The Donkey in the Panther’s Skin

There was once a washerman who had a very thin donkey. He wanted to fatten it up, and he thought of a sneaky trick.

He found the skin of a panther and put it over the donkey like a coat. Then every day he let the donkey loose in his neighbour’s cornfield to eat.

The donkey munched and munched. The people who saw it were far too frightened to chase it away. “That’s a panther!” they whispered. “Keep back!”

So the donkey ate the neighbour’s corn every day, and it grew round and fat.

Then one day a farmer came by with a bow in his hand. He saw the spotted animal in the corn and thought it was a panther too. He was scared. So he crouched down low, hunched his back, pulled a rug over himself, and began creeping quietly away.

The donkey looked up and saw this hunched, shuffling shape. “Why, that must be another donkey!” it thought. And because its belly was full of corn and it was feeling very pleased with itself, it lifted its head and let out a great big bray. “HEE-HAW!”

The farmer stopped. “A panther doesn’t sound like that,” he said. “That’s a donkey!”

He threw off his rug, turned around and fitted an arrow to his bow. And the foolish donkey, who had given itself away with its own voice, was shot by the farmer it had taken for a friend.

Where this story comes from

This fable appears in the Kathá Sarit Ságara, Somadeva’s eleventh-century Sanskrit ocean of stories, and is retold here from the English of C. H. Tawney (Project Gutenberg #40588). An old crow tells it to explain how the crows and the owls first became enemies. Like the donkey, a crow once got into terrible trouble just by opening his mouth.

In his notes Tawney writes that the scholar Theodor Benfey believed this fable was known to Plato, and thought it may have travelled from Greece to India. He also notes that in Benfey’s translation of the Panchatantra the skin is a tiger’s, which is how many readers know the story.

Read the original: Tawney’s translation of Somadeva, The Kathá Sarit Ságara (Project Gutenberg #40588)

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12; the donkey is shot at the end. Discuss the owner’s role and the severity of the punishment.

A closer reading

Two mistakes of recognition drive the ending. The farmer sees a predator where there is a donkey; the donkey sees a companion where there is a frightened farmer. The bray corrects one mistake at the moment the other becomes fatal. Looking and listening offer different kinds of evidence.

The washerman designed the deception and gained from the stolen crop, but the donkey pays for it. A moral focused only on the donkey’s ‘true nature’ overlooks the owner’s responsibility and the farmer’s violent response. Discovering a deception explains his anger; it does not make the killing a proportionate model for readers to copy.

Try this with the story

Draw three speech bubbles for the washerman, donkey and farmer. In each, record what that character knows about the disguise. Then describe how the same bray means friendliness to one character and exposure to another.

Questions to ask

• Who invents the disguise, and who suffers for it?
• What does the donkey mistake for another donkey?
• Why does the bray change the farmer’s understanding?

You may also like

• The Story of the Washerman’s Donkey — a different fable about a washerman’s donkey
• The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing — another fable about an animal in disguise