The Jackal and the Drum

Long ago, a jackal lived in a forest. One day he was trotting about looking for something to eat, and he came to an open field. A great battle had been fought there long before.

Suddenly he heard a sound. BOOM! BOOM!

The jackal stopped and stared. Over there, lying on the ground, was something he had never seen before. It was a drum.

“What sort of animal is that,” he wondered, “that makes such a big noise?”

He waited, and watched. The thing did not move at all. So, very slowly, he crept up close and had a good look. “It’s not moving,” he thought. “It isn’t an animal at all.”

Then he saw what was making the noise. An old arrow was stuck in the ground beside the drum. Whenever the wind blew, the arrow swung, and its wooden end knocked against the drum’s skin. BOOM!

So the jackal stopped being afraid. “Perhaps there is something good to eat inside,” he thought. He tore a hole in the drum and climbed in to see.

But oh dear! There was no food inside. The big booming drum was nothing but wood and an empty skin.

Where this tale comes from

This fable is retold from the Kathá Sarit Ságara, the eleventh-century “Ocean of Story” collected in Sanskrit by Somadeva, in the English translation by C. H. Tawney (Project Gutenberg #40588). There a jackal tells it to his frightened king, the lion. A strange bellowing has scared the lion, and the jackal wants to show him that a noise alone is nothing to fear. The noise turns out to be the bull of “The Merchant and the Bullock.”

Tawney notes that the Arabic and later versions of the fable leave out one point: the drum lying on a battlefield.

Read the original: Somadeva, Kathá Sarit Ságara (Ocean of Story), translated by C. H. Tawney (Project Gutenberg #40588)

Best for ages 3–5 — a short fable about being brave enough to find out what a scary noise really is.

A closer reading

The jackal changes his explanation in stages. First he associates a loud sound with a large animal; then stillness makes him look again; finally he sees wind moving the arrow against the drum. The cause is a relationship between objects, not a creature hiding inside.

His second guess—that the noisy object contains food—is also wrong. Discovering that something is harmless does not prove it is useful. That small disappointment gives the ending a second turn after the fear is resolved.

Try this with the story

With an adult, use a familiar safe object such as a closed box or toy drum to compare soft and loud taps. Ask the listener to describe the sound before naming its cause. Do not investigate unknown noises or abandoned objects alone.

Think about it

• Which observation first makes the jackal doubt that the drum is an animal?
• What three things work together to make the boom?
• Why is an empty drum a second surprise after the first fear passes?

Related stories

• The Merchant and the Bullock — the bull whose bellow frightened the lion
• The Monkey With The Tom Tom — another story with a drum
• The Wise Jackal — another clever jackal