King Dabschelim said, hovering in a state between
understanding and uncertainty, “but why can’t We see you
more often?”
“Because those words are more precious to me than, ‘Oh,
you again!’”
That was all Bidpai would say. Now, many years later,
here he was in the flesh, after every shred of expectation had
vanished.
The storyteller asked King Dabschelim “to keep formalities
4 Kalila and Dimna

to a bare minimum, please, Your Majesty.” Consequently

there was no welcoming ceremony, no celebration, no court
announcement. Bidpai and the king simply met again, and
took up their interrupted task. It was a calm resumption of
the storytelling that had occupied them years previously, and
which the old man now claimed time had rendered ready for
completion.
Late on the second night of their reunion, after they had
settled down with blankets and pillows under the stars, beside
a campfire purposely lit at one end of the palace grounds,
Bidpai began telling King Dabschelim the fables relating to
the ancient theme ‘How to Lose What You Have’, otherwise
known as …
 5

Snaggletooth and
Spackleface
“As Spackleface, the monkey leader, grew greyer, his
senses dulled and his pace slackened. Pride filtered out what
he didn’t want to see ... But what one keeps hidden from
oneself can be clear to others. What difference
So it was that Spackleface had a fearsome fight with a is there between
younger male, who defeated him and drove the old monkey women ruling,
and rulers ruled
deep into the jungle. Spackleface, who for years had been by women?
the undisputed king of a troop of females and young ones, Aristotle
seeing off challengers in victory after victory and boisterously
beating his chest from high vantage points, was now alone,
vanquished and exiled.
He didn’t want to retire, but such was his fate. He put a
brave face on it, like any warrior, and settled in an old fig tree
beside the murky-brown Maipura River which fed into the sea.
Up in this tree, he licked his wounds and felt like
himself again – king of all he surveyed. He loved the
tree’s figs and there were plenty of them. So many,
in fact, that every now and then he tossed some
into the river. ‘Plop!’ they went, ‘plop!
plop!’ Oh, it was fun, and it helped him
pass the time, which went much slower
now that he was alone, free from social
excitement, crises and duty.
But Spackleface wasn’t alone. Beneath
the tree from which he so gaily tossed
6 Kalila and Dimna

down figs, hidden under the water of the Maipura, cruised

Snaggletooth the crocodile. Snaggletooth had never eaten figs
but, spying how much the monkey enjoyed them, he decided
to test one that landed nearby. It was surprisingly good –
fresh, strangely sweet and, what’s more, delightful after the
relentlessly high protein diet common to his species.
Snaggletooth was himself a sweetie, as crocs go; a middle-
aged gentle giant of the waterways, even if he did kill for his
supper. Thus, it was not long before the monkey and the
crocodile, lonely on the river, began a relationship, albeit a
guarded one.
‘Hello,’ Snaggletooth burbled melodiously one morning,
startling Spackleface in his tree. The old monkey glanced
around before spotting two eyes and a snout protruding above
the surface of the water. Snaggletooth raised his head just
enough to display an unattractive smile featuring a great many
irregular teeth. ‘Don’t worry,’ Snaggletooth said. ‘I can’t climb
trees like you. I’m just curious what you call those things you
keep tossing into the water. They’re good, aren’t they?’
‘Figs!’ said Spackleface. ‘They’re called figs. You don’t mean
to say you’ve been eating them? I thought you only ate fish
and other animals.’
‘Well, yes, you’re right. But curiosity is not limited to cats
and monkeys. Some crocs want to know about things too, so
I tried one of those …. figs, because I saw you throw it. When
it hit the water I thought “Why not?” snatched it and hurried
back to the reeds to hide. I didn’t want to alarm you.’
‘Well, you do alarm me,’ Spackleface called from the fig
tree. ‘What is one to make of you, a flesh-eater, chatting up a
fruitarian?’
‘One doesn’t have to make anything of it,’ said the crocodile.
‘In the unlikely event that you fell into the river, I wouldn’t
hurt you. What would be the point? I’m more interested in
the figs than in you. Without you, no figs. Simple.’
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 7

And so, from this initial conversation, a friendship

blossomed between monkey and croc. At first, they talked
about figs or the weather or the Maipura River, but soon
wives, children and grandchildren became their topics. They
were frank with each other, exploring the landscape of their
lives.
Spackleface spoke of his youth, his mistakes, his victories
and the final defeat that led to exile in the fig tree. He even
pondered aloud whether loss of status was inevitable for all
alpha males.
Snaggletooth, for his part, told, among other things, of his
wife and their nearby island home, and the territorial dominance
that led to him becoming monarch of this part of the river. He
spoke of the fish, snakes, turtles, pygmy deer, fruit bats and other
creatures, even the occasional monkey, which formed part of his
diet. The crocodile’s transparency about his carnivorous habits
helped cement a trusting bond, giving Spackleface enough realism
to observe, even set aside, a few instinctive fears, although, of
course, he kept to his tree. There was no pretence. Each occupied
a separate habitat in respectful co-existence.
Often their chats would last hours with the crocodile
stretched out in the mud on the riverbank and Spackleface
relaxing in the tree. After several weeks, Snaggletooth’s quip,
the nearest either got to a declaration of intimacy, was, ‘You
know, I actually do care a fig about you, Old Face; in fact
several.’
‘Ha, ha!’ the monkey snorted, then pelted him with
figs. And if you can imagine a crocodile smiling, that’s what
happened, as he nimbly flipped each fig with his snout into
the air from the water, and caught it in his mouth. Oh, yes,
they got on better and better as time drifted by.
Their mutual love of figs polished the bonds of brotherhood
and brightened their time together. But sadly, while some
honeymoons shrivel in the light of everyday ordinariness,
8 Kalila and Dimna

others burn out more dramatically. The end came when the
green-eyed monster of jealousy got its grip on Buttercup,
Snaggletooth’s wife.
There was no immediate souring of friendship. Spackleface
and Snaggletooth continued floating together in a rare
bubble of delicately balanced buddyhood. They inhabited an
extra-dimensional sphere, nullifying all intrusions of reality.
That monkey flesh might be crocodile food was so obvious as
to be irrelevant, in the face of Spackleface’s fig supply. They
enjoyed a mutual trust tempered by fig-love. What else did
they need?
Madame Buttercup took a while to recognise the change
in her husband. She knew about Spackleface, of course.
Snaggletooth had told her about his new pal, even sometimes
swam back to her with figs tucked in his cheek, claiming they
were gifts from Spackleface. But he did not dwell excessively
on his new friendship. For although Buttercup had a
multitude of female crocodile friends who gathered together
regularly, he, frankly, couldn’t bear to listen to their recapping
in excruciating empathetic detail the ins-and-outs of each
shifting alliance of every relative, friend or acquaintance, not
simply with one another, but with the entire tribe’s collective
network of siblings, children, grandchildren, best friends,
lovers, parents, former friends, ex-lovers, partners, the dead –
and anyone else who interconnected.
Knowing his wife’s excitability, Snaggletooth played
down the details of his time with Spackleface. The avowed
superficiality of his simian relationship made her doubly
suspicious. She knew perfectly well that males needed male
friends, and that new alliances were harder for them to form
and sustain. They placed so much emphasis on competitive
achievements like strength, or status or how deep they could
dive or how long they could hold their breath underwater.
What absurd creatures!
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 9

