The Bear and the Gardener

The Bear and the Gardener is a fable originating in the ancient Indian text Panchatantra that warns against making foolish friendships.

Unable to drive off a persistent fly, the bear seizes a paving stone to crush it and kills the gardener as well.

One of its earliest appearances was in Robert Dodsley's Select fables of Esop and other fabulists (1764), where it is given the title "The Hermit and the Bear" and provided with the moral "The random zeal of inconsiderate friends is often as hurtful as the wrath of enemies".

In this version a hermit has done the bear a good turn; later still this was identified with taking a thorn from its paw, drawing on the story of Androcles and the Lion.

A variant appeared in Rumi's 13th century poem, the Masnavi, which tells the story of a kind man who rescued a bear from a serpent.

[9] In the Masaka Jataka from the Buddhist scriptures it is a carpenter's foolish son who strikes at a fly on his father's head with an axe.

[11] A similar episode also occurs at the start of Giovanni Francesco Straparola's tale of Fortunio in Facetious Nights (13.4), written about 1550.

[13] A watercolour in Lucknow style, painted by Sital Das round about 1780 and now in the British Library, shows the bear contemplating the gardener after it has killed him.

On the other hand, Jean-Charles Cazin's 1892 oil painting of L'ours et l'amateur des jardins dispenses with the bear altogether.