Episode Details

The Gatiloke goes on with the treatise of the Eight Worldly Conditions — gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, pleasure and pain — and with the follies that hunger breeds. Nang Amara, left behind when her husband the sage was slandered out of the court, receives the four teachers who ruined him as they come courting her by night, and gives each of them a bath he does not forget. A crocodile, whose wife in her pregnancy craves a monkey's liver, lies flat upon the river rock in ambush — and answers, once too often, for the rock. A crow, flattered into finding its voice, sings for the sampoch and loses its cake. And a lion, lied to by the jackal who lived on his leavings, makes war upon his own reflection in a polished rock, and breaks himself upon it — for pride, the book says, is a folly that needs no enemy.

Chapters:

00:03 — Nang Amara and the Four Teachers

06:57 — The Pregnant Crocodile Who Wanted to Eat the Monkey's Liver

12:49 — The Crow and the Sampoch

15:58 — The Jackal and the Lion

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 the book's second part — the tale of Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher — 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. One further tale of the treatise — the tale of the Singha-To who wanted the chief's daughter — is likewise held back under house rule: its close is a beating given to a creature first stripped of its defences, and such a tale is not read until it is ruled on; it stands recorded in the register, in its place. One further tale of the treatise — the tale of the crocodile and the cart-driver — is likewise held back under house rule: its close is a killing done with an axe, at a judge's word, and such a tale is not read until it is ruled on; it stands recorded in the register, in its place. One further tale of the treatise — the tale of the hunter and the parrot — is likewise held back under house rule: its close is a killing by a serpent's bite, planned and done in the tale's open scene, 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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