The Monkey and the Wedge

"One, who interferes in other's work, surely comes to grief".

There was once a merchant who employed many carpenters and masons to build a temple in his
garden. Regularly, they would start work in the morning;

and take a break for the mid-day meals, and return

to resume work till evening.

One day, a group of monkey arrived at the site of the building and watched the workers leaving for
their mid-day meals.

One of the carpenters was sawing a huge log of wood. Since, it was only half-done; he placed a wedge
in between to prevent the log from closing up. He then went off along with the other workers for his
meal.

When all the workers were gone, the monkeys came down from the trees and started jumping around
the site, and playing with the instruments.

There was one monkey, who got curious about

the wedge placed between the log. He sat down
on the log, and having placed himself in
between the half-split log, caught hold of the
wedge and started pulling at it.

All of a sudden, the wedge came out. As a

result, the half-split log closed in and the
monkey got caught in the gap of the log.

As was his destiny, he was severely wounded.

The wise indeed say:

One, who interferes in other's work, surely comes to grief.
The Jackal and the Drum
"Only the brave succeed in life".

One day, a jackal called Gomaya was very hungry, and was wandering about in search of food.

After some time, he wandered out of the jungle he lived in, and reached a deserted battlefield.

In this deserted battlefield, a battle was fought recently. The fighting armies had left behind a drum,
which was lying near a tree.

As strong winds blew, the branches of the tree got rubbed against the drum. This made a strange
noise.

When the jackal heard this sound, he got very frightened and thought of running away, "If I cannot
flee from here before I am seen by the person making all this noise, I will be in trouble".

As he was about to run away, he had a second thought. "It is unwise to run away from
something without knowing. Instead, I must be careful in finding out the source of this
noise".

He took the courage to creep forward cautiously. When he saw the drum, he realized that it
was only the wind that was causing all the noise.

He continued his search for food, and near the drum he found sufficient food and water.

The wise indeed say:

Only the brave succeed in life.
Fighting Goats and the Jackal
"Do not close your eyes to the impending danger due to greed".

One day while a sage was going through a jungle, he saw two golden rams (billy goats) fighting each
other.

Even though both were wounded, and blood was oozing out from their heads and bodies, they did not
stop fighting and rammed at each other.

At the same time, a hungry jackal was passing by. When he saw all the blood, he started licking the
blood from the ground without caring for the fighting rams.

Watching all this, the sage thought to himself, "This jackal is a fool as it has become greedy by the
smell of blood. If he comes between the fighting rams, it will get rammed and get hurt himself".

No sooner had the sage thought of it, the jackal

craving for more blood came nearer to the fighting rams, and got caught in the middle of their fight.

Both the rams rammed into him by mistake. He got hit on his head, and fell down because he was
severely wounded.

The wise indeed say:

Do not close your eyes to the impending danger due to greed.