Sometimes it offended Buttercup that her husband was

so happy with someone else, especially a smelly monkey,
however amusing he and his figs might be. Indeed, she began
to imagine that Spackleface might be a female monkey, and
that she was being duped. Her best friend, Glinta, agreed it
must be so. How could a bull croc be so happy with another
male? There had to be some kind of interspecific hanky-panky
going on. Of course, this idea was far more exciting than the
dull truth of straightforward male bonding. It was something
you could get your teeth into and natter about, something
to exaggerate and build toward all-consuming jealousy. Soon
Buttercup was engulfed in a self-ignited blaze of fury, whose
flames were fed by her continuous gossip with the crocodile
sisterhood.
When the confrontation came, it came swiftly – like the
explosive ambush of an open-mouthed crocodile shooting
full-length out of the water to snatch the unwary fruit bat off
an overhanging branch.
‘Your friend Spackleface can’t be all you claim. It must be a
female monkey you’re hanging out with, having fun.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Snaggletooth, looking at her
intently. He felt like whacking her hard with his six-foot tail
but restrained himself. He knew that crocodilian wife-beating
was a short-term tactic that usually bore a high strategic cost.
‘Well, explain why you are so happy with him then,
coming home later than usual?’
‘I don’t have to explain more than I already have. He’s my
friend, that’s all, and I like his company. Not more than I like
yours, but differently.’
‘Nonsense!’ growled Buttercup. ‘I don’t believe a word of
it.’
Truth be told, if Snaggletooth hadn’t valued home comforts
so much – his wife, the mud and reeds on their island, the
company of his children, and his role as patriarch – he would
10 Kalila and Dimna

have told her to buzz off with a shake of his massive head, as
if he were snorting out a fly that crawled too far up a nostril.
Two souls, his and Spackleface’s, may well have coalesced
in harmony by a riverside fig tree, but their sweet unity was
now threatened by Buttercup’s petulance. She demanded
nothing less than complete loyalty and proceeded to blackmail
Snaggletooth into compliance.
Paradoxically, because he was such a sensitive croc, he was
susceptible to her wiles. Had he been a more thuggish type,
it is unlikely he would have stayed married. Snaggletooth
remembered his father’s views on the subject, spouted to
him one day while swimming together: ‘Few are the joys of
celibacy and many the pains of matrimony.’ He did not visit
Spackleface for three days because Buttercup took to her bed,
saying she was sick of the situation, and weeping copious tears
which in no way seemed false to Snaggletooth. His wife meant
business: get rid of Spackleface or else. Finally, in despair, he
relented enough to ask her what she wanted.
Raising herself from her reed bed, she looked at him in the
most distraught way imaginable. She had not eaten in days
and appeared even more threatening than usual.
‘The only thing that will cure me is monkey heart. Bring
me Spackleface’s heart or I shall slowly die right here. Nothing
else will do. Do you hear me? Monkey heart! I’ll eat nothing
else till you bring his little fig-sweetened organ. After living so
long in that tree its nectar must be incredible.’”
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 11

“R evolting!” King Dabshelim exclaimed from the

shadows, interrupting Bidpai’s narrative by their campfire.
“How disgusting! Poor Snaggletooth; it must have been awful
for him.”
“Indeed it was, my Lord. Buttercup’s words cut and
twisted into Snaggletooth’s gut worse than a stabbing knife.
The pain in his chest was excruciating. We don’t often think
of crocodiles as creatures with feelings, but Snaggletooth was
the exception. He felt torn in two, as if one of his own had
chomped on his skull and was thrashing his body back and
forth in a death grip. Putting it bluntly, Sire, Buttercup was
a croc willing to control her habitat at any cost. Emotional
brutality wrecks home life just as violently as physical abuse.
Snaggletooth was in turmoil. How could he present
himself to Spackleface in such a guise, as stalker and not as
friend? How could playfulness survive if hunting entered
their equation? Snaggletooth hated himself, his wife, his very
species. What had domesticity done, to turn him on himself
like a monster?
Buttercup was not one to take things lying down, especially
things domestic. From egg to death, she terrorised her family
into obeying her rules.
So, there was no going back for Snaggletooth if he wished
to remain with Buttercup: she could no more compromise
than a volcano could stop erupting. Though, of course, she
was not erupting now but lying sullenly smoldering on her
reed bed, oblivious to any pain but her own.
With the heaviest of hearts Snaggletooth swam slowly
back to the fig tree early one morning with a terrible mixture
of uncertainty rumbling in his chest. ‘How can I repay
12 Kalila and Dimna

unselfish love with death?’ he asked himself. ‘Am I friend in

word but villain in deed? Is every joy I have experienced with
my boon companion to be betrayed?’ With every stroke of
his stout legs and wiggle of his agile body through the murky
water, he pondered a different personal defect from the menu
that had tripped off Buttercup’s sharp tongue. ‘Maybe you’re
going gay,’ she had tossed at him before he left. ‘I shouldn’t be
surprised.’ He was as offended by this assault on maleness as
would be an atheist accused of being a closet mystic.
‘Ho, ho!’ hailed Spackleface loudly when he at last spied
the triangulated wake of Snaggletooth’s snout and eye sockets
cruising towards him. ‘Hello, bruiser,’ he called out when the
river beast was close enough to hear. ‘Where have you been?
Everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ said the crocodile. ‘Had a bit of bother with the wife
that delayed me.’
‘How so?’
‘She accused me of being mean and selfish for never
inviting you to dinner at our place. “After all,” she said, “we
have both often enjoyed his figs and should reciprocate.”’
‘Well, they’re not really my figs,’ said the monkey. ‘They
belong to the tree. All I do is pick them and chuck them to
you in the water. It’s not exactly hard work.’
‘True,’ said the croc, ‘but the spirit of generosity
nevertheless prevails. You know I’ve always been grateful for
your introduction to this fruit.’
‘Tosh,’ said the monkey. ‘Think nothing of it. What does
your wife propose to feed me if I visit your island? Do you
have banana trees? Or will I be served fish?’
‘Actually, we do have banana trees, as well as berries and
other fruits, although I don’t know their names, so I’m sure you
will find plenty to enjoy. However, it’s the occasion my wife
looks forward to, being able to welcome you in the true spirit of
multianimalism as the first primate guest across our threshold.’
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 13

‘Very kind, very kind,’ said the monkey, ‘but totally

unnecessary. I mean, your wife could much more easily come
here than me to your island. Is she feeling a bit excluded by
not being part of our fig tree parties?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ said Snaggletooth. ‘You know how it
is. She wants to meet you and show off our home. Include
you in her tribal network.’
‘You mean check me out, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose there’s a bit of that too.’
‘Well I’m not sure about this. Our relationship is unusual
enough; and I’m certain that never in a million years would
any of my ex-wives want to meet yours. They’d die of fright
at the very idea.’
‘Fair enough,’ said the crocodile. ‘I suppose I’m asking you
to do me a favour for the sake of domestic peace. It’s probably
not your first choice of social activity.’
‘No, it isn’t. Why can’t we just continue as before, chatting
by the fig tree?’ After a pause, Spackleface continued, ‘I know
why: curiosity has seized the lady. She wants to know how we
can relate so successfully, how we can spend so much time
together enjoying simple fun.’
‘You’re right there,’ said the croc. ‘She even thinks you
might be a girl monkey.’
‘That’s crazy,’ said Spackleface.
‘That’s exactly what I told her.’
‘Nothing like imagination to spark a roaring fire,’
remarked the monkey. ‘Women can be so neurotic, so fearful
of a nothing.’
‘You said it, brother,’ said the croc.
‘There’s no way out, is there?’ said the monkey. ‘I have to
come or she’ll make it increasingly difficult for you to visit
me.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Snaggletooth. ‘I’d be ever so grateful.’
‘So when shall I come? Now?’
14 Kalila and Dimna

‘If you wish: Why not? Hop aboard.’

