Continuing on the Tales from the Sanskrit, this is a lovely story about nature and nurture. The story explores how, when the cat is trapped in a snare and asks for help, the mouse helps her, the owl waits to catch the mouse, and the cat kills the lizard, ultimately demonstrating how self-interest and opportunism can determine the fate of others, and that nature is hard to overcome.
The story is a moral tale that highlights the self-serving nature of the creatures and the consequences of their actions. It teaches that while one may appear helpless or offer friendship, the true nature of the individual may be revealed in their actions, and true safety only comes from caution and self-reliance.
This tale includes thought provoking questions at the end of each chapter moving children to self-realisation or creating a fun set of English exercises for classroom or homeschool.
Translated by S. M. Mitra. and adapted by Nancy Bell (Mrs. Arthur Bell)
Sample Page from A Cat a Mouse, A Lizard, and an Owl
CHAPTER I
This is the story of four creatures, none of whom loved each other, who lived in the same banyan tree in a forest in India. Banyan trees are very beautiful and very useful, and get their name from the fact that “banians,” as merchants are called in India, often gather together in their shade to sell their goods. Banyan trees grow to a very great height, spreading their branches out so widely that many people can stand beneath them. From those branches roots spring forth, which, when they reach the ground, pierce it, and look like, columns holding up a roof. You will understand that a great many creatures can live in one without seeing much of each other.
In an especially fine banyan tree, outside the walls of a town called Vidisa, a cat, an owl, a lizard, and a mouse, had all taken up their abode. The cat lived in a big hole in the trunk some little distance from the ground, where she could sleep very cosily, curled up out of sight with her head resting on her forepaws, feeling perfectly safe from harm; for no other creature, she thought, could possibly discover her hiding-place. The owl roosted in a mass of foliage at the top of the tree, near the nest in which his wife had brought up their children, before those children flew away to seek mates for themselves. He too felt pretty secure as long as he remained up there; but he had seen the cat prowling about below him more than once, and was very sure that, if she should happen to catch sight of him when he was off his guard seeking his prey and obliged to give all his attention to what he was doing, she might spring out upon him and kill him. Cats do not generally attack such big birds as owls, but they will sometimes kill a mother sitting in her nest, as well as the little ones, if the father is too far off to protect them.
The lizard loved to lie and bask in the sunshine, catching the flies on which he lived, lying so still that they did not notice him, and darting out his long tongue suddenly to suck them into his mouth. Yet he hid from the owl and the cat, because he knew full well that, tough though he was, they would gobble him up if they happened to be hungry. He made his home amongst the roots on the south side of the tree where it was hottest, but the mouse had his hole on the other side amongst damp moss and dead leaves. The mouse was in constant fear of the cat and the owl. He knew that both of them could see in the dark, and he would have no chance of escape if they once caught sight of him.
1. Which of these four creatures do you think was most to be pitied?
2. Do you think that animals ever hate or love each other as human creatures do?
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See more adapted Sanskrit tales by Nancy Bell on FKB here: https://freekidsbooks.org/author/mrs-arthur-bell/
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