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	---> MORE Thai Proverbs: _________________________________ Keeping your head down Standing the World on its Head Beware of Appearances Keeping Your Head Down When the Cat's Away You've Got to be Stupid Before You Get Wise Measuring Someone's Footprint Be compliant! Snake Snake Fish Fish Bid Tong Lang Phra - To do good by stealth The Menacing Tiger Little birds nest according to their size Keeping Your Head Down The Chameleon That Lost Its Head Out of Pride Wisdom come from Stupidity Follow the old, and the dogs won't bite you LOOKING AT THE TSUNAMI DISASTER Measuring Someone's Footprint One drop of honey Keeping Your Head Down Avoiding Victory Blame and Responsibility Beware of Appearances When the cat’s away, the mice play Water, water everywhere…

The Chameleon That Lost Its Head Out of Pride

The phrase ging-ga dai tong ('the chameleon who won a coin of gold') is a rather close equivalent to the English saying, 'Pride comes before a fall'.

This is the story.

Enjoying his royal stroll one morning, a king saw a chameleon nodding its head up and down, touching the ground. On being asked what it was doing, his pundit-advisor immediately informed him, that, like one of his loyal subjects, the little reptile was showing his deepest respect for his ruler, and in pretty much the same way any ordinary citizen would. The king, touched and delighted by this act of fealty, lightheartedly laughed and ordered that the humble chameleon be served one baht's-worth of meat every day.

As his lightest command always was, this order too was meticulously obeyed. That is, until one day the gardener responsible for feeding the chameleon, arrived at the market too late to purchase meat. To demonstrate his loyalty (and save his own skin) the gardener tied the one baht that should have been used to buy the daily meal to the chameleon's neck. But this suddenly gave the little reptile a sense of importance out of all proportion to his real status.

"The king has money. And now so do I," he told himself. "This puts me at exactly the same level as the ruler himself. Why should I go on abasing myself, when the king himself sees me as an equal?"

The result was that the very next morning, when the king was taking his morning constitutional, what should he see but the self-same chameleon that had so amused him some days earlier. But instead of ‘bowing', the foolish little reptile was standing as high as his four legs would lift him, with his head held as high as he could get it. No more nodding for him. Puzzled, the king turned to his pandit, asking him the reason for this remarkable change of behaviour. And the pandit, seeing the coin around the chameleon's neck, understood what had happened and what the creature was thinking, and informed his sovereign accordingly. Immediately, his anger coming up as swiftly as storm clouds cover the sun, the king's mood darkened. "Intolerable insolence!" he shouted. "Off with its head!"

The story spread far and wide, and since that time, anyone who becomes arrogant and forgets his station in life is likely to be called a ging-ga dai tong, as a reminder of this foolish chameleon and his condign punishment.