The monkey and the crocodile
Reading time aloud: about four minutes.
One of the oldest stories still being told anywhere — it appears in the Panchatantra, in the Jataka tales, and in versions across half the world.
On the bank of a wide river grew a jamun tree, and its fruit was the sweetest for miles. A monkey lived in that tree and ate as much as he liked.
One afternoon a crocodile hauled himself onto the bank to rest, and the monkey — who was lonely, and generous, and pleased with himself — dropped a handful of jamuns down to him. The crocodile had never eaten anything so sweet. He came back the next day, and the next, and soon the two of them talked away every afternoon while the fruit fell.
"Take some home for your wife," the monkey said one evening. So he did.
The crocodile's wife ate the fruit and thought about it for a long time. "If the fruit is this sweet," she said at last, "imagine the heart of the monkey who eats it every day. I want that heart. Bring it to me."
The crocodile refused. She wept, and refused food, and said he had never loved her. And on the third day he swam to the tree with his eyes on the ground.
"My wife would like to thank you," he said. "Come home with me for dinner. Ride on my back."
The monkey, delighted, jumped down. They swam out into the deep water, where the trees on the bank went small and blue, and there the crocodile stopped.
"I have to tell you something," he said. "My wife wants your heart. I'm sorry."
The monkey held very still. Then he said, in his ordinary voice, "Well, why didn't you say so this morning? Every monkey knows a heart is far too precious to carry about. I keep mine in the tree — in the hollow, with the ripest fruit. We'll have to go back for it."
The crocodile, relieved that his friend wasn't angry, turned round and swam to shore.
The monkey was up the trunk before the crocodile's feet touched the mud. From the highest branch he looked down and said: "You fool. Nobody keeps their heart in a tree. But I have learnt something today — I know now what my fruit was buying."
And he never came down again while the crocodile was watching.
Two things, and children usually notice both. First, that quick thinking beats strength — the monkey survives because he doesn't panic. Second, and harder: that generosity given to the wrong person isn't generosity, it's payment. The story doesn't say don't be kind; it says know what your kindness is buying.
In the Jataka version the crocodile's wife wants the monkey's heart and the Buddha is the monkey — the ending is instructive rather than triumphant. In many Bengali and Tamil tellings the crocodile is a friend who is bullied at home, and the sympathy sits with him. And in gentler tellings for very young children, the monkey simply refuses to visit again and no one is threatened at all.
More from the same collection: the blue jackal and the lion and the hare.
Last updated: 2026-08-11
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