And the monkey did. They set off for the rendezvous
with Madame Buttercup, to a
dinner party that would feast
Spackleface in ways that he
didn’t imagine.
Snaggletooth, with the
monkey on his back, glided
smoothly through waters that
became progressively deeper
as the pair made their way
out into the broad reaches
of the estuary. Spackleface turned around very carefully to
glimpse his comfortable fig tree diminishing on the horizon.
Soon it vanished entirely as he watched the croc’s even wake
disappearing behind them.
‘Everything okay?’ Snaggletooth burbled. ‘Am I going too
fast? Are you comfortable?’
‘Not much to hang onto back here, is there?’ remarked the
monkey. ‘I can swim, but would rather not tumble in.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Snaggletooth. ‘I’ll stop if you do, so
you can climb back on.’
‘Thanks, but I’d prefer to keep dry. You probably don’t
feel it with your armour plating, but there’s quite a breeze up
here. So maybe slow it down a bit, please, if you don’t mind.
I think I’ll stretch out and clutch on, hoping your bow-wave
doesn’t swamp me.’
‘Right-o!’ said the croc, reducing his speed by half. And
although this verbal exchange was friendly enough, there was
a tension in the air between them because of the unfamiliarity
of their roles. This experience in deep water was a long way
from their established routine around the fig tree, and it made
them both nervous – but for different reasons.
‘Something’s wrong,’ the monkey thought to himself as
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 15

he lay on his belly in an awkward yet more aerodynamic

position, gripping by hand and foot some of the spinal knobs
that ran down the croc’s back. ‘I don’t like it out here so far
from shore. Snaggletooth may be a great swimmer but I feel
vulnerable. What if another croc comes up and snatches me?
Or a sea eagle? I’m just a visible and sweet piece of bait on
my friend’s back, a stupid little monkey who’s wandered out
of his depth. What an idiot!’
For his part, the crocodile was plagued by guilt. ‘I’m more
rat than croc,’ he burbled to himself in the water. ‘A big, lousy
double-dealing sneak. How can I ever claim friendship again
with any creature, even my own kin, after this performance?
I’m one henpecked reptile. I should take Spackleface back to
the tree we have shared so happily and forget this pathetic ruse
to appease a jealous wife. This foray is only going to earn me
woe, woe and more woe.’
Although Spackleface could not hear a word of
Snaggletooth’s gloomy mutterings he picked up certain subtle
variations in the croc’s body language, a stiffening here and a
clumsiness there – vibrations that indicated danger.
‘What are you thinking,’ he called ahead to his friend. ‘Is
it harder for you to swim so slow?’ He could spy a dot on the
horizon that was presumably Snaggletooth’s island.
‘No, not at all,’ said the croc. ‘It’s a delight to be able to take
you home for a meal. My wife will be so thrilled to meet you.’
But here a sudden blast of conscience, if Your Majesty can
believe it, struck Snaggletooth. Relief came in a spontaneous
burst of confession that swept over him.
‘O Spackleface!’ he said, lifting his chin from the water,
‘I have done you wrong. Things are not as they seem. I am
taking you home because my wife wants to consume your
dear, sweet heart. She believes it will be a million times
sweeter than the figs I have already brought her. The meal she
plans, I hate to say, is you. Your heart is the fruit she craves.’
16 Kalila and Dimna

At the end of this speech, the croc gave a tremendous sigh

and lowered his head. As his jaws dipped underwater, the
sound that had begun as a soft sibilant ended in a miserable
gurgle.
Needless to say the shock of Snaggletooth’s announcement
so upset the balance of the monkey’s mind (not to mention
his body) that he almost rolled off the croc’s back into the
drink. And who would have blamed him? Fortunately, he
remembered advice given long ago by his father when he
was an impulsive scamp: ‘Think first, panic later.’ How, or
even why, he became aware of such a functional message
from within is impossible to say, but it surfaced with enough
urgent insistence that Spackleface couldn’t ignore it.
He had a so-called out-of-body experience: on one hand
he was terrified to the point of speechless immobility, while
on the other – calm and detached – he observed himself pause
and activate every ounce of cunning he possessed, trusting
it and whatever extra wisdom might condense around it, to
rescue him from disaster.
‘Oh no!’ he exclaimed to the silent croc who had resumed
his steady cruise towards Buttercup. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?
I left my dear sweet heart back in the tree. I don’t wear it every
day, you know.’
‘What!’ said the croc. He stopped swimming, though his
momentum carried them gliding inexorably forward. ‘What
the devil are you talking about? Since when do creatures have
two hearts? Get away with you.’
‘No, sorry, but it’s true for most primates. There’s the sweet,
special heart fed by hopes and dreams, and the other cruder,
sour one that feeds on any damn thing that comes along. We
can open and close our chests to exchange them whenever we
feel like it, but usually it’s before sleep and after we wake up in
the morning. I mean, it’s not something we brag about, you
know. It would be too risky if our enemies knew. We like to
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 17

keep our hidden heart hidden.’

However unlikely this story seemed, Snaggletooth
was happy to believe it, thereby releasing himself from his
predicament. It offered the ideal win-win solution; a heart
that could both be kept and eaten. The crocodile was beside
himself with joy and sang out in a surprisingly melodious
baritone, startling three seagulls that were passing overhead:

‘How beautiful, how sweet is life,

When two pals put an end to strife.
Hurray! To the fig tree we now repair,
Our sweetest heart awaits us there.’

After this absurd rhapsody, he asked: ‘Do you truly mean

that if we return to the fig tree you will get your sweet heart
and we can take it to my wife?’
‘Of course,’ said the monkey, shivering slightly, though he
knew the croc couldn’t turn around sufficiently to behold his
fear. And because Spackleface floated in uncharted waters, he
followed his best option: silent patience, otherwise known as
Masterly Inactivity.
‘All right,’ said Snaggletooth finally. ‘Let’s do it,’ And in
less time than it takes to tell, they were back at the fig tree
where the monkey jumped off the croc’s back as quick as he
could and scampered high into its branches.
‘Hurry if you can,’ called out the croc, settling down into
the thick mud on the riverbank for what he thought was a
brief rest. ‘We need to get a move on.’
‘Bugger off, lizard brains!’ Spackleface shouted from
the top of the tree. ‘You’re on your own now, you bloody
dinosaur.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Snaggletooth called back.
‘Get your sweet heart and let’s go.’
18 Kalila and Dimna

‘You don’t get it, do you fatso?’ the monkey screamed

back, coming down lower in the tree so he didn’t have to
shout. ‘You’ve been had, you sack of fishguts. Of course I
don’t have two hearts. Get out of here and leave me alone!’
Now you might well imagine the shame and shock that
greeted Snaggletooth when he understood his mistake. He’d
lost what he had by being had, and this realization felt bad.
‘Won’t you reconsider?’ he called out pathetically from the
mud.
‘Listen, dragon’s breath!’ Spackleface said clearly. ‘If I
never see you again it will be too soon. Sod off!’
‘Now, now,’ said the croc, ‘don’t talk like that. We’ve been
good friends for many, many months. Balance that fact in the
equation against our late unpleasantness.’
‘“Late unpleasantness”! Do you think I’m as stupid as
Flopears who was devoured by that wretched lion?’
‘Who’s Flopears?’ asked Snaggletooth.
Spackleface peered down sullenly at the beast who had
only recently conspired to do him in. Not a shred of friendship
remained in either of his hearts, sweet or sour. He felt only
an incandescent mix of fear and fury in his relief at reaching
safety.
The monkey glowered at the reptile to whom he had been
so closely bonded.
‘Croc in the mud same as snake in the grass,’ he shouted,
his grammar deserting him in his rage.
‘I understand and I’m sorry for being such an coward. I
don’t expect you to forgive me, but please tell me the story
about Flopears, if you can bring yourself to.’
‘Monkey don’t have a “D” in it!’ shouted Spackleface. ‘I’m
no Donkey.’
‘What do you mean,’ said Snaggletooth.
‘Flopears died because he didn’t learn from his first
mistake, which was to trust the jackal.’
‘Go on,’ said the croc.
 Flopears, Smiley and Squinteye the Lion 19

