Rex simiarum – The Monkey King
The town of Hamadan is surrounded by mountains where a great troupe of monkeys live. The monkeys are ruled by a wise king named Ruzbef, who is a clever and insightful leader. One day, while sitting on a rock above the town, guarding the troupe, he sees a ram playful butting a woman in the town square. Ruzbef calls his companions, and tells them that he has seen something strange, and that it signifies that ill fortune is headed their way. He tells the troupe that they must gather everything they need, collect their children, and leave at once. The rest of the monkeys cannot understand this, and reply that there is no need to worry. Ruzbef then asks for their obedience, saying saying that he has a duty to protect them as their king, and together with his mate and their young, he prepares to leave. The other monkeys refuse to follow him, however, and once Ruzbef has left, they choose a new leader.
A few days later, the ram again playfully butts the same woman, but this time she is struck by its horns. Angry, the woman throws a stone at the ram’s head, knocking it out cold. When the ram wakes up, it remembers the blow; when it sees the woman nearby, it rushes at her in a fury. The woman is carrying a torch, and she strikes out at the ram with it to fend off the attack. The ram's wool catches fire. Panicked, the ram begins to run, and stumbles into the king's elephant enclosure where it tries to put out the fire by rolling around on the bundles of reeds. However, the reeds themselves start to burn as well, and soon the fire spreads throughout the enclosure, burning some of the elephants to death and injuring many others. The king, grieved by the news, calls his elephant keeper, who advises him that the best cure for the elephants' burns is monkey fat, applied to their skin every day until they heal. The king orders his men to hunt down all the monkeys on the mountain, take their fat and apply it to the elephants. A large group of soldiers set out on the hunt up the mountain, and when the monkeys demand to know why they must be killed, the soldiers explain the sequence of events, starting with the ram and the woman. The monkeys understand that this is the ill fortune their king had foreseen, and that their deaths are the consequences of their lack of faith in his leadership.
Note
Nishimura notes the following motifs, analogues, and references:
Motif: cf. TMI J652.2 Swallows warn other birds against roosting in trees with glue. They disregard and are caught.
Analogies: Jataka, 404 ‘Kapi-j.’ Konponsetsu Issai Ubu Binaya Hasoji, 20, Zo Hozo-kyo, 121; Bosatsu Hongyo-kyo, vol.2; Kyoritsu Iso, 47.11.6; Rokudo Jikkyo, 6.61; Schiefner, Tibetan Tales, 43 ‘Incredulity punished’. Panchatantra, Textus simplicior, 5.10 ‘Monkey’s Revenge’ and Textus ornatior (Pūrṇabhadra), Panchatantra, 5.8 ‘The Ape’s Revenge’.
Reference stories: Stories in which swallows warn other birds against a specific tree: Aesop’s Fables, 39 ‘The wise Swallow’; Babrius, Aesopic Fables (prose), 164 (=Aesopica 39); Phaedrus, The Aesopic Fables, 1.2 ‘The Frogs asked for a King’; Esopo no Fabulas, vol.1, 11; Isoho Monogatari, vol.1, 24; Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, 101 ‘The fable of the swallow,…’; Ruiz, The Book of Good Love, paragraph 746-753; Conde Lucanor, 6 ‘Von der Schwalbe, die Lein säen sah, und den andern Vögeln’; and La Fontaine, Fables, 1, 8, etc. Aesop’s Fables, 437 ‘The Owl and the Birds’.Critical Literature
Rex simiarum appears in the following versions and secondary versions
| Has Language Of Version | Has Branch Of Tradition | Is Adapted From | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Persian Sindbadnama | Persian | Book of Sindbad |
Rex simiarum is narrated in the following occurrences
Rex simiarum appears in the following manuscripts
| Has Language | Has Siglum Of The Version Of The Seven Sages | Has Language Group Within Version |
|---|