Panchatantra: Hang-Ball and Greedy

From The Panchatantra of Vishnu Sharma, translated by Arthur W. Ryder (1925).

Hang-Ball and Greedy

[This story is inserted into Soft the Weaver.]

In a certain town lived a bull named Hang-Ball. From excess of male vigour he abandoned the herd, tore the river-banks with his horns, browsed at will on emerald-tipped grasses, and went wild in the forest.

In that forest lived a jackal named Greedy. One day he sprawled at ease with his wife on a sandy riverbank. At that moment the bull Hang-Ball came down to the same stretch of sand for a drink.

And the she-jackal said to her husband when she saw the hanging testicles: "Look, my dear! See how two lumps of flesh hang from that bull. They will fall in a moment, or a few hours at most. So you must follow him, please."

"My dear," said the jackal, "nobody knows. Perhaps they will fall some day, perhaps not. Why send me on a fool's errand? I would rather stay here with you and eat the mice that come to water. They follow this trail. And if I should follow him, somebody else would come here and occupy the spot. Better not do it. You know the proverb:

If any leave a certain thing,
For things uncertain wandering,
The sure that was, is sure no more;
What is not sure, was lost before."

"Come," said she, "you are a coward, satisfied with any little thing. You are quite wrong. We always ought to be energetic, a man especially. There is a saying:

Depend on energetic might,
And banish indolence's blight,
Let enterprise and prudence kiss -
All luck is yours - it cannot miss.

And again:

Let none, content with fate's negation,
Sink into lazy self-prostration:
No oil of sesame, unless
The seeds of sesame you press.

"And as for your saying: 'Perhaps they will fall, perhaps not,' that, too, is wrong. Remember the proverb:

Mere bulk is nothing. The resolute
Have honour sure:
God brings the plover water. Who
Dare call him poor?

"Besides, I am dreadfully tired of mouse-flesh, and these two lumps of meat are plainly on the point of falling. You must not refuse me."

So when he had listened to this, he left the spot  where mice were to be caught and followed Hang-Ball. Well, there is wisdom in the saying:

Only while he does not hear
Woman's whisper in his ear,
Goading him against his will,
Is a man his master still.

And again:

In action, should-not is as should,
In motion, cannot is as can,
In eating, ought-not is as ought,
When woman's whispers drive a man.

So he spent much time wandering with his wife after the bull. But they did not fall. At last in the fifteenth year, in utter gloom he said to his wife:

"Loose they are, yet tight;
Fall, or stick, my dear?
I have watched them now
Till the fifteenth year.

Let us draw the conclusion that they will not fall in the future either, and return to the old mouse-trail."

"And that is why I say:

Loose they are, yet tight;
Fall, or stick, my dear?
I have watched them now
Till the fifteenth year."