Episode Details

The Gatiloke — Part 10 of 23 (The Two Rats Who Were Friends · The Jackal Who Was Greedy for Food · The Village Dog with the Neck-Band · The Pregnant Bitch Who Gave Birth · The Jackal and the Tung Bird · The Tung Bird and the Fish)

The Gatiloke goes on from the book's fourth part into its fifth, with feasts and the morals they carry. Two rats who are friends eat first in terror, at knocking doors and treading feet, and then in peace in the open field. A jackal, greedy for food, crawls into a dead elephant's belly to live on what is inside, and is shut within it for its greed. A village dog praises his easy service to a lean wild dog, until the wild dog sees the band bound round his neck. A bitch lends her house for a single day to a mother about to give birth, and is kept out of it, plea by plea, until the grown puppies threaten her, in words, with their teeth — she does not climb up to them, and no bite falls. And the tung bird closes the part twice over: answered trick for trick at the feast, flat plate for narrow bottle, and letting three little fish go free while it waits for a great one, until the day is gone and it goes hungry.

Chapters:

00:03 — The Two Rats Who Were Friends

04:21 — The Jackal Who Was Greedy for Food

06:38 — The Village Dog with the Neck-Band

11:50 — The Pregnant Bitch Who Gave Birth

18:55 — The Jackal and the Tung Bird

22:29 — The Tung Bird and the Fish

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. One further tale of the book's fourth part — the fable of the old woman whom desire unmade — is likewise held back under house rule: its matter is a mother's desire set against her own son, 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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