The Blue Jackal

At the edge of a big forest lived a jackal named Caṇḍarava. He had sharp ears, a bushy tail and, one winter, a very empty tummy. There was nothing to eat in the forest at all.

“Maybe,” he thought, “there’s food in the town.”

So that night he crept out of the trees and into the sleeping town, sniffing along the lanes. Sniff, sniff. Something smelled interesting… But a dog woke up and barked. WOOF! WOOF! Then another dog, and another, until the whole town was barking.

The jackal ran. He dashed down an alley, round a corner, through a gate, and… SPLOSH!

He had fallen straight into a huge tub in a dyer’s yard. The dyer used it to colour cloth, and it was full to the brim with deep blue dye.

The jackal scrambled out, dripping, and ran all the way back to the forest. By the time the sun came up and he looked down at himself, he gasped.

He was blue. Bright, shining blue, from his nose to the tip of his tail. He rubbed and rubbed, but it would not come off.

Just then, a deer came round a tree, saw him, and froze. “W-w-what are YOU?” it squeaked, and bolted. Soon a monkey saw him and screamed. Then a rabbit. Before long, the whole forest was whispering: “There’s a strange blue creature! Nobody has ever seen anything like it! It must be very powerful!”

The jackal’s eyes narrowed. They don’t know it’s me, he thought. They’re scared of me. And that gives me an idea…

He climbed onto a big rock in the middle of the forest and called out in his deepest voice:

“Animals of the forest! Do not be afraid! I have been sent from the sky to be your king. From today, I will rule over you!”

The animals gathered round, amazed. Lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, monkeys: every one of them bowed low before the shining blue king.

What a life it was! The lion brought him the best food. The elephants fanned him with leaves. The monkeys sang to him. The jackal had never been so comfortable in all his days.

But there was one thing he did. When his own family, the other jackals, came to see him, he was worried. They might recognise me!

“Send those jackals away,” he ordered. “Out of the forest! I don’t want them anywhere near me.”

The other jackals left, heads down and tails drooping, very sad and very confused.

Time passed. The blue king grew proud, and lazy, and a little bit lonely.

Then one night, a big round moon rose over the hills. And far away, at the edge of the forest, the jackal family sat together and lifted their heads to sing to it, as jackals always do.

Ow-ow-OWOOOOOOO!

The blue king’s ears pricked up. Something deep inside him stirred. It was the song he had sung every full moon of his life. He tried to stop himself. He pressed his lips together. He squeezed his eyes shut. But the song was a part of him.

He lifted his blue nose to the sky…

OWOOOOOOOOOOO!

The whole forest went silent.

“That’s not a king from the sky,” said the lion slowly. “That’s a jackal!”

The animals all turned towards him. The jackal didn’t wait to hear any more. He leapt off his rock and ran, as fast as his blue legs could carry him, out of the forest and into the night.

Far, far away, he lay down by a stream, panting. He looked at his blue reflection in the water. Then he thought about his family, howling together under the moon, and how he’d sent them away.

“I wasn’t a real king,” he whispered. “I was just a jackal pretending. And I was never as happy as when I was simply… me.”

Slowly, over many weeks of rain, the blue washed away. And when it was gone, a plain brown jackal walked back to find his family, and said the hardest word of all: “Sorry.”

That full moon, they all sang together.

The end.

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A note for grown-ups: in the Pañcatantra the jackal’s story ends much more harshly once he is found out. We’ve given it a gentler ending, where he runs away, reflects and returns to his family, so it works as a bedtime story for young children. The heart of the original lesson is unchanged: you can’t hide your true nature forever.