King Candapinggala was still not convinced that this applied to the bull Nandaka, so Sambada told him the well-known story of King Aridharma, who acquired the knowledge of the animals’ languages.  Just when the king was on the point of dying he heard a goat talk to her husband in a similar manner as his queen spoke to him: “If you don’t do as I say, I will kill myself.”  Whereupon the he-goat answered, “Go ahead.  I am not to be subdued by my wife like the king, who obeys his.”  The king smiled and the queen mounted the pyre.

At this juncture, Sambada quoted a verse: “Beware of horned animals, and never trust a woman.”  “The bull has horns, therefore he cannot be trusted,” concluded the wicked jackal, although in the story only the she-goat was the “baddie” among the horned animals.

In the end, the jackal succeeded in creating enmity between the lion and the bull.  Finally, the lion attacked the bull and bit his throat, but at the same time the bull ripped open the lion’s belly.  In the last scene of the cycle the two great animals died miserably side by side and their bodies were devoured by the jackal, the lion’s prime minister.  Basubaga composed a couplet:

The ruler will be eaten by his slave
If he has chosen one who is a knave.
The jackals rule where lions are too weak
A king should not allow his slave to speak.

Thus is the sad ending of the Javanese Pandjatanderan, in accordance with the Sanskrit original.  Why did the author let his tale finish on such a gloomy note?  The answer lies in the culture in which these tales were first conceived.

The tales were tantras, or formulas, that is, brief lessons to be memorized by youngsters.  They were not intended as belles letters, as literature for its own sake, nor as short stories written for the amusement of readers in a busy life.  Fables were the equivalent of instructions in a school of management.  They were conceived as lessons for daily use by princes, heads of villages, tribal chiefs, squires, rich farmers, and all those who had to manage people.  For a king in antiquity, it was of vital importance to choose the right man as his chief minister or his viceroy in a distant province.  For a modern business manager, it is of equally vital importance to choose the right man as his chief secretary, his vice chairman, or his overseas representative.