Flopears, Smiley and Squinteye the Lion

‘Once upon a time,’ Spackleface began grumpily, ‘there was

a lion named Squinteye who lived by a river.’ The monkey
paused, pointing at the muddy water below. ‘A lot cleaner
than this one,’ he said. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘one morning
this Squinteye gets into a terrible fight with an elephant and,
although he survives, his neck is so badly twisted by the
elephant’s trunk that he can’t hunt. The pain is too severe to
chase prey, and soon he and his sidekick, a
jackal named Smiley, are starving.
Smiley, who depends on the lion’s leavings,
finally speaks up one morning, when hunger
pinches his throat so tightly he feels the end
can’t be far away. The similarly starving lion
is lethargic, and lying in a heap with a trance-
like look on his face.
“Boss,” says the jackal, “we better find
something to eat soon or we’re both going to topple over once
too often. End of story.”
“Not far wrong, I’m sure, old pal,” says the lion, “but what
am I to do? Stalking anything is out of the question for it
kills me to slink along close to the ground. Unless you can
drive something right into my paws for me to kill, that ugly
pachyderm has done us in.”
“Well that’s not impossible,” says Smiley. “I think I have
a candidate who might just follow me if I provide the right
incentive. Get ready behind that bush in about an hour, and
I’ll see what I can do. You’ll know we’re coming when you
hear me speaking loudly.”
20 Kalila and Dimna

“Okay,” says the lion, “I’ll be ready in an hour.”

And off trots Smiley until he comes to the outskirts of
a village where he finds Flopears, a skinny and bedraggled
donkey, who works for a parsimonious brickmaker. Flopears
is nibbling away at a sparse patch of dusty grass in front of his
owner’s brickyard.
“Top of the morning to you, friend,” Smiley says, trotting
up beside him. “How are things?” The donkey tilts his head
sideways to see who’s visiting, and recognises the clever and
witty jackal he’s known slightly over the years.
“Pretty terrible,” Flopears says, still cropping his meager
fare. “My cruel owner makes me haul racks full of bricks to
his customers all day in the sun and barely feeds me. Look at
this awful grass! I’m knackered and angry.”
“Now that you mention it, you do look a bit strung out,”
says Smiley.
“Strung out!” says Flopears, lifting his head to stare at
Smiley. “My ribs are so corrugated I feel like a xylophone. I’m
feeble and grumpy, and anytime I bump into something, I
sing out a new note of pain. Look at all these dings and dents
on my body. I’m completely out of tune!”
“Well, why don’t you leave?” asks the jackal, reaching up
with a back paw to scratch at a flea nipping his left ear.
“Oh, sure,” says Flopears, “wander off and take care of
myself. Just like that – boom! That’s the problem with you
beasts: you forget that we domesticated animals have lost
the capacity to fend for ourselves. Besides, miserable as it
is working for men, it’s in their interest to protect us from
predators. A freed slave like me feels marvelous until some
brute targets him as dinner.”
“Come, come,” says Smiley. “You remind me of my old
uncle’s saying: ‘It’s no use being pessimistic. It wouldn’t work
anyway.’ He used to repeat that whenever I said I couldn’t
do something, including change my attitude. Anyway, that’s
partly why I’m here. I have a proposal for you.”
 Flopears, Smiley and Squinteye the Lion 21

So the jackal pauses and gives a superlative smile, looking

joyfully into the donkey’s eyes. “You can leave this place in safety
any time you want,” he continues. “I know three she-donkeys
who were recently in similar straits to your own, yet now they’re
having the time of their lives. They live downriver in a quiet
valley where there’s luscious grass and bright skies. What’s more,
they told me the other day they were lonesome for company
and asked if I knew any good-looking single males.”
“What are you talking about?” says Flopears, shaking his
head. “I’m a bag of bones. No woman’s
going to look at me.”
“There you go again,” sighs the jackal.
“Pessimism, pessimism, pessimism! Give
it a rest, will you? Skinny is big this
year. You have no idea. Work, work,
work – that’s your problem: all nose to
the grindstone. You’d probably have a
harem if you ever went out. Anyway I’ve
already told these donkey girls the score,
and they understand perfectly because they themselves were in
the same condition two or three months back: emaciated and
worked half to death by a market trader, who had them hauling
all sorts of stuff, all over the place. But now they’re plump and
lusty, and looking for a husband to serve and be served by.”
“All three of them?” says Flopears incredulously, yet ready
to embrace such a charming fantasy.
“That’s right. They don’t want any complications with male
rivalry, status battles, territoriality and all that sort of thing.
One fella, three gals. So if you’re game, we’ve got to get a move
on to get you started in your new life, as stud of the valley.”
Old Flopears had never before in his life had such an offer.
The deal sounded like a dream come true, and, well, what did
he have to lose? Such was his train of thought, silly though
it may seem, though the answer to his question was, in fact,
“Quite a Lot!”
22 Kalila and Dimna

‘Quite a lot of what?’ asks Snaggletooth suddenly, looking

up to the fig tree. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Hello! Still talking!!’ Spackleface sings out, stabbing a
forefinger downward. ‘Behave, or I stop now!’
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ says the crocodile. ‘I just couldn’t figure
it out.’
‘That’s the point of the story! You listen patiently while my
eloquence enters your so-called brain. And then you wait!’
The monkey glares down. ‘Where was I?’ he asks after a steely
silence.
‘Smiley taking Flopears down to the valley,’ says
Snaggletooth.
‘Okay. As the donkey and jackal make their way toward
the bush, the injured lion in fact has grown so tired of waiting,
and is so weak from hunger, that he has settled down for a
snooze.
Meanwhile Smiley tells Flopears that the three delightful
lady donkeys he is destined to meet are called Sheila, Delia
and Daphne. To alert the lion of his approach he starts calling
out their names. “SHEILA!” the jackal shouts. “Guess who is
COMM-MMIIIIING! DELIA! DAPHNE! PARTY TIME!”
These cries wake up the napping lion who makes himself
ready, but, as it happens, not ready enough. When Flopears
is led past the ambush bush, the lion’s balance is off and he
overshoots his target, just managing to whack his bared paw
briefly against the donkey’s neck before rolling into a heap on
the ground.
“Awwrgrr,” cries the lion, for his shoulders are killing him
after this sudden exertion. Flopears is momentarily transfixed
by the startling sight of a disheveled beast, its ragged mane in
 Flopears, Smiley and Squinteye the Lion 23

