Lion’s Share

Lion and Jackal went together a-hunting. They shot with arrows. Lion shot first, but his arrow fell short of its aim; but Jackal hit the game, and joyfully cried out, “It has hit.”

Lion looked at him with his two large eyes; Jackal, however, did not lose his countenance, but said, “No, uncle, I mean to say that you have hit.” Then they followed the game, and Jackal passed the arrow of Lion without drawing the latter’s attention to it. When they arrived at a crossway, Jackal said: “Dear uncle, you are old and tired; stay here.” Jackal went then on a wrong track, beat his nose, and, in returning, let the blood drop from it like traces of game. “I could not find anything,” he said, “but I met with traces of blood. You had better go yourself to look for it. In the meantime I shall go this other way.”[88]

Jackal soon found the killed animal, crept inside of it, and devoured the best portion; but his tail remained outside, and when Lion arrived, he got hold of it, pulled Jackal out, and threw him on the ground with these words: “You rascal!”

Jackal rose quickly again, complained of the rough handling, and asked, “What have I now done, dear uncle? I was busy cutting out the best part.”

“Now let us go and fetch our wives,” said Lion, but Jackal entreated his dear uncle to remain at the place because he was old. Jackal then went away, taking with him two portions of the flesh, one for his own wife, but the best part for the wife of Lion. When Jackal arrived with the flesh, the children of Lion, seeing him, began to jump, and clapping their hands, cried out: “There comes cousin with flesh!” Jackal threw, grumbling, the worst portion to them, and said, “There, you brood of the big-eyed one!” Then he went to his own house and told his wife immediately to break up the house, and to go where the killed game was.[89] Lioness wished to do the same, but he forbade her, and said that Lion would himself come to fetch her.

When Jackal, with his wife and children, arrived in the neighborhood of the killed animal, he ran into a thorn bush, scratched his face so that it bled, and thus made his appearance before Lion, to whom he said, “Ah! what a wife you have got. Look here, how she scratched my face when I told her that she should come with us. You must fetch her yourself; I cannot bring her.” Lion went home very angry. Then Jackal said, “Quick, let us build a tower.” They heaped stone upon stone, stone upon stone, stone upon stone; and when it was high enough, everything was carried to the top of it. When Jackal saw Lion approaching with his wife and children, he cried out to him:

“Uncle, whilst you were away we have built a tower, in order to be better able to see game.”

“All right,” said Lion; “but let me come up to you.”

“Certainly, dear uncle; but how will you[90] manage to come up? We must let down a thong for you.”

Lion tied the thong around his body and Jackal began drawing him up, but when nearly to the top Jackal cried to Lion, “My, uncle, how heavy you are!” Then, unseen by Lion, he cut the thong. Lion fell to the ground, while Jackal began loudly and angrily to scold his wife, and then said, “Go, wife, fetch me a new thong”—”an old one,” he said aside to her.

Lion again tied himself to the thong, and, just as he was near the top, Jackal cut the thong as before; Lion fell heavily to the bottom, groaning aloud, as he had been seriously hurt.

“No,” said Jackal, “that will never do: you must, however, manage to come up high enough so that you may get a mouthful at least.” Then aloud he ordered his wife to prepare a good piece, but aside he told her to make a stone hot, and to cover it with fat. Then he drew Lion uponce more, and complaining how heavy he was to hold, told him to open his mouth, and[91] thereupon threw the hot stone down his throat. Lion fell to the ground and lay there pleading for water, while Jackal climbed down and made his escape.

Moral

Lion’s greed in claiming all the hunt spoils betrays his partnership with Jackal; the tale demonstrates that those who seize power through force may win battles but lose respect and future cooperation.

Historical & Cultural Context

African folk tales, drawn from oral traditions across the Akan, Zulu, Yoruba and Swahili peoples among many others, blend trickster figures (especially Anansi the spider) with creation myths, moral parables and lessons about community, cunning and kinship.

