The Tiger and the Golden Bracelet
Hitopadesha · Ages 6-10 · 4 min read
An old tiger stood at the edge of a river, and he was not the tiger he used to be. His teeth were worn, his legs were stiff, and he could no longer chase down his dinner the way he once had. So the cunning old creature had thought up a new way to catch a meal. A way that did not need any running at all.
He held up, between his great paws, a beautiful golden bracelet, and whenever a traveller appeared on the far bank, he called across the water in his gentlest voice.
“Traveller! Wait, traveller! See this golden bracelet? I wish to give it away, for nothing, to any honest soul who passes. I have grown old, you see, and wise, and holy. I have given up hunting, and now I want only to do good. Come, come and take this gold. It is yours.”
Most travellers took one look at those great paws and that toothy smile and hurried straight on. But one day a traveller came by who was very, very greedy. He saw the gleam of the gold, and his heart began to thump.
“A tiger that gives away gold,” he thought. “It is surely too good to be true.” And some careful voice inside him said, plainly, walk away. But the bracelet shone so brightly, and was so very large, that the greedy traveller talked himself round, step by step, until his want was louder than his sense.
“Good tiger,” he called, “how do I know you will not eat me?”
“Eat you!” said the tiger, sounding quite hurt. “I told you, I am holy now. But if it would set your mind at ease, wash yourself first in the river, to be clean and pure, and then come and take your gift.”
So the greedy traveller waded into the river. And the moment he stepped off the firm bank, he sank into the deep, soft mud at the water’s edge, and there he stuck fast, unable to move forward or back.
And the old tiger, who had never once meant to share anything at all, smiled his worn and toothy smile, and waded slowly out toward his dinner. The traveller had seen the danger clearly from the very first. It was only his greed, in the end, that had walked him straight into the mud.
An original retelling of a tale from the Hitopadesha (public domain).
