Episode Details

The Gatiloke stays in the book's fifth part. A deer caught in a hunter's snare is freed by his friends' night-long labour, and repays it by carrying the tortoise out of the hunter's hands. A king of doves who cannot hold his flock from the baited net will not abandon them to it, and their rising together tears the net away. The mice agree on the perfect plan against the cat, and no one dares to bell her. A borrowed fortune-gong is wasted on a wife's heedless cry — the book's own ribald joke, told as the book tells it — and the three strikings strike out. And two goats meet on a bridge, where neither will yield the path.

Chapters:

00:04 — The Deer, the Crow and the Tortoise Who Were Friends

06:06 — The King of the Doves and His Retinue

14:01 — The Mouse and the Mother Cat

16:24 — The Man with a Perfect Wife and the Man with an Ill-Omened Wife, Who Were Friends

21:21 — The Two Goats Who Fought over the Path

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. One further tale of the book's fifth part — the tale of the abbot and his two students — is likewise held back under house rule: its close is a killing in the tale's open scene, a wild buffalo's goring of the teacher in the forest, 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 fifth part — the tale of the deer, the crow and the jackal — is likewise held back under house rule: its close is a killing with a weapon 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 fifth part — the tale of the jackal and the elephant — is likewise held back under house rule: its close is a killing plotted 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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