The Monkey and the Crocodile

At the bottom of a great river, a mother crocodile lay still in the muddy water. In her mind there was only one thing. She longed to eat a monkey's heart.

The mother crocodile called her son to her side and gave him a firm order. He must catch a monkey and bring its heart back to her. The young crocodile obeyed, flicked his tail, and swam upstream to search.

On a stretch of the river farther upstream, a tall tree grew close to the bank, its green leaves shading a whole reach of water. In that tree lived a monkey. Every day he picked fruit and ate his fill, then lay swinging on a branch, gazing across the river. Over there was a small island. Its trees hung heavy with fruit, far sweeter than the fruit of his own tree. He had never been able to get there, because he could not swim.

Buddhists say the monkey in this story was one of the past lives of the man who would later become the Buddha. He was an ordinary monkey by the river, with no crown and no title. His only wealth was a quick, clever mind. And the crocodile who tried to harm him, the tellers say, was an earlier life of Devadatta. In Buddhist tradition, Devadatta was a cousin of the Buddha and his rival.

The young crocodile swam on and on, until he found the very tree where the monkey lived.

One afternoon, the crocodile came close to the bank and coaxed the monkey. The fruit on that island grew thick, he said, and he would carry the monkey across on his back. The monkey had only to stand on him, and he would be there. The monkey was delighted. He sprang onto the crocodile's back, held on tight with both hands, and got ready for a new adventure.

The crocodile swam out to the middle of the river. Where the water was deepest, he slowed down and began to sink. The monkey panicked and clung tighter. Why, he asked again and again, was the crocodile diving halfway across? The crocodile answered honestly. "My mother is longing for a monkey's heart. I have to bring her yours to eat."

When the monkey heard this, his heart pounded, but his mind stayed wonderfully clear. He answered in a voice full of regret, as if he truly meant it. "If only I had known sooner! We monkeys don't carry our hearts with us. Every time we leap from branch to branch, we leave our hearts behind, hanging on a branch, so they won't get knocked about and broken. My heart is hanging right now in the very tree where I live. Take me back there, and I will fetch it for her at once."

The crocodile believed him without a flicker of doubt and turned back toward the old bank. Before he had even reached it, the monkey crouched and sprang onto the bank in one bound. He climbed straight to the top of the tallest tree and perched there, looking down. The crocodile looked up and waited. He waited a long time, but the monkey never brought down any heart, and at last the crocodile understood he had been fooled. By then the monkey was high up and safe. However the crocodile called, the monkey would not come down again.

From that day on, the monkey no longer felt easy on that old stretch of river. He moved away to a reach farther off, thinking the crocodile would surely never find him there. But the crocodile followed his trail and found the monkey's new home.

This time the crocodile did not show himself. He crawled up and lay still on a large rock in the middle of the river. It was the very spot where the monkey always jumped across to the island to pick fruit, and back again in the late afternoon to go home. He lay without moving, as still as a real rock, waiting for the monkey to come near.

This monkey had a small habit. Every time he came and went, he glanced at the water in the river and at the rock in the middle of the stream. He remembered exactly how high the rock stood above the water.

That afternoon, when he had finished picking fruit on the island, the monkey stood at the water's edge looking across. The familiar rock seemed somehow higher than ever before, though the water stood at its usual level. He stopped short and did not jump yet. Surely, he thought, the crocodile was lying in wait up there. So he called out as if he were talking to the rock, three times in a row. "Rock, oh rock. Rock, oh rock. Rock, oh rock." The rock stayed silent. He called again, louder. "Rock, why don't you answer me today, the way you always do?"

Lying on the rock, the crocodile heard this and thought to himself that this rock must usually answer the monkey. Today he would have to answer in its place. So he called back. "Yes, monkey, what is it?" The monkey knew at once. A real rock can never speak. It really was the crocodile, lying there pretending to be a rock. But he did not panic or run away. He stood quite still, looking meek, as if there were no other way out.

He called across loudly. "All right, I give in. Open your mouth nice and wide, and I'll jump straight in." The crocodile was overjoyed. He opened his mouth as wide as it would go, and his eyes shut tight all by themselves. In this tale, a crocodile that opens its mouth very wide cannot keep its eyes open. At that very moment, the monkey leaped. He did not land in the crocodile's mouth. He landed neatly on top of his head, then bounded on in one long leap to the bank and vanished into the leaves.

That one answer, spoken in the rock's place, had given away the whole trick.

Down in the water, the crocodile stopped short. He knew he had lost a second time. He was no longer angry. He only lifted his head toward the distant trees, where the monkey had just disappeared, and called out that the monkey was truly brave and truly clever. He had learned his lesson, he said, and from now on he would never come looking for the monkey again. Then he sank beneath the water and swam away, and he never came back to that stretch of river.

High in the tree on the riverbank, the monkey was back among his clusters of ripe fruit, eating happily as if nothing had ever happened. Down in the river, the water closed smoothly behind the crocodile, with not a ripple left of either trick.