Labh Lakshmi

Bandhu was a handsome baby elephant. He had a long, curly trunk that kept swinging all the time, large flapping ears and a gracious gait.

He was good-natured and cheerful and his friends liked him, because he would always make them laugh with his funny tricks. Every day, they would meet under the shade of a huge Banyan tree and play for hours on end, or just sit around and chat.

Once upon a time there lived a swan who used to spend time in various playful activites on a lake. Once an owl visited him in the forest and requested him to be friends, after praising the swan a lot. The swan agreed to be friends with him and they used to spend time near the lake a lot of days.

Once upon a time there lived a crow couple, who had built a nest on the top of a tree. But unfortunately the tree was inhabited by a serpent at its bottom. So the serpent used to crawl up the tree and eat all the eggs that the lady crow used to lay.

Once upon a time there lived a heron by the side of a pond. It was a lazy creature and once deivsed a plan to get a supply of fish without doing much work. So one day, he went to the side of the pond and put on a gloomy face without attempting to catch any fish.

Once upon a time there lived a lazy jackal. Also in the hills there lived a hillman and a wild boar. Once when the hillman went to hunt, he saw the wold boar. He took a sharp aim with his arrow and stuck the boar.

Once upon a time there lived a jackal who strayed into a city in search of food. He was hungry and was being chased by a group of dogs. He accidentally entered the house of a dyer and fell into a vat of indigo(blue), and was stained blue from head to toe. When he escaped from the house back into the forest, all animals were surprised at his appearance and could not place its identity.

Once upon a time there lived a ferocious lion in the forest. It was a greedy lion and started killing animals in the forest indiscriminately. Seeing this, the animals gathered and decided to approach the lion with the offer of one animal of each species volunteering itself to be eaten by the lion everyday.

Once upon a time there lived a sparrow with her husband on a tree. She had built a nice nest and laid her eggs in the nest. One morning, a wild elephant with spring fever feeling restive came to the tree in search of shade and in a rage broke

Once upon a time there lived a monkey named Red-face on a tree by the side of the sea. The tree was an apple tree and the fruits it bore were sweet as nectar. Once a crocodile named Ugly-Mug swam ashore and Red-face threw apples at him and asked him to taste them.

For more than two and a half millennia, the Panchatantra tales have regaled children and adults alike with a moral at the end of every story. Some believe that they are as old as the RigVeda. There is also another story about these fables. According to it, these are stories Shiva told his consort Parvati. The present series is based on the Sanskrit original.