The monkey king's bridge.
A human king found a mango tree the monkeys were feeding from and ordered them killed. The monkey king lashed a cane to his own feet, stretched himself between two trees, and made his body the last span of a bridge while eighty thousand of his troop ran across his back — including the cousin who had been plotting against him, who stamped as he went and broke his heart. The human king, watching, asked what he was and got a lesson in what a crown is for.
The Mahakapi Jataka is a political story wearing fur. Its lesson is delivered to a king, by a king, on the subject of what a ruler owes those he rules — everything, including his body — and the detail that finishes it is the traitor cousin trampling deliberately on the way across. The monkey king dies of it, and does not name him. Southeast Asian court art returned to this tale constantly, for reasons no one had to explain to the court.
The same ground, other faiths
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