tatters, wincing up at him from the ground. Also, the blow to

his neck clearly signals danger and in an instant he takes off like
a rocket, braying hysterically and not stopping until he is back
at the village brickyard.
“Well done, O mighty hunter,” proclaims Smiley, chiding
his master. “I lead probably the stupidest donkey in the world
into your front paws and you still miss him. What’s the matter
with you?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” snaps the lion. “I just slightly
over-balanced, that’s all. I’m very sorry for both our sakes to
have spoiled your work. I’m afraid you’ll have to go and try
and lure another creature here for that one has surely been
frightened to death and will never return.”
“Now wait a minute,” says the jackal. “That’s my business,
not yours. I’ll get him here again, but this time you’d better be
ready to jump him properly.”
Snarling and growling from embarrassment, the lion
agrees. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Next time I won’t miss.”
“Okay,” said Smiley. “Give me another hour. I’ll be back
with him.”
So jackal returns to village to find Flopears at the
brickmaker’s place nibbling the same dusty patch of grass he
had been grazing before.
“What happened to you,” Smiley asks in a concerned
voice. “Why did you run off?”
“Whaddya mean, ‘Why did you run off?’ Flopears
mimics. “I ran off because I got hit by an ugly thunderbolt.
A monster!”
“You’re talking about Sheila, Flopears, the hottest donkey
babe out there. She did get a bit excited, I admit, and she sent
me to apologise and beg you to come back. They all did, in
fact, all three of the girls. And she’s honestly sorry; she just
couldn’t control herself when she actually saw you.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Flopears. “She was a monster.
24 Kalila and Dimna

No proper donkey behaves like that. It was out of control.”

“Well, she’s honestly sorry, but she says if you weren’t so
handsome, she wouldn’t lose her mind like that.”
“Oh, rubbish! Don’t sweet-talk me. Whatever it was nearly
killed me.”
“Now, now, you’re exaggerating. She’s just frisky, you
know. Healthy and ready for the old wham bam, thank you
ma’am. You need food to get your strength up, that’s all: some
decent grass and time off. I told them this but she wouldn’t
listen. Delia and Daphne are going to take care of you, nurse
you. Get you fit. They’re twins, so they can stand up to Sheila
if she gets out of line again.”
“What’s in for you, eh, Smiley? What do you get out of
this deal?”
“Nothing. They saved my life once, letting me eat some
food they didn’t want, so I owe them one. It’s a long story. I’ll
tell you about it on the way. They’ll be beside themselves if I
don’t bring you back soon.”
“Are you sure that was a donkey? I don’t like the feel of
this,” says Flopears.
“Come on,” says Smiley. “Don’t worry. If you really don’t
like the look of them when we get there, you can turn tail
again and come back here. I couldn’t stop you last time, and
couldn’t if you changed your mind again, you being so strong
and fast.”
“Oh, all right,” says Flopears, still hesitant.
So, once more, the donkey and jackal make their way back
to the swards of lush, emerald-green grass growing beside the
river, where the lion lies in ambush. Smiley is immensely
entertaining, making up some cock-and-bull story about how
the three donkey lasses saved his life some months before,
when he was starving and a fish suddenly flopped up out of
the water onto the riverbank. He hadn’t noticed it but they
had, calling him over to his lucky meal. They found his eating
 Flopears, Smiley and Squinteye the Lion 25

habits revolting, of course, but put up with him in exchange

for his charm and chat.
And so, Smiley talks on and on, careful to ask Flopears
regular questions and listen to his answers. When they arrive
at the valley again, Smiley suggests the donkey might like to
try some fresh grass, and so Flopears eats his fill until he is
sure all is right with the world and Smiley his truest friend.
Eventually they approach the bush where Squinteye waits,
this time wide awake and ready. Smiley announces their
arrival in as much of a singsong voice as a jackal can muster:
“Girls! Girls! Flopears is here!”
He isn’t for long. It would be cruel to describe the donkey’s
messy end in the flashing jaws and claws of the lion. At least
his dispatch is swift, and his suffering – once Squinteye’s jaws
grip his face and suffocate him – minimal. A few squeals and
gurgles, and the pain-numbing endorphins kick in. Flopears
dies suddenly and bloodily, as welcome prey, like so many
before him in the great food chain of being and unbeing.
“Well, done, Boss,” says Smiley to Squinteye. “You have
truly delivered this time.”
“I’m just going to go wash my paws and face at the river,
if you don’t mind,” says the lion somewhat regally. “Compose
myself before we begin to feast. Please guard our meal until
my return.”
“Your word is my command,” says the jackal as the lion
wandered off. But it isn’t long before hunger overpowers
Smiley and he sidles up to Flopears’s corpse and with great
relish neatly consumes the donkey’s ears and then his heart.
Quickly he wipes his muzzle and licks his paws so completely
clean that no speck of telltale blood remains. When Squinteye
returns, Smiley is sitting demurely on his haunches before the
carcass.
“Wait a minute,” says the lion as he circles around. “What
happened to the donkey’s ears?” There’s a pause as he studies
26 Kalila and Dimna

his meal more closely. “And his heart!” he thunders. “Are you
trying to leave me YOUR leftovers, you weasel?” he says,
glaring at the jackal.
“Boss,” says Smiley calmly, bowing his head slightly,
“there’s more here than meets the eye.” He pauses and then
slowly looks up at Squinteye. “This fool donkey came twice to
meet you because he lacked certain essentials of perception.
Would a donkey who could listen have returned after your
first ferocious attack? He was an idiot with no ears. What’s
more, he had no heart to feel and understand, or, indubitably,
he would have felt panic and considered things more carefully.
That was just the way he was built: an incomplete, deaf and
muddled animal. No ears and no heart. Sir, this was no
common donkey.”
“Well, I suppose you’re right,” says Squinteye, finding
nothing to counter this apparently logical argument, and
feeling the subtlest pinprick of inferiority at not being as
clever as Smiley. So jackal and lion eat Flopears together in
peace, sharing their lives in fractious harmony thereafter.’
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 27

‘Okay.’ said Snaggletooth, ‘I get it. You’ll no longer play

donkey to my sweet jackal words so my missus can eat your
heart out. In fact, she can eat her own heart out waiting for
you never to appear.’
‘Exactly!’ said the monkey. ‘I’m staying in the damn
tree and you and she can crawl to hell for all I care. You’ve
destroyed our friendship by trying to trick me.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said the croc. ‘More fool me.’
‘Quite,’ said Spackleface. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful for your
honest stupidity, but you let the cat-o-nine-tails out of the
bag, powderhead, and then I thrashed you with it. If you’re
going to be devious, you’ve got to be smarter and not give
the game away, like the potter did to the king. I think you’ve
relied too long on sheer brute power instead of learning other
tactics.’
‘What potter and king?’ said the croc. ‘Tell me!’
‘Oh I can’t be bothered with the likes of you. I’m tired.
Clear off!’
‘No, no, no please,’ implored the croc. ‘Let’s end
harmoniously. Forgive me. I’m sorry. I know we can’t go back,
but just tell me this one last tale and then we can part.’
‘Well, as long as you don’t go telling me any more of your
fairy tales,’ said Spackleface. ‘I don’t want to listen to anything
you have to say.’
‘Yes, solution!’ said Snaggletooth. ‘I understand. Mum’s
the word. Now pray proceed.’
There was a brief, almost poignant pause while the two
animals held one another’s gaze as they had in the more playful
co-minglings of friendship. But the moment soon passed.
28 Kalila and Dimna

