The Jackal and The Drum

Panchatantra Story

Once upon a time, in a forest, there lived a jackal. He was a greedy jackal and would

always eat up any animal killed by the other jackals of the pack. All the jackals were

tired of him, so they banished him from their pack.

Now the jackal had to hunt food by himself. One day, as he was wandering in search

for food, he came upon a battleground. A war had recently been fought in this

battleground, but now it lay deserted.

The jackal stood there for a while wondering whether he should go into the deserted

ground and look for food. As he lingered there, he heard a great sound.

This sound scared him a lot. He fell into deep though and said: “Ah! Disaster is upon

me. I am as good as dead already. Only a monster can make such a sound. What

kind of dangerous creature is hidden in this ground?”

Frightened, he turned around and started running away. As he was running away,

the thought, “was that sound really a dangerous animal? Maybe, or maybe not. It is

unwise to run away from something without knowing what it is.”

Thinking so, the jackal turned around and went back into the battleground. As he

grew closer to the source of sound, he saw a big war-drum under a tree. As the wind

swayed the tree, its branches rubbed against the drum, making a loud shrieking

sound. Ah! I was such a fool! To have run away from something so silly”, thought the

jackal.

No longer afraid, he scouted the battleground for food. He soon came up upon a tent,

inside which he found a large store of food and water. The jackal ate to his heart’s

content.