The Tales · Indic
The Brahmin and the Mongoose
A woman kills the mongoose that saved her child, because she saw blood and did not inquire.
A Brahmin and his wife raise a mongoose alongside their son. The wife does not trust it. One day she goes for water and tells her husband to watch the baby. He leaves to beg for food instead. A black snake crawls toward the cradle, and the mongoose kills it, then runs to meet the wife with blood on its mouth.
She assumes it has killed the child. She drops her water-jar on it and kills it. Then she finds her son safe beside the dead snake. In Ryder’s version she beats her breast, and when her husband returns she blames his greed.
Ryder’s closing verse: “Let the well-advised be done; / Ill-advised leave unbegun: / Else, remorse will be let loose, / As with lady and mungoose.”
Counsel
The frame story of the Charitropakhyan in miniature. The evidence was real: there was blood. The conclusion was wrong. The speed was fatal. A man or woman who convicts on what they see in the first minute will, sooner or later, kill the thing that saved them.
Verification
Read in Arthur W. Ryder's 1925 translation; corroborated in D. L. Ashliman's collection (University of Pittsburgh), which gives Aarne-Thompson type 178A and names the Brahmin Devasarman in Benfey's German. Western analogues (a dog in the Welsh Gelert legend, the Seven Sages cycle) are noted in Wikipedia and not independently checked. We could not confirm a specific Jataka parallel and do not name one.