The Blue Jackal

The lion once bowed its head to take orders from a jackal. The biggest and fiercest beasts of the forest served him day after day. They stood guard, brought him offerings and cleared the path whenever he stepped out, as if this had been the natural order of the forest since the world began. A small, weak jackal seated higher than all the rest sounds like a tall tale. Yet that is just how the old story tells it. This is one of the tales in the Panchatantra, an old book of stories from India. People long ago used it to teach young princes the wise conduct of life. Later the tale was told by word of mouth all over India, and here we follow the gentler ending of that spoken telling. It all began one evening, when a hungry jackal risked a trip into the city to look for food.

The jackal was named Chandarava. He lived alone in a rocky den at the edge of a large city, right beside the old forest. On days when prey was scarce in the forest, Chandarava would slip out to the edge of the city at dusk. He rooted around the garbage heaps behind the market, hoping for a leftover bone or a dropped crust of bread. That evening, with his stomach growling hard, Chandarava boldly went deeper into the streets than usual. Before he had found anything, a burst of fierce barking rang out right behind him.

A whole pack of house dogs burst out of an alley with their white teeth bared, close on his heels. Chandarava ran for his life. He slipped through narrow lanes and leaped over a pile of firewood stacked against a wall, while the barking grew closer behind him. Just when it seemed there was no way out, he saw a dark opening ahead. He shut his eyes and dove straight into it, with no time to see what it was. Chandarava fell with a splash into a large dye vat in the yard of a dyer's house, deep in a sloshing liquid thick with dark blue indigo. The dogs stopped short at the rim of the vat. They sniffed, then went away, and not one dared to jump into that strange liquid. Chandarava held his breath at the bottom of the vat for a long time. Only when he was sure the dogs were far away did he clamber out, trembling and shaking off the dye. Then he ran flat out toward the forest without once looking back at the city.

Back at the edge of the forest, Chandarava bent over a puddle to look at himself, and he jumped at what he saw. His coat, once a familiar dull yellow, was now dyed a brilliant blue. It was a blue that no living animal in that forest had ever worn. Chandarava stood frozen, staring at himself for a long time, half frightened and half curious. Before he could decide what to do with this strange new look, an odd sound came from a nearby thicket.

A small animal passing by caught sight of Chandarava, shrieked and fled as fast as its legs could carry it. Soon a whole group of other forest animals stopped as well. They stared wide-eyed at the bright blue figure standing among the bushes, and none dared come closer. Until then, the creatures of the forest had known only coats of yellow, brown, black and gray. None of them had ever seen a living thing wear such a brilliant indigo blue. At first Chandarava was frightened too. But as he watched the forest animals look at him with fear and awe, a daring idea suddenly flashed into his head.

Chandarava stood up straight, raised his head high and spoke in a ringing voice so every animal around could hear. "I have been chosen by the gods. They dyed my body this sacred blue, worn by no other creature, to make me king over every animal in this forest. For a long time now, this place has had no one to lead it." The animals looked at one another, trembling, then one by one bowed low before Chandarava. Not one dared to argue with a creature in such strange colors, who had come from a place nobody knew.

Word spread quickly through the forest. Before long the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the elephant and the monkey all came to pay homage to the new blue king. Chandarava sat high on a big rock in the middle of a forest clearing. He made the lion his chief minister, and the tiger became captain of the guard, watching over the palace day and night. The leopard was named keeper of the betel tray, to hand it to the king whenever he wished. Betel is an evergreen vine, and areca is a tall, slender palm whose nut is chewed wrapped in a betel leaf. The elephant became gatekeeper outside the palace, and the monkey was given the task of holding up a parasol to shade the king whenever he went out. The biggest and strongest animals in the forest, who had never served anyone, now bowed and obeyed every order of one small jackal.

On his high seat, Chandarava feared one thing above all. If just one other jackal saw him, the fraud would be exposed at once. So from the first days of his reign, Chandarava ordered every other jackal driven away from the land around the palace, and none were allowed near. The jackals, his own kin, had to move far away together. They could not understand why the bright blue king hated his own kind so much.

Many moons passed this way. Chandarava sat on the high rock with an air of majesty. Each day he received offerings and heard the reports of the animals, and each night he was alone in a stone den set aside for the king. No one dared come near for a friendly talk. No one dared to play or run about with him the way jackals do with one another. His high rank brought him plenty of good food and the fearful respect of every creature, but it could not fill the emptiness inside him. Night after night Chandarava lay awake with a vague, hollow feeling that even he could not put into words.

Then one night, Chandarava sat holding court while moonlight silvered the stone clearing. From far away came the long howl of a pack of jackals, ringing across the silent forest. At that familiar sound, Chandarava began to tremble all over. His heart raced, his eyes stung, and a longing he could not hold back welled up in his chest. Before he could think at all, Chandarava threw back his head and howled along. It was the true voice of a jackal, his very own, and it carried as far as the howls of his kin out there.

The whole court froze. The lion, standing close by, whipped around. The tiger pricked up his ears, and the leopard dropped the betel tray he was carrying. The howl was nothing like any sound a sacred king could make. It was the howl of an ordinary jackal, a howl they had heard all their lives. The lion roared in fury. "All of us have been fooled. The one who has sat on that rock all these many moons is nothing but a common jackal, no more and no less."

Anger spread quickly through the court. The tiger growled and stamped the ground, and the leopard bared his fangs. The elephant let out a long, furious trumpet, and the monkey flung the parasol he was holding to the ground. Every animal that had bowed to serve Chandarava all this time now rose to its feet. They surrounded the rock, their eyes full of rage at having been tricked for so long by one small jackal.

Before Chandarava could gather his wits, a whole ring of fierce beasts had closed tight around him. He leaped down from the rock, slipped through a gap between two snarling animals and ran straight out of the stone clearing. The lion, the tiger and the whole crowd of forest animals roared and gave chase. But Chandarava ran faster than anyone had expected. He wove through thicket after thicket and ducked under low roots, along paths just wide enough for the small body of a real jackal.

Chandarava ran on and on, through the whole forest he knew and past the land he had once ruled. At last the snarling behind him thinned out and then died away. No animal followed him beyond the edge of that forest. Chandarava stopped in the middle of an open field, panting, and looked back one last time. Behind him, the old stone clearing had disappeared beyond a dark line of trees.

No more high rock, no more betel tray or parasol, no more cheering from every creature. Chandarava was now only a jackal, just as nature had made him. His coat still held a little blue, fading a bit more with each rain. That night, under a sky full of stars, Chandarava walked on alone, farther and farther from the forest, his footsteps fading into the darkness. Behind him the forest went on living by the order it had kept for ages, as if no bright blue king had ever ruled there.