Scarface the Potter

‘There once was a drunken potter,’ Spackleface said loudly,

‘who got home one night very much the worse for wear.
He stumbled around in the dark until he tripped over some
broken terracotta jugs and cut his head on a shard.’
‘Oh, how terrible!’ said the croc.
‘QUIET!’ shouted the monkey, glaring. The crocodile
shrank back into the mud, apologizing profusely. ‘This potted
potter,’ Spackleface continued calmly, ‘cursed his pain and
passed out flat on his back. He had slashed his forehead. Blood
streamed over his face, clogging his eyes, entering his mouth
and sloshing into his right ear. He was a gruesome mess, and
when he came around, gagging, a few minutes later, he rose
and staggered to a trough of filthy water normally used by the
goat. He splashed his face with this vile water, bumbled into
his shack, fumbled in the dark for a grubby rag to staunch his
wound and crashed down on his bed.
In a short time, without proper treatment, the wound
developed into a vicious scar running diagonally from his
right hairline across the brow of his left eye nearly to the top
of the ear. From then on he looked a frightful brute, but he
wasn’t really – he was just a large, amiable potter with a drink
problem.
Life continued as it does for big ugly potters everywhere,
with its usual litter of triumphs and defeats. One of these
defeats was that Scarface – for such he was soon nicknamed
in his village – began to lose sales. For reasons totally
unconnected to his drunken accident, the bottom dropped
 Scarface the Potter 29

out of the clay-pot market, and soon he hadn’t enough

money for food, or even ale.
Fortunately some of his pub mates were soldiers on local
duty, and they still had enough cash to buy him a drink or two
when they met up. The question inevitably arose: “Why don’t
you join up, mate? Come with us next week! We’re leaving for
the capital, the big city, and you could come along. You never
know where you’ll end up but at least you’ll get food, bed,
grog, and – sometimes – pay and booty.”
Scarface took his friends’ advice; he quit potting and
joined the army. He underwent brief training, and the next
thing anyone knew, he and his mates were stationed together
in the capital’s barracks. It wasn’t glamorous duty but it was
a lot more exciting than village life. One day, however, he
seemed to hit the jackpot when the king noticed his fearsome
face during a routine troop review.
“Good heavens!” the king thought to himself. “Now there’s
a brave fellow to terrify the enemy. I rather like the cut of his
brow.” Soon enough the monarch himself drafted Scarface
into his palace guard. Not only that, but it was soon clear
that he had become a royal favourite, to the annoyance of his
mates. They were too frightened of the king to do anything
about it except to tease Captain Ugly Mugly, as they called
him, after his undeserved promotion. To put it another way,
he was the wrong guy at the right time in the right place, but
he didn’t know that yet of course.
Yes, here was Scarface, the silly fraud. Working, to be
sure but, by military standards, as pampered as a lapdog. His
comrades attached enormous weight to the most trivial of
events. For example, when the king passed him a pair of his old
socks (and dirty ones at that) the royal discard was to Scarface
and his mates like precious coin. “The king gave him a pair of
socks!” Gossip traveled around the palace and far beyond as
tongues wagged. “What is it about this brute that so intrigues
30 Kalila and Dimna

the king?” courtiers asked. Nobody could fathom it. “He

isn’t even a real soldier!” they complained. Words flew helter
skelter, denigrating or defending Scarface. “The king spoke to
Scarface!” some exclaimed. “Who is this soldier and what kind
of spell has he cast over our noble leader?” Rumour reached
fever pitch when the royal hand casually passed Scarface a
peach from a nearby bowl of fruit. “Good God!” the Vizier
thought, “he’s FEEDING him now!”
Quite soon Scarface had many would-be friends who gave
him small presents, including a few gold coins, asking after his
health and such like, and “By the way have you ever heard His
Majesty speak out about this or that, diamond mining in the
south, for example, or a disputed track of land near Orissa,
or that vacancy for a new provincial governor?” Although
not the brightest spark, Scarface, it must
be said, soon learned to refuse all such
entreaties to exploit his position, saying
to himself: “I didn’t earn this honour,
so it’s not mine to turn to commercial
advantage.” Nevertheless, it didn’t occur
to him to wonder: “Why is the king
attracted to me? What have I done?”
He may have had a moral streak but his
curiosity was limited. He knew he was
one of the king’s minor favorites, and that
was good enough for him. His unthinking
motto, if it could have been plumbed, ran
something like this:

“Ours not to question why,

Ours but to satisfy!”

Captain Ugly Mugly wasn’t exactly smug, but he was

in danger of taking a tumble. Easy come, easy go. What
 Scarface the Potter 31

happened to trip him up was Veterans’ Day, the annual

extravaganza when all the country’s warriors gathered at the
capital for a massive ritual celebrating their glorious military
history.
Over countless decades, thousands had fallen in terrible
battles in defense of the realm. Every veteran had a duty
to remember dead comrades and former heroes. Their
pitiful stories of privation and bravery under unimaginable
conditions inspired in all citizens a sense of worth and
valour. This was the land of the brave, of honourable men
and chaste women, of the brightest children, and where all
grandchildren were geniuses. Its citizens must be always alert
to the dreaded enemy, lurking in darkness, ready to spring
upon the innocent.
On Veterans’ Day, elephants would be arrayed in armour
and battle colours, horses caparisoned and the bravest men
lined up in full dress uniform for royal inspection. There
would be long speeches, endless parades, banquets, music,
dance, chants, amazing costumes and a blaze of pageantry to
gladden the heart of any patriot. It was during the preparation
for this celebration that the king decided to find out more
about his favourite guard, “Tell me, my good man, how came
you by your magnificent scar?”
“Well it was like this, Your Royal Highness. I used to be
a potter, and one night when I came home drunk, and …”
Scarface soon poured forth his grubby tale.
The king was enraged. “A potter! A worker in common
clay! Trickster!” he shouted. “I’ll show you battle. Seize the
imposter,” he instructed the guards. “Thrash him!”
This royal command was music to the ears of his comrades
who now gave vent to their resentment. They threw him to
the floor to give him the drubbing of his life.
“Pity, Sire! Mercy!” Scarface cried out, trying to defend
himself as blows rained down all over his body. “At least you
32 Kalila and Dimna

could give me a chance to prove myself. You could test me.”

“Desist, men,” the king said to the other guards. “Test
YOU, Scarface? Test you HOW, you miserable worm?”
“Test me in battle, Your Majesty! See whether I’m soldier
material or not.”
“Ha! Test you in battle? Don’t be ridiculous! You’ll slay no
elephants, my boy, as the wise have said.”
All the guards, as well as the bashed and bleeding Scarface,
stared back uncomprehendingly at the king. “You … you
know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” the king spluttered.
“The story about the lions and the … the … er … jackal
cub?”
The guards stood in abashed ignorance as if they’d been
turned into stone, hardly daring to breathe. “No, Sire,” the
bravest one among them ventured just above a whisper, “I
don’t think we do.”
“Oh, for heavens sake!” said the monarch. “What’s the
matter with you lot? Don’t you know anything?” He snatched
a halberd from one of the guards and banged its butt loudly
on the marble floor. “Scarface, sit up!” he said. “The rest of
you,” he said banging the halberd again, “onto the floor. Settle
down and listen or I’ll pin your ears back.”
Thus it was that this king, attended by one of the most
captive audiences in recent history, began his rendition of
the traditional tale. Understandably any court functionary,
servant, waiter, petitioner, dignitary, foreign personage and
idler present or passing by during the narration felt it prudent
to gather around and sit awkwardly on the floor to listen.
Scarface, bloodied but thankful to be alive, was the most
attentive of all.
 The Jackal Adopted by Lions 33

