The Lion, the Tiger and the Jackal

Also known as Sandhibheda Jataka

• 3 minute read
• Ages 7-11
• Jataka Tales

A lion and a tiger lived in the same cave in a mountain and were close friends, which no hunter in that country could quite believe.

Because of it, nothing could be done about either of them. A lion alone can be trapped. A lion and a tiger who look out for each other cannot.

A jackal lived nearby and ate what they left, and he had a comfortable life doing it.

Then one day he decided he wanted more than the leavings.

Two conversations

He came to the lion first and sat down looking uncomfortable, and said nothing for a while, and then said he had heard something he did not want to repeat.

The lion asked him what.

"It is probably nothing. The tiger was saying that a lion is only strong in the shoulders and that his own strength is greater and always has been. He said you know it too."

The lion did not answer.

The jackal went to the tiger the same afternoon and said the same kind of thing in the opposite direction, and left.

The change

Neither of them mentioned it.

That is the part the story is careful about. They did not argue. Nothing was said at all.

They simply stopped lying near each other in the cave. Then they stopped hunting the same ground. Then a week went by in which neither of them spoke, and each of them noticed that the other had not spoken, and took that as confirmation.

By the second week they were not speaking at all, and each of them had a complete explanation for it.

The tiger's question

Then the tiger, who was the more direct of the two, walked over one evening and asked him straight out.

"Have you been saying that my strength is nothing compared to yours?"

The lion sat up.

"I have never said that in my life. Have you been saying the reverse?"

"No."

They looked at each other.

"Who told you?" said the lion.

And they worked it out in about ten seconds, because there was only one animal in that mountain who had spoken to both of them.

The jackal

He was not there when they went to look, because he had left the district two days earlier.

He had known exactly how long it would take.

And the story notes what he was actually after, which was not revenge and not a quarrel. He had simply worked out that two friends who share a cave leave very little behind, and that two enemies hunting separately, badly, and in a hurry, leave a great deal.