The long-tailed rat

In the North Indian village of Ghatiyali, Rajasthan, persons of all ages narrate a short and humorous folktale about a rat who makes a series of improbable trades. Each transaction begins as a gift offered freely but becomes a kind of extortion. Variants on this tale-type-"The Clever Animal and the Fortunate Exchanges" (170A)-are widespread in South Asia. They generally portray either a rodent or a monkey who gains-either to keep happily or ultimately to lose painfully-either a bride or a drum. The moral, economic, and social problems encapsulated in the tale's stable core of "deceptive bargains" are differently elaborated in its varying outcomes and evaluations of the trading protagonist's character. These evoke contrasting moralities of gifts and bargains, the amibiguities surrounding them, and the consequent fuzziness or gray zone that separates the two.