The Jackal Adopted by Lions

“Once upon a time,” began the king, and stopped because

there was a shuffling of feet and a cough from the floor.
“Once upon a time,” he said again, glaring at the now silent
guards, then sweeping his eyes around to scan the other
listeners who had gathered, “there was a pair of lions with two
female cubs. The family was starving because their habitat was
bereft of prey. One day the father, after a long hunt through
a huge expanse of his territory, found only an abandoned,
whimpering jackal cub. He couldn’t bring himself to kill the
youngster, so he picked him up by the scruff of his neck and
took him back to his wife. He set the ragamuffin down before
her, saying:
‘A thoroughly rotten day, my darling. Rotten! Total waste
of time. All I could find was this baby which might serve as a
tidbit to help you give better milk to the girls.’
‘Arnold!’ the lioness snarled, for that was indeed her
husband’s name. ‘I can’t do that! Kill an orphan? No, I’ll raise
him as their brother. He will be a member of the family.’
With that, the lioness began to suckle as best she could the
poor jackal orphan, who was utterly famished.
‘I was rather afraid of that,’ said Arnold who well knew
and admired her tenderheartedness. ‘Another mouth to feed,’
he muttered as he curled up for a nap, swishing his tail to
keep the flies off his face.
So it came about that a lioness adopted and raised a jackal
baby alongside her two cubs. All three ate, slept, and played
together and sincerely believed they were siblings. The wise
34 Kalila and Dimna

lion parents said nothing to upset this happy state. But to an

outsider it was obvious that there were differences: the lion
cubs were a bit younger and stumbled a bit more when they
walked, while the jackal, although physically smaller, moved
in a sure-footed way and tended to boss his sisters around.
One day, however, the three cubs strayed further from
their den than ever before and ran into a lone elephant who
peered down at them balefully from a great height.
‘Uh-oh!’ shouted the jackal cub, turning
tail quickly. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!
This is terrible! We know elephants
fight lions and here’s one right in our
path!’
But his leonine sisters weren’t
listening and had inched ahead,
growling deep down in their
throats and staring right back at the
elephant that towered over them.
‘Sisters! Sisters!’ yapped the jackal, ‘time to go home. This
is going to end in tears. Let’s go. Now. NOW!’
The jackal’s anxiety was infectious, undermining the girl
cubs’ instinctive bravery. In a flash all three scooted home
as fast as they could and told their mother the whole story
several times in quick succession in breathless voices. But the
lion cubs also teased their jackal brother, saying he had been
a scaredy-cat coward.
‘Tommyrot,’ the jackal snapped, for he was vain. ‘It was
my duty to protect you from your folly in trying to frighten
an elephant. I was being prudent. I was not in the least afraid.’
‘If that’s so,’ said one of his sisters, ‘why did you run first
and fastest?’
‘You little pipsqueak,’ snarled the jackal, rushing in and
giving a painful nip to her back left leg. ‘I’ll teach you to
mock me!’
 The Jackal Adopted by Lions 35

‘Children, that’s enough!’ growled the lioness in a

meaningful way. ‘Stop this bickering instantly.’ Silence
followed, like the aftermath of a thunderclap. The siblings
knew very well not to mess with Mother. They’d seen her kill
their dinner enough times to know her power. In their eyes a
herd of elephants was significantly less formidable.
‘You!’ the lioness said to the jackal. ‘Come with me. You
two,’ she said to her cubs, ‘go and play together under those
trees.’ She led the jackal cub over to a patch of marshy grass
beside a pool of spring water and calmly stooped to take a
drink. The jackal stood beside her and after a minute she
said patiently, ‘Please never fight with your sisters in this way
again. It will simply land you in trouble.’
But her plea only served to rile him again. ‘Do you think
I’m their inferior?’ he demanded of his foster parent. ‘What
right do they have to put me down? Am I not their equal in
intelligence, beauty, skill and courage?’
‘Yes, indeed you are,’ said the lioness patiently, for she truly
loved him as her own. ‘But you are lacking one key piece of
information which I now shall give you.’ Quietly she explained
to the young jackal how he had been a foundling, tenderly
brought to her by her husband. She told of their decision to
raise him as a lion, how she had suckled and fattened him
from her own breast, and how proud she was of him. ‘But the
key piece of information is that you are and will always be a
jackal, whereas your sisters will grow into lionesses. They will
be bigger and fiercer than you and surely eventually kill you if
you continue this habit of taunting them.’
By now the young jackal had begun to quake in terror. His
mouth dropped slowly open, for the sudden discovery of his
true origins shocked him almost beyond bearing. If he wasn’t a
lion, who was he?
‘So, yes,’ his foster mother continued, ‘you are indeed
handsome, clever, brave, and brimming with heaps of other
36 Kalila and Dimna

fine characteristics. But, my dear, you are not a lion, and for
that reason and for the sake of your own safety, I think you
should now leave us and find your own kind to mingle with.
Staying with us, I am sorry to say, will lead to your certain
destruction.’
‘I don’t feel very well, Mum,’ whimpered the sad little
jackal, beginning to snuffle and cry.
Wisely, his surrogate mother allowed him time to flush
out his sense of vulnerability. ‘I know, my darling,’ she finally
said most quietly. ‘This is hard for you.’ She paused, then
continued: ‘You are very brave. That is the quality your father
and I – as well as your sisters – have bestowed on you: the
Bravery of Lions. Take that and you will become the best of
jackals. But, sadly, you can never be a lion, my son. Be brave.
Go now, forever with my love.’
‘Good bye, Mum, and thanks,’ the youngster sniffled,
and gave the big cat a nuzzle of gratitude. Then he
scampered off so quickly he raised a cloud of dust and was
never seen again and neither, as far as we are concerned,
were the lions.
 Scarface the Potter 37

“T hat, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the tale,” said

the king, breaking the reverent silence that had followed
his story. A flutter of applause broke out along with a few
whispers of appreciation.
“Enough of that!” the king ordered, again stamping the
butt of his halberd on the floor. “This story is for Scarface and
anybody else who can use it – now or later.”
He turned and looked sternly yet with an amicable
flicker of his eyebrows at his erstwhile favourite who, with
everyone else, had risen to his feet. “Like the jackal cub, my
hideous potter, you had better get out while the going’s good.
Otherwise the veterans of my army, the genuine warriors, will
soon find you and serve you some old shoe pie, poke in the
eye, chin music and anything else they have ready. War is not
all mouth and trousers, my clay hero. Begone and Godspeed!”
38 Kalila and Dimna

‘A t these words Scarface swiftly left the palace, vanishing

from the city, never to be seen again. Indeed the only trace
of his life is the story I have just told,’ said Spackleface to
Snaggletooth.
‘Oh, monkey! These convoluted tales of yours make one’s
brain ache,’ grumbled the crocodile. ‘How am I to understand
them? What do they mean? Will you please stop and explain
the wisdom beneath their surface?’
‘Do you also want me to eat the figs in the tree for you?’
asked the monkey. He grabbed one and threw it so hard it
bounced off the croc’s head with a dull thud. ‘Swallow that
and then YOU tell me what it means. What’s the matter
with you, Snake Brains? Explanation is no substitute for
experience. Do you want real life or a fantasy? You can’t live a
lie and hope to get away with it for long,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ said the crocodile.
‘What do I mean? What do I mean?’ said Spackleface. ‘I’m
sick of your questions. What I mean is that you’ll end up like
the donkey hidden under a tiger’s skin. Yes, I will tell the story
to you if you wipe those ugly tears from your even uglier eyes.
But that’s it. We’re finished. The sooner I never see you again,
the happier I’ll be.’
Snaggletooth knew the monkey meant it, so he kept quiet.
 Soapsuds and Lovejoy 39

