Episode Details

The Gatiloke's Rascal Chapter rolls on. A rascal dressed as a master of timber rafts measures the old vihara, wins the abbot's trust with a watch and a flash of banknotes, and borrows the congregation's eighty riels against a hundred-riel note he never leaves behind — and spends them across the river in Phnom Penh. Then power itself takes its turn as rascal: an opium-addicted Oknha, a kinsman of the king, whose retainers strip the river villages as they cruise, and who fines a grandmother for her own bananas. At a forest stream the lamb answers the wild dog's charges one by one — and learns what the small have always known about power. And an old brahmin, sent out begging by his young wife, carries a cobra home in his provision bag, until the Bodhisatta's wisdom unties the tree deity's riddle, saves two lives, and catches a thief with a three-day feast.

Chapters: 00:04 — The Monk Who Built a Vihara 07:31 — The Opium-Addicted Oknha 12:24 — The Lamb and the Wild Dog 17:02 — The Old Brahmin with a Young Wife

From the Gatiloke by Suttantaprija Ind (1859–1924), Cambodia's treasury of Khmer folk tales, first published in parts in Phnom Penh in 1914–1921 — public domain, and told here in a fresh in-house English rendering made from the Khmer text, in the book's own order. One question-chapter near the collection's opening is held back under house rule — its matter is murder itself, and such a tale is not read until it is ruled on; it stands recorded in the collection's written register, in its place. One further tale of this part — the tale of Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher, which stands in the book between the lamb and the old brahmin — is likewise held back under house rule: its matter is a whole lineage put to death, and such a tale is not read until it is ruled on; it stands recorded in the register, in its place.

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