The Cave That Talked

Also known as Bolti Gufa

• 2 minute read
• Ages 6-10
• Panchatantra Stories

A lion named Kharanakhara had grown old and slow and had not eaten for three days.

He came across a cave in a hillside with tracks going in and out of it, and worked out that something lived there and would come back at dusk.

So he went inside and lay down in the dark at the back and waited.

The jackal comes home

The cave belonged to a jackal named Dadhipuchchha, and he came home at sunset as usual.

He stopped some distance from the entrance.

There were tracks going in that were not his, and they were large, and there were none coming out. He had lived there long enough to know exactly what the ground outside his own door normally looked like.

He did not go in. He also did not run, because if the thing inside was fast, running would only tell it where he was.

The conversation

He stood at a safe distance and called out cheerfully.

"Cave! I am home!"

Nothing happened.

"Cave," he said again, louder, "you know the arrangement. Every evening when I come back, you call out to me and tell me it is safe to come in. That is what we agreed. I am waiting."

Inside, the lion listened to this and thought about it.

He had never heard of a talking cave, but he had never lived in one either, and if this was the arrangement and the cave stayed silent, the jackal would clearly not come in. And he had not eaten for three days.

So the lion answered.

"COME IN," said the cave, in a voice that shook loose stones from the roof.

Afterwards

Dadhipuchchha left the district.

He said afterwards that he had not been certain there was anything in there at all until the cave answered, and that he had asked precisely because it cost him nothing to ask, and that in his experience the answer to a stupid question tells you a great deal more than silence ever does.