Panchatantra: The Wedge-Pulling Monkey

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

The Wedge-Pulling Monkey

[This story is told by Cheek in The Loss of Friends.]

(from Directorium Humanae Vitae, 1484)

There was a city in a certain region. In a grove nearby, a merchant was having a temple built. Each day at the noon hour the foreman and workers would go to the city for lunch.

Now one day a troop of monkeys came upon the half-built temple. There lay a tremendous anjana log, which a mechanic had begun to split, a wedge of acacia-wood being thrust in at the top.

There the monkeys began their playful frolics upon tree-top, lofty roof, and woodpile. Then one of them, whose doom was near, thoughtlessly bestrode the log, thinking: "Who stuck a wedge in this queer place?" So he seized it with both hands and started to work it loose.

Now what happened when the wedge gave at the spot where his private parts entered the cleft, that, sir, you know without being told.

And that is why I say that meddling should be avoided by the intelligent.