The Panchatantra (Purnabhadra's Recension of 1199 CE)/Book 3/The Bird with Golden Dung
THE BIRD WITH GOLDEN DUNG
There was once a great tree on a mountain side. On it lived a bird in whose dung gold appeared.
One day a hunter came to the spot, and directly in front of him the bird dropped its dung, which at the moment of falling turned to gold. At this the hunter was amazed.
"Well, well!" said he. "For eighty years, man and boy, I have had bird-trapping on the brain, and I never once saw gold in a bird's dung." So he set a snare in the tree. And the bird, fool that he was, forgot the danger, and perched on the customary spot. Of course, he was caught immediately.
Then the hunter freed him from the snare, put him in a cage and took him home. But he reflected: "What am I to do with this bird of ill omen? If anybody should ever discover his peculiarity, it would be reported to the king. In that case my very life would be in genuine danger. I will take the bird and report to the king myself." And he did so.
Now when the king saw the bird, his lotus eyes blossomed and he felt supremely gratified. "Come now, guardsmen," said he. "Look after this bird with anxious care. Give him everything he wants to eat and drink."
Then a counselor said: "He was hatched from an egg. Why keep him? You have no evidence save the mere incredible assurance of a hunter. Is gold ever present in bird-dung? Take this bird from the cage and set him free."
So the king, taking the counselor's advice, freed the bird, who perched on the lofty arch of the doorway long enough to drop dung which was of gold. Then he recited the stanza:
I played the fool at first; then he
Who had me on his tether;
And then the king and counselor—
We all were fools together.
After which he took his carefree flight through the atmosphere.
"And that is why I say:
I played the fool at first, . . . .
and the rest of it."
But once more—for fate was hostile—they neglected Red-Eye's counsel, sound as it was, and pampered Live-Strong further with varied viands, including plenty of meat.
Then Red-Eye called together his personal adherents, and said to them privately: "The end is at hand. The welfare of our king, and his fortress, are things of the past. I have given him such counsel as an ancestral counselor should give. Let us now, for our part, seek another fortress in the mountains. For the saying goes:
Joy comes from knowing what to dread,
And sorrow smites the dunderhead:
A long life through, the woods I've walked,
But never heard a cave that talked."
"How was that?" they asked. And Red-Eye told the story of