The Gatiloke — Part 14 of 23 (Oknha Yomaraja and Oknha Poltep · The Sampoch That Got into the Rice Barn · The Donkey-Seller and the Forest Robbers)
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Gatiloke stays in the book's sixth part. A prisoner under sentence of death, who claims a knowledge no one else alive possesses — the language of animals — begs his life from the great lord who would learn it, in the Buddha's own hall; and when his secret release is laid against that lord before the king, on a morning when the crows clamour over the palace, the lord answers the charge by reporting what the crows are saying. A sampoch creeps into a rice barn and eats until it is too fat to leave by the gap it came in at, and wins its freedom only by fasting itself thin again. And a merchant's laden donkey, beaten and dragged away by the forest robbers, learns that the goods upon its back were the whole cause of its suffering; a woman in Phnom Penh, struck by a robber feigning her husband and stripped of her gold while no one helps, learns the same. The episode opens and closes with January Lament as its theme, heard also briefly between the stories. Narrated by Scratch. Chapters: 00:57 — Oknha Yomaraja and Oknha Poltep 19:23 — The Sampoch That Got into the Rice Barn 22:38 — The Donkey-Seller and the Forest Robbers 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. Earlier holds stand as recorded in the collection's written register and in the descriptions of Parts 1–13: the question-chapter of the rascal who should be feared; Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher; the Singha-To who wanted the chief's daughter; the crocodile and the cart-driver; the hunter and the parrot; the fable of the old woman whom desire unmade; the abbot and his two students; the deer, the crow and the jackal; the jackal and the elephant; the lion and the frog; the rabbit and the tigress; and the goatherd boy — each held back under house rule until it is ruled on by name. One further tale of the book's sixth part — the tale of the village cat and the chap-puk bird — is likewise held back under house rule: its matter is a killing and an eating in the tale's open scene, twice over, and such a tale is not read until it is ruled on; it stands recorded in the register, in its place. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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