Long ago, beside a lonely forest lake, there lived a tiger who had grown very old. His teeth were worn, his claws were blunt, and he could no longer hunt. So he thought of a trick. He bathed in the lake, took a blade of holy kusha grass in his paw, and stood on the bank calling out sweetly, “O travellers, listen! Here is a bangle of pure gold. I wish to give it away in charity. Who will take it?”
A traveller walking on the far shore heard him and stopped. “Gold!” he thought, “but from a tiger?” He called across the water, “You are a beast of prey. How can I trust you?”
The old tiger sighed like a saint. “In my youth I was cruel indeed, and I have suffered for it — today I am all alone in the world. Then a holy man showed me the path of dharma. Now I am old, toothless and slow. I bathe, I pray, I give alms. The scriptures say that giving is the highest virtue — and to whom should I give, if not to a poor traveller like you? See, here is the bangle. Bathe first in this lake, and then come and receive it with clean hands.”
Greed makes even a careful man blind. Dreaming of the gold, the traveller stepped into the lake — and sank at once to his waist, for beneath the shining water lay deep, heavy mud. “Alas, I am stuck in the swamp!” he cried. “Do not fear,” said the tiger kindly, “I will help you out.” Padding slowly across the marsh he knew so well, the tiger reached the helpless man and seized him — and that was the end of the greedy traveller.
So the soft words of the wicked and the glitter of easy gold did together what the old tiger's worn claws could never have done alone.