Elephants and Hares — A Panchatantra Story of Wit Over Might

In a forest there lived an elephant-king named Four-Tusk, who led a great herd of elephants and spent all his time looking after them.

Once a drought came that lasted twelve years. The ponds, the swamps, the tanks and the lakes all dried up. The elephants came to their king and said, “O King, our little ones are suffering so terribly from thirst that some are close to death and some have already died. Please find a way to end our thirst.” So Four-Tusk sent elephants as swift as the wind to search for water in eight directions.

Those who went east found, beside a path near a hermit’s home, a lake called the Lake of the Moon. It was full of swans, herons, ducks and cranes, and it was ringed with flowering trees whose branches drooped low with blossom. Foam lay white along the beaches where little waves ran up and broke, and the leaves of the trees shaded it from the sun. Its clear water was brimming with lilies. It was like a corner of paradise. The scouts hurried back to tell their king.

So Four-Tusk led the whole herd to the Lake of the Moon by easy stages. All around the lake the bank sloped gently, and the elephants plunged in. But on that bank lived thousands of rabbits who had made their homes there long before, and as the elephants trampled down to the water, they crushed the heads and necks and paws of thousands of them. When the elephants had drunk and bathed, they went back to their own part of the jungle.

The rabbits who were still alive held an emergency meeting. “What are we to do?” they said. “Those brutes will come back every day. We must think of some plan to stop them.”

One rabbit, named Victory, saw how frightened they were and how they grieved for their sons, wives and relatives who had been crushed. He felt sorry for them and said, “Don’t be afraid. They will not come back. I promise it.”

The rabbit-king, Block-Snout, said, “Dear friend, I am sure you can do it. You know every lesson in the books and how to act at the right time and place. Wherever you are sent, good luck follows. Speak with care, and the elephants will see how wise and strong I am, even though I am not there. A good messenger is as good as the king himself. Go, and may your mission protect you.”

So Victory set off. He found the elephant-king on his way back to the lake, surrounded by thousands of great elephants whose ears swayed like flowering branches. Four-Tusk was dusted with pollen from his bed of blossoming twigs, so that he looked like a storm cloud full of lightning. His trumpeting boomed like thunder, and bees hummed around his head.

“I can’t go too close to someone like that,” Victory thought. “An elephant kills just by touching you. I must find a safe place first.” So he climbed up onto a tall, jagged pile of rocks and called down, “Is all well with you, lord of the elephants?”

The elephant-king peered around and said, “Who are you, sir?”

“I am a messenger,” said the rabbit.

“Whose messenger?”

“The messenger of the blessed Moon.”

“Say what you have come to say,” said the elephant-king.

“You know, sir,” said Victory, “that no harm may be done to a messenger while he is carrying out his duty, even in war. So I speak by the Moon’s command. The Moon says this: ‘Why have you attacked others without weighing your own strength against your enemy’s? You have trampled the Lake of the Moon, which bears my holy name. And there you have killed rabbits who are under my special protection, who belong to the family of the rabbit I hold in my heart. Surely everyone knows about the rabbit in the moon. Stop doing this, or I will bring disaster on you. If you stop now, you will be honoured. Your body will be fed by my moonlight, and you and your herd will live happily in this forest. If you do not, I will hold back my light, the summer heat will scorch you, and you and your herd will die.’”

When the elephant-king heard this, his heart shook. After thinking for a long time, he said, “It is true, sir. I have wronged the blessed Moon. Who am I to fight him? Please show me quickly what I must do to be forgiven.”

“Come alone,” said the rabbit, “and I will show you.”

So that night Victory led Four-Tusk to the Lake of the Moon and showed him the moon reflected in the water. There it lay, round and full and shining, with the planets and the stars dancing around it in the dark water.

“I will purify myself and worship the god,” said the elephant, and he dipped his huge trunk into the water. The water rippled, the moon’s reflection rocked back and forth as if it were spinning on a wheel, and the elephant saw a thousand moons.

Victory jumped back in alarm. “Oh, woe to you, O King! You have made the Moon twice as angry!”

“Why is the blessed Moon angry with me?” asked the elephant.

“Because you have touched this water,” said Victory.

So the elephant-king drooped his ears and bowed his head all the way to the ground, begging the Moon to forgive him. Then he said to Victory, “My good sir, please ask the blessed Moon to forgive me for everything. I will never come here again.” And he went back to his own part of the forest.

Where this story comes from

This tale is “How the Rabbit Fooled the Elephant” in Book III of the Panchatantra, “Crows and Owls”, in Arthur W. Ryder’s translation (1925). A crow tells it to the other birds to warn them that a clever messenger who borrows a great name can win without fighting.

The trick draws on the story’s image of a rabbit in the moon; it should not be taken as a claim that everyone in India interprets the moon’s markings the same way. Ryder calls the animals rabbits; in many retellings they are hares. It is a separate story from “Frogs That Rode a Snake” in the same book, and it ends the opposite way: here the small creatures outwit the big one.

Read the original: Arthur W. Ryder, The Panchatantra (archive.org)

Best for ages 9–12 — includes drought deaths and graphic descriptions of rabbits being trampled, followed by a nonfatal trick to prevent another visit.

A closer reading

Victory creates safety before speaking by climbing beyond the herd’s reach. He then borrows an authority the elephant respects and makes the reflection seem like independent proof. When the elephant disturbs the water, Victory interprets the resulting ripples for him; the king’s own action appears to confirm the warning.

Four-Tusk is seeking water for a suffering herd, not setting out to kill rabbits. The story therefore begins with competing survival needs and unequal physical power. The trick protects the rabbits without another killing, but it does not tell us where the elephants will find water next. That unresolved need makes the ending worth discussing rather than treating it as a complete solution for everyone.

Try this with the story

Draw the lake before and after the trunk touches it. Label the physical change and the explanation Victory gives. Then propose a shared-water arrangement that protects the rabbits while addressing the elephants’ thirst.

Talk about it

• Why does Victory choose a high place before delivering his message?
• What causes the reflection to move, and what does he claim causes it?
• Whose immediate danger is solved, and whose need remains unresolved?

Related stories

• Frogs That Rode a Snake — another Book III tale, where the small creatures are fooled
• The Story of the Lion and the Hare — another clever hare who uses a reflection
• Of Crows and Owls — the frame story of Book III