The Jackal's Judgment

At a village there is a tank. A Crocodile, making a burrow in the [foot of the] embankment, stayed in it. Afterwards the mud having dried and become hard, the Crocodile being unable to get out of the hole was going to die.

As a man was going past to fetch a midwife-mother to attend to his wife, the Crocodile, hearing him, said to the man, "Somehow or other manage to save me by breaking up the earth so that I may get out." The man broke up the earth, and let it out.

After that, as there was no water left in the tank, the man, placing the Crocodile on his shoulder, went to the edge of the river. Having gone there, after he had placed it in the water, the Crocodile seized the arm of that man in order to eat him.

"Why wilt thou eat me?" he asked. "Dost thou not know the help I gave thee? Yet thou art going to eat me!"

The Crocodile said, "It is true, indeed, regarding the assistance. It is because I am hungry that I am going to eat thee."

The man said, "It is good. Eat thou me. There are my witnesses, two or three persons. First ask them [regarding the justice of it], and then eat me." So they went to ask the witnesses about it.

Having met with a Kumbuk tree, he said to the Kumbuk tree, "This Crocodile is going to eat me. I ask this one's opinion of it."

"What is that about?"

The man said, "This Crocodile was going to die. I saved it. It is now going to eat me. Is that right?"

Then the Kumbuk tree says, "O Crocodile-cultivator, do not let that man go. There is no animal so wicked as that man. He stays near the tree in the shade, and having broken off the bark and the leaves he takes them away. At last he cuts down and takes the tree."

From there he goes and asks it of the Cow. "O Cow, I saved this Crocodile from death. This Crocodile is now going to eat me. Do you think it right?"

The Cow says, "O Crocodile-cultivator, do not let that man go. That man is a wicked man. He takes our milk, and at last kills and eats us. Do not let him go."

After that he asks it of the Jackal. The Jackal asks, "What is it about?"

He says to the Jackal, "O Jackal-artificer, without letting this Crocodile die, I saved it. Now it is going to eat me."

The Jackal-artificer says, "I cannot give this decision, not having seen what is the meaning of it. You must show me the whole affair from the beginning."

Then the man, placing the Crocodile on his shoulder, and having gone with it and put it in the house in which the Crocodile was at first, [and closed the entrance], and made the soil hard, the Jackal says, "Now then, don't you be afraid. I am on your side."

Then the man says, "Jackal-artificer, hear this case."

"I am both the judge and the witness," the Jackal said. "Now then, taking a cudgel beat thou him until he dies. I saw thy excellence and this one's wickedness."