The trickster jackal

At a Glance

• Central figures: The Jackal - called Huli by the Santhals - a cunning animal who lives by tricking larger, stronger creatures; a Tiger who rules the forest through fear; a Crocodile who guards the river crossing; and a Farmer whose field lies between them.
• Setting: The Santhal Parganas of eastern India (present-day Jharkhand), in the forested country between the Rajmahal Hills and the Ganges plain, where Santhal villages sit among sal trees and rice paddies.
• The turn: The Jackal, cornered between a hungry Tiger and a Crocodile blocking his escape across the river, talks each predator into suspecting the other - and persuades the Farmer to settle the dispute he himself invented.
• The outcome: The Tiger and the Crocodile attack each other; the Jackal crosses the river untouched and eats the Farmer’s ripened grain while everyone else fights.
• The legacy: The Jackal became a figure Santhal elders invoke when warning against flattery and the cleverness of those who profit while others bleed - a stock character in Santhal oral storytelling passed down through evening gatherings around the fire.

The Jackal had not eaten in three days. His ribs showed through his hide like the slats of a broken fence, and when he trotted along the edge of the sal forest his belly made no sound at all - there was nothing in it to slosh. He kept his nose to the ground because that was all he had. His nose and his mouth. The nose found things, and the mouth talked him out of trouble when the things he found belonged to someone bigger.

On the third evening he smelled ripe paddy from across the river. A Farmer’s field, fat with grain, the stalks bending under their own weight. Between the Jackal and that field stood two problems. The first was the Tiger.

The Tiger on the Path

The Tiger lay across the forest path like a fallen tree. He was not sleeping. His eyes were open and fixed on the Jackal the way a man watches a fly he is about to swat but hasn’t yet decided is worth the effort.

Where are you going, Huli?

The Jackal sat down. He did not run. Running from a Tiger is the last thing you do, and then you do nothing else.

Nowhere, Dada, the Jackal said. He called the Tiger “elder brother” because flattery costs nothing and silence costs everything. I was only walking. I have no business on this path.

Everything on this path is my business, the Tiger said. You are on this path. So you are my business.

The Jackal looked at the Tiger’s belly. It was not as flat as his own, but it was not full either. A Tiger who has eaten recently does not bother speaking to jackals.

Dada, I am bones and fur. There is nothing on me worth your teeth. But I know where there is food.

The Tiger’s ears moved forward. That was enough.

Across the river, the Jackal said. The Farmer’s field is heavy with grain, and the Farmer keeps goats. Fat ones. They graze along the bank in the evening.

The Tiger stood. He was enormous. The Jackal had forgotten how enormous, or had tried to forget.

Show me, the Tiger said.

The Crocodile at the Crossing

They reached the river where the water ran shallow over flat stones - the place where Santhals crossed on market days, hitching their dhotis above the knee. But in the deeper pool just upstream, the Crocodile waited. He had been waiting all dry season. The shallow crossing funneled everything past his pool: deer, dogs, children who wandered too far from their mothers.

The Crocodile surfaced when he heard them. His eyes sat on the water like two stones that had learned to blink.

No one crosses, the Crocodile said. He said this to everyone.

The Tiger growled. The Crocodile did not move. A crocodile in water does not fear a tiger on land. They both knew this. The Jackal knew it too.

Dada, the Jackal said to the Tiger, quietly, as though sharing a secret, this Crocodile told me yesterday that he is not afraid of you. He said your roar sounds like a sick cow.

The Tiger’s tail went rigid.

Then the Jackal slipped down to the water’s edge and spoke to the Crocodile in the same confidential voice.

Brother Crocodile, the Tiger says he will dam the river upstream and dry out your pool. He says he has done it before. He says you are nothing but a log with teeth.

The Crocodile’s jaws opened slightly. Not to speak. To show what was inside them.

The Farmer’s Verdict

The Jackal trotted back up the bank and sat between them - not quite within reach of either.

You are both angry, he said. This is a dispute. A dispute needs a judge. The Farmer is in his field. He is a fair man. Let him decide who owns this crossing.

Neither the Tiger nor the Crocodile trusted the Jackal. But each of them trusted the other less, and neither wanted to be the one who refused a judge. The Tiger walked to the Farmer’s field. The Crocodile crawled along the bank, dragging himself through the mud with terrible patience.

The Farmer was cutting rice with a hand sickle when the three of them arrived. He put down the sickle because there was a tiger standing in his paddy.

What is this? the Farmer said.

The Jackal spoke first, before either of them could.

These two great lords have a quarrel over the river crossing. The Tiger says it is forest, so it is his. The Crocodile says it is water, so it is his. They have agreed to accept your judgment, Father.

The Farmer looked at the Tiger. The Farmer looked at the Crocodile. He was not a fool. He knew that whoever lost this judgment might eat the judge.

I must see the crossing myself before I can decide, the Farmer said. Show me the exact place where the quarrel stands.

The Fight at the Ford

They all went back to the river. The Jackal walked behind the Farmer, which put the Farmer between himself and the Tiger. The Crocodile slid back into the water the moment they reached the bank.

The Farmer stood on the stones and pointed upstream.

Tiger, show me how far your forest extends along the water.

The Tiger walked upstream along the bank. The Crocodile, suspecting the Tiger would claim the whole river, surged through the shallows after him. The Tiger saw the Crocodile lunging and swiped at him. The Crocodile locked his jaws on the Tiger’s forepaw. The Tiger roared - not like a sick cow - and threw his weight onto the Crocodile’s back. They rolled into the deeper water together, the river turning white around them.

The Farmer ran. He ran back to his house and barred the door and did not come out until morning.

The Jackal did not run. He walked - across the shallow stones, through the knee-deep water, and into the Farmer’s unguarded field. He ate rice straight off the stalk. He ate until his belly was round and tight and dragged on the ground when he walked.

The Morning After

By dawn the Tiger had pulled himself onto the far bank, bleeding from his shoulder, one ear torn half away. The Crocodile sank to the bottom of his pool and did not surface for two days. The Farmer found his field trampled and half-eaten, the stalks broken and scattered.

The Jackal was gone. He had crossed back before first light, fat and quiet, his tracks mixed in with the mud the fight had churned up. No one saw him go.

In the Santhal villages around the Rajmahal Hills, when someone profits from a quarrel they started, the elders say the same thing. Huli has been here. They say it in the evening, sitting by the fire, and the children listen because the Jackal is always funny until you realize you are the Farmer.