The Cat, the Mouse and the Banyan Tree
A mouse’s delight at seeing his old enemy caught in a trap proves short-lived.
1000s
A mouse’s delight at seeing his old enemy caught in a trap proves short-lived.
1000s
Yaugandharayana, minister of Udayana, King of Vatsa (roughly Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh), has made a casual assertion that even animals go to each other for protection. Yogeshvara challenges him to provide an example, so the wise minister tells him about a mouse that once lived at the bottom of a banyan tree.
ONCE upon a time, a mongoose, an owl, a cat and a mouse all lived in one banyan tree.* The others were all mortally afraid of the cat, so when a hunter’s cord snared him one night, Puss did not get much sympathy.
At first the mouse simply danced for joy. Then he spied the owl and the mongoose between him and his hole, looking at him in a most sinister fashion. So he scampered over to the tethered cat and begged for protection, promising to release him in return. Puss eagerly agreed, and the mouse, somewhat doubtfully, snuggled up close until the sun rose and the hunter began his rounds. Then the mouse gnawed through the cat’s bonds, and the animals sprang away in opposite directions.
That evening, Puss called down the tree and asked sweetly if the mouse cared to spend another night under his protection. He declined. Your enemy may sometimes be your ally; but that does not make him your friend.
In volume one of his ‘Oriental Memoirs’ (1813) James Forbes recalled relaxing beneath ‘Kabirvad’, a banyan tree that still stands on the banks of the River Narmada in what is now Gujarat. It now covers about 4.3 acres. Forbes said it was “supposed by some persons” to be the very tree under which Alexander the Great and ten thousand men sheltered some two thousand years before, as recorded in Arrian’s ‘Anabasis Alexandri’ Book VIII on the authority of Alexander’s general Nearchus. The name banyan or banian derives from the Gujarati word for a merchant, banya, as Europeans associated the tree with the merchants who often did business in their shade.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did the mouse ask the cat for protection?
Because he wanted to deter other predators.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
A cat was snared in a trap. A mouse was pleased. He saw a mongoose stalking him.