This Bantu tale, similar to story 1558 but with different emphasis, explores power dynamics in hunting partnerships. The arrow-hunting context situates the narrative in specific historical moment (pre-firearms hunting technology), while the inequality of wealth division reflects real economic tensions in traditional societies. Among Bantu and other African peoples, hunting was often cooperative enterprise with established division protocols; violation of these protocols constituted serious social transgression. Lion’s physical dominance enables theft, but the narrative questions whether force-backed acquisition builds sustainable advantage. Such tales invited reflection: Does might make right? What happens when the strong consistently violate agreements? Can community persist when trust erodes? The repeated theme of partnership dissolution – appearing in multiple stories within this collection – suggests that societies struggled with inequality and breach of contract as central social problems.

Reflection & Discussion

1. Why does Lion think he can just take everything without keeping his promise?
2. How would Jackal feel about working together next time after being cheated?
3. Does winning through unfairness feel like real winning, or does it hurt the winner too?

Did You Know?

• A lion’s roar can be heard from 5 miles away. Lions sleep up to 20 hours a day.
• South African folk tales often feature the jackal as a cunning trickster character, similar to the fox in European folklore.
• The San people of Southern Africa have one of the world’s oldest oral storytelling traditions, dating back tens of thousands of years.

What This Tale Teaches Us Today

Old stories keep their power because their lessons never stop being useful. Here is how this one still applies:

• Alliances shift with circumstance. Trust is earned over time, not granted by titles or speeches.
• Generosity, when offered to the right creature, returns in forms you could not have predicted.
• Patience rewards itself. The characters who wait for the right moment usually outperform those who rush.

Why This Story Still Matters

This folk story from the Panchatantra preserves wisdom that Indian teachers have used for over two thousand years to teach practical ethics. Lion’s Share is a small but finished piece of moral engineering – each character represents a recognizable human type, each decision is a lesson in how people actually behave. Indian grandparents still tell these stories to grandchildren for the same reason ancient royal tutors told them to young princes: because the patterns described in the Panchatantra are eternal. Those who listen early in life make better decisions for the rest of it.

Cultural Context and Continuing Influence

Folk tales like this one survived for hundreds of years through oral storytelling before any scholar thought to write them down. Grandparents told them to grandchildren, travelers traded them along roads and rivers, and mothers repeated them to babies who would one day repeat them to their own children. Each small retelling sharpened the story, discarded unnecessary parts, and polished the essential lesson. That long process of refinement is why a good folk tale feels so weighty – it has been shaped by thousands of listeners across generations, each contributing something small to the story we read today.

Modern readers sometimes wonder whether folk tales are still relevant in an age of apps and smartphones. The answer is yes, perhaps more than ever. The technology changes, but the underlying questions – about kindness, courage, loyalty, greed, family, fear, love – do not. These are the same questions that children asked around a fire in ancient India, around a hearth in medieval Ireland, around a campfire in 19th-century Korea. And they are the same questions children ask their parents today, just phrased differently. That is why a family that reads folk tales together is doing real cultural and emotional work, not simply entertaining itself.

Reading Folk Tales With Children

Reading folk tales aloud to children is one of the oldest and most effective forms of moral education. Unlike a lecture or a rule, a story slides past a child’s natural resistance and plants its lesson in the imagination, where it quietly grows. Years later, when the child meets a real situation that resembles the story – a bully at school, a dishonest coworker, a moment of temptation – the old tale rises to the surface of memory and offers guidance. That is why parents and teachers across every culture have trusted stories to do the work of raising good humans, long before formal schools or textbooks existed.

When reading this story with a young listener, try pausing at key moments and asking what the child thinks will happen next. Let them guess, even if they are wrong. That small act of prediction turns a passive listener into an active thinker. After the story ends, a simple open question – “What would you have done?” or “Who do you think was the smartest character?” – invites the child to connect the tale to their own life. Those conversations are where real learning happens, not during the reading itself but in the quiet moments that follow.

Older children and teenagers sometimes think they have outgrown folk tales. In reality, the best tales only deepen with age. A ten-year-old hears the surface plot; a fifteen-year-old notices the irony; a twenty-year-old sees the economic and political pressures on the characters; a forty-year-old understands the parents in the story for the first time. A good folk tale is a gift that keeps unfolding for decades. Families who read and reread the same stories across the years discover this naturally, and pass the discovery down.