The Panchatantra by Sunita Parasuraman

Author:Sunita Parasuraman [Parasuraman, Sunita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jaico Books
Published: 2013-02-03T23:00:00+00:00

GOLD’S GLOOM

In the southern country is a city called Maidens’ Delight, and in the neighborhood a shrine to Shiva. In a cell near by lived a hermit named Crop-Ear. During his begging hour he would fill his alms-bowl with dainties from the city, eatables jellified, melting in the mouth, toothsome, flavored with sugar, treacle, and pomegranate. Then, returning to his cell, he satisfied himself according to the ordinance, hid what food was left in the alms-bowl, and hung it on a peg, keeping it for the servants’ breakfast. On this food I subsisted with my companions. And so the time passed.

Since I nibbled his food, however carefully he hid it, the hermit was disgusted, and in fear of me he moved it from place to place, always hanging it higher. Even so I got at it easily enough and ate it.

Now one day a guest arrived, a holy man named Wide-Bottom. And Crop-Ear welcomed him, paid him due respect, and relieved his fatigue. At night they lay on the same couch and started to relate pious tales. But Crop-Ear’s thoughts were so preoccupied with mice that he kept striking the alms-bowl with a frazzled bamboo and returned an absent-minded answer to Wide-Bottom as he told a pious tale.

Then the guest grew extremely angry and said: “Come, Crop-Ear! I perceive that your friendship is dead. For you do not talk with me whole-heartedly. So, night though it be, I shall leave your cell and go elsewhere. For there is a saying:

Come! Enter! News from town?

A chair! You look run down!

Welcome! Why have you slighted

Our home so long? Dee-lighted!

Such kindly words as these

May set the mind at ease,

And friends be glad to go

Where they are greeted so.

And again:

Wherever hosts look vaguely round

Or fix their glances on the ground,

The guests who visit such a place

Are hornless, yet of bovine race.

You should not visit any home

From which no gentle greetings come,

Which fails in eager promptitude,

With gossip touching bad and good.

“But this you do not understand, having forgotten friendship through pride in the ownership of one mere cell. So that you seem to dwell here, but in reality you have earned a place in hell. For the proverb says:

A certain course for hell to steer,

Become a chaplain for a year;

Or try more expeditious ways —

Become an abbot for three days.

Poor fool! You take pride in what should cause contrition.”

When he heard this, Crop-Ear was terrified and said: “Do not speak thus, holy sir. There is no friend nearer my heart than you. Pray hear the reason of my inattention. There is a villainous mouse that jumps and climbs to my alms-bowl, however high I hang it, and he eats my leavings. Thus the servants get no recompense, and refuse to tidy up. So to frighten the mouse, I strike the alms-bowl repeatedly with my bamboo. This is the whole story. But I should add that the villain has such cleverness in jumping as to put cats, monkeys, and other creatures to the blush.”

Then Wide-Bottom said: “But have you found the mouse-hole anywhere?” “Holy sir,” said Crop-Ear, “I have not.

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