The Trickster

Hello. Me again. I haven't been writing in for over a month now, so I have to work doubly hard to make sure this project works (stupid exams!) Anyway, I'm going to post some stories regarding Malaysian mythology, then I'll move on to my next section.

My plan is to write a weekly or bi-weekly serial about an amateur detective on this blog, in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe and Veronica Mars. I'm still trying to put some meat on this, so it'll not be on here any time soon. I'm hoping that some of you people out there should start writing your own weekly serials. Who knows, somewhere in Hollywood, some down-and-out director might steal our stories and make it his own, and earn millions of dollars while we bitch about it on our blogs.

Sorry, did I get carried away again? Here's a tale about Sang Kancil the mousedeer, a trickster character in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology, whose role is similar to that of Sun Wukong of the Chinese and Juan Tamad in Philippine lore.

One day, Kancil wandered around the forest and accidentally offended the elephant (how he offended the elephant we do not know), and so the elephant feels obligated to crush the little critter like scrambled eggs.
'I'm going to crush you,' said the elephant, who only says what the narrator tells him to.
'Oh, dear. Why do you wish to destroy God's beautiful creation such as little ol' me?' answered the Kancil. He's scared, but since he's the hero of this story, he's not supposed to show it. Instead, he thought of an idea. 'Tell you what. Why don't we play a game? Let's see who's tail is stronger, yours or mine?'
The elephant accepted, of course, since he has a long tail, and the Kancil barely has one. 'Fine, I'll accept your challenge. But if you lose, I get to crush you.'
The Kancil agreed, but lamented the violent nature of the grey beast and his limited vocabulary. He took a long piece of rope (where he got the rope was not mentioned, probably a nearby village) and tied it to the elephant's tail. Then he ran all the way to the beach, bringing with him the rope (don't ask me for details, I'm just the penglipur lara) and offended the whale. The whale also felt obligated to crush the Kancil, only he used harsher language than the elephant.
Again, the Kancil challenged the whale to the contest, and tied the rope to the whale's tail. Feeling a strong tug at the other end, the elephant and the whale started pulling the rope, and the earth shook. Eventually, the elephant and whale were exhausted, and admitted the strength of the Kancil.
The Kancil walked away happy, and thought of other ways to trick other animals in the forest.

Personally, I believe Kancil has a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War hidden somewhere.