The Mouse and the Camel
Only Knee-Deep to a Camel
Masnavi II.3436–3447 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926A little mouse caught in his forelegs a camel's leading-rope and from emulation went off (with it).By reason of the readiness with which the camel set out along with him, the mouse was duped into thinking himself a hero.The ray of his thought struck the camel. He (the camel) said (aside), “I will show thee (presently)! Enjoy thyself!”(All went well) till he (the mouse) came to the bank of a great river, at which any lion or wolf would have lost heart.There the mouse stopped and became paralysed. The camel said, “O my companion o'er hill and plain,What is this standing still (for)? Why art thou dismayed? Step (forward) like a man! Go into the river!Thou art my guide and leader: don't halt midway and be dumbfounded!”He (the mouse) said, “This is a huge and deep river: I am afraid of being drowned, O comrade.”Said the camel, “Let me see the limit (depth) of the water,” and he quickly set foot in it.“The water,” he said, “is (only) up to the knee. O blind mouse, wherefore didst thou become dismayed and lose thy wits?”He (the mouse) replied, “It is (as) an ant to you, but to me it is a dragon, for there are differences between one knee and another.If it is (only) up to your knee, O excellent one, it is a hundred ells higher than the crown of my head.”
- First attested
- 1278The text is Mathnawī II.3436–3447. No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya (Konya) manuscript, which Nicholson designated G and describes as “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī died. He translated Books I and II in 1926 from other copies; in 1930 he printed an Appendix “showing the changes required in order to bring the translation of Books I, II and III (vv. 1-2835) into agreement with” G, and it lists no change for these lines. Every English phrase quoted here is Nicholson's, from the 1926 translation.
- Claimed
- the 1260sasserted by Rūmī's own proem to Book II dates its beginning: “The date of beginning this gainful (spiritual) traffic was in the year six hundred and sixty-two” (II.7, Nicholson 1926) — A.H. 662, a year that began in 1263 and ended in 1264; C. E. Wilson's commentary (1910, p. 5, note 11) gives it as “the year 1263 A.D.” Book II carries no later date, and Rūmī died on 17 December 1273.
The tale does not end on the camel's rebuke, “a mouse has nothing to say to a camel” (II.3449). The mouse repents and is carried across on the hump: “This passage has been vouchsafed to me: I would take across hundreds of thousands like thee” (II.3452). The guide's power is to ferry, not to scorn.
Mathnawī II.3448–3452 (Nicholson 1926).
A mouse takes a camel's halter and thinks himself the leader, until a river only knee-deep to the camel.
Mathnawī II.3436–3452. A little mouse catches up a camel's leading-rope, and because the camel sets out so readily with him, the mouse is “duped into thinking himself a hero”. The camel reads the thought and lets him lead. At the bank of a great river the mouse stops, paralysed; the camel wades in to show the water is only up to the knee, and the mouse answers that “there are differences between one knee and another” — to him it is a hundred ells over his head. Told to contend with mice like himself, he repents, and the camel carries him over on its hump. Rūmī frames the tale with warnings against envying and rivalling the saints (II.3429–3435) and follows it with “Since you are not a prophet, go on the road (after the prophets)”. The passage runs from the halter to the mouse's answer, II.3436–3447.
Light
The comedy is exact and the scale is the argument — “It is (as) an ant to you, but to me it is a dragon” — and the mouse is faulted not for his fear but for having taken the rope. The moment he admits it, the camel carries him.
Shadow
Its lesson is obedience. The lines that follow tell the reader “Be a vassal since you are not a lord”, to be mute and “be an ear” (II.3454–3456) — counsel that serves a genuine guide and a pretended one alike.