Soapsuds and Lovejoy

‘Another donkey,’ explained Spackleface, ‘completely

unrelated to the one I just told you about, belonged to a
laundryman named Soapsuds. Every day this donkey, one
Lovejoy, staggered around a certain village dragging a cart
to deliver clean clothing and other laundered items. Even
though Soapsuds worked his hands to the bone, he still was
so poor he could not afford to feed his donkey properly.
So although Soapsuds loved Lovejoy to bits, the donkey
was as skinny as a toothpick and frail to boot. The laundryman
despaired of finding a way to fatten up his beloved beast
of burden, the collapse of whose health would wreck his
livelihood. One day, when man and donkey were making
a delivery on the outskirts of the village, Soapsuds spied
something odd in a field by the edge of the jungle. Curious,
he left the cart to investigate and was amazed to discover a
dead tiger. He had a good knife and a sharpening stone in
his cart, so he set about skinning the tiger as fast he could.
When he had finished, he abandoned its carcass and hauled
the valuable pelt home, pegging it out to dry.
At first he thought he would sell the tiger skin, but then
he devised a better plan: he would use the skin to get food
for the donkey. This was his idea: every night he would take
the donkey to a field where there was a fresh crop. He would
tether and then cover Lovejoy with the tiger skin so the
donkey could eat his fill in peace. Any farmer would think he
was a tiger and creep away.
40 Kalila and Dimna

And, indeed, that was exactly how it came to pass. Night

after night, the donkey under the tiger skin stuffed his eager
face with barley shoots, meadow grass, turnip tops, curly kale
and other munchy bits. Every morning before dawn Soapsuds
crept up and bundled the tiger skin into a sack, then took
beast and secret costume home. Soon Lovejoy grew so plump
he could barely fit into his stall. And so terrified was anyone
who spotted the disguised donkey in the night that they
tiptoed away as quietly and quickly as they could. Rumours of
the tiger spread like wildfire but no one investigated the matter
too closely, being grateful that the tiger seemed to have taken
no prey since first being spotted. But some farmers did notice
that, mysteriously, there seemed to be regular circles of damage
to their crops. But there were no tiger prints anywhere. And
anyway, whoever ever heard of a vegetarian tiger?
Everything went smoothly for Soapsuds and Lovejoy until
one occasion just before midnight. Not far from where our
hoofed hero munched away, a lonely she-donkey brayed her
misery into the gloom. Now sleek and fed, Lovejoy’s amorous
appetite was whetted and he raised his head to bray back a
lusty love-note. Amazed at such an unexpected reply to her
call, the jenny loudly sent forth more passionate entreaties.
And so, an almighty racket of courting nocturnal donkeys
aroused several farmers from bed. They threw on their clothes,
lit torches, and set forth to resolve the nuisance. Meanwhile,
Soapsuds remained obliviously asleep at home in the village.
You can well imagine the farmers’ annoyance when they
found the laundryman’s ass hidden under the tiger skin. Not
to put too fine a point upon it, they immediately took knives,
hoes, shovels, axes and other hardy farm instruments and did
poor Lovejoy in. The she-donkey never beheld her suitor and
the next day Soapsuds was run out of town and all his goods
confiscated by the outraged citizens.’
 Snaggletooth and Spackleface 41

“At the end of his story, Spackleface threw three final figs
at the silent crocodile lying morosely by the bank. Then he
swung out of the fig tree into the next and, moving thus
from tree to tree, abandoned that neighbourhood entirely.
Snaggletooth never saw the monkey again, which gave him
plenty of time to contemplate these stories, his behaviour
and the loss of a rare friendship. Buttercup, of course, was
delighted; she never got her monkey heart, but she certainly
kept her grip on Snaggletooth’s.”

Pleasure begins in the

realm of lovers
and death’s hardship
is separation.

Since all lovers
mingle into dust
life and death are but
one to us.

Ustad Khalilullah
Khalili, former
Poet Laureate of
Afghanistan
42 Kalila and Dimna

T he sun was already peeping over the eastern flank of the

city’s mountain ridgeline when Bidpai finished telling ‘How
to Lose What You Have.’ Crisp daylight raked out across the
palace grounds, glinting from every object and casting long,
deep shadows.
“Not exactly a cheerful ending,” King Dabschelim
remarked with a smile, “although fairly well-told.”
“As you well know, Your Majesty, life is not just
strawberries and cream,” Bidpai replied. “If I haven’t learned
my skills by now, what have I been doing? Stories are being
sung or told everywhere by billions of people in different
ways, their voices sprinkling the water of experience into
every community; a scattering of knowledge helping people
survive – even improve.”
“My kingdom unto a flower?” the king asked with a smile.
“And the storyteller but a ditch?” Bidpai responded. “Yes,
in a manner of speaking: one needs the water, the other
delivers it. The result is nourishment.”
“But are not storytellers often liars?”
“Indeed they are, Sire, for anyone may become a gambling
fool, thinking he’ll never be tangled in folly’s glorious chatter.
Self-deception rules, which is why we have the old saying: ‘A
bad king is like a contagious disease.’”
“I understand how Snaggletooth felt,” Dabschelim said
morosely, shaking his head from side to side. “This idea of
being healed by nutritious stories seems so fanciful, such
a long way from the simple joy of listening to an exciting
adventure unfold. So many types of loss are described in
 Bidpai Tells ‘How to Lose What You Have’ 43

‘How to Lose What You Have’ as to make the heart shrivel

from hopelessness.”
“Relax, Your Majesty. Enjoy, digest and don’t try to analyse.
Let the Kalila and Dimna fables grow in your mind; don’t try
to pulverise them with sovereign intellect. Let their mystery
confound and bemuse you, like it does a child! Here’s a quick
one to help you remember the link between fools, liars, kings,
storytellers and everyone else, regardless of caste, colour or
creed. But after that, I suggest we adjourn this session. It’s
been long night.”
“Yes, on that we agree!” the king said, stifling a yawn with
the back of his fist. “Frankly, I’ve had enough. Get on with it,
you Story Devil, so we can get some sleep!”
And Bidpai did, immediately …

I once heard it said

that life is like chess
and that stories
are like books of
famous chess games
that serious players
study so they will
be prepared if they
ever find themselves
in similar straits.

Kendall Haven,
Story Proof – the
science behind the
startling science
of story
44 Kalila and Dimna

Bleeding Dead Men

“O nce upon a time there was a madman who was

convinced he was dead. Nothing his doctors said would
convince him otherwise. He lay on his bed, stiff as a board
and refused to listen to their words. ‘Go away!’ he shouted.
‘I’m dead. Leave me alone!’
Then one of the doctors had a final idea. ‘Do dead men
bleed?’ he asked.
‘No, of course they don’t, you fool!’ said the madman,
turning his head slightly to glare at the quack.
The doctor grabbed the man’s arm and quickly pricked it
with a scalpel. ‘Look!’ he pointed as the wound flowed red:
‘Blood!’
The madman sat bolt upright, amazed. ‘By God,’ he
exclaimed. ‘Dead men DO bleed!’”

 Bidpai Tells ‘How to Lose What You Have’ 45

A s soon as Bidpai had finished, he and Dabschelim covered

themselves in blankets and slept through much of that day by
the smouldering campfire.

O man! If you only

knew how many of
the false fantasies
of the imagination
were nearer to the
Truth than the careful
conclusions of the
cautious. And how
these truths are of
no service until the
imaginer, having
done his work with
the imagination,
has become less
imaginative.

Shab-Parak