Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit quotes

They realize indeed, whilst still in the nursery, the ideal suggested by the sage Vidura in the Mahabharata: “

Seek to know thyself by means of thyself, keeping thy mind, intellect and senses, under control; for self is thy friend as it is also thy foe.

”

So he said to one of the fairies, “Will you show me where the food is, and exactly where you would like me to set it out?”

At these questions all the fairies began to laugh, and the sound of their laughter was like the tinkling of a number of bells.

When the fairies saw how astonished Subha Datta was at the way they laughed, it made them laugh still more, and they seized each other’s hands again and whirled round and round, laughing all the time.

He heard a silvery laugh, and what sounded like children clapping their hands, and he thought he also heard the words,

“Our pitcher is ours again!”

Could it all have been a dream? No: for there on the ground were the fruits and cakes that had been in the pitcher, and there were his wife, his children and his friends, all looking sadly and angrily at him.

He stayed quietly in his hole, and only ventured forth after he had heard the cat climb up into the tree again.

“It is all very well,” thought the mouse, “to pretend to make friends with an enemy when that enemy is helpless, but I should indeed be a silly mouse to trust a cat when she is free to kill me.”

The cat made a good many other efforts to be friends with the mouse, but they were all unsuccessful. In the end the owl caught the mouse, and the cat killed the lizard.

… tree, he would bend down, clear away the earth and leaves with which he had hidden his secret hole, take out the money and let it slip through his fingers, and hold up the jewels to the light, to watch how they gleamed and glistened.

He was never so happy as when he was alone with his riches, and it was all he could do to tear himself away from them when the time came to go back to his shady corner.

In fact he was becoming a selfish miser instead of the holy man the people of Sravasti thought he was.

What surprised Agni-Sikha, and in fact nearly took his breath away, was to be quietly told that he was dead. He began to think that he was dreaming, and said to himself,

“I cannot really be dead without knowing it, so I must be asleep.”

And he quietly turned his horse round and rode slowly home again. This was just what his daughter wanted;

The guards were at first afraid to touch the vizier, remembering how others had been punished for only speaking against him. Seeing their unwillingness, the Raja got more and more angry; but Dhairya-Sila himself kept quite calm, and said to the soldiers:

“I go with you gladly. It is for the master to command and for me to obey.”

The guards were relieved to find they need not drag the vizier away; for they admired his courage and felt sure that the Raja would soon find he could not get on without him.

Buddhi-Mati listened very attentively to these strange instructions, and began to ask questions about them. “Why do you want the beetle? Why do you want the honey?” and so on. But her husband checked her.

“I have no strength to waste in explanations,” he said. “Go home in peace, sleep well, and dream of me.”

So the anxious wife went meekly away; and early the next day she set to work to obey the orders she had received. She had some trouble in obtaining fine enough silk, so very, very thin it had to be, like a spider’s web;

He didn’t even need to be told what was wanted, but at once began to nibble the string, first setting free the king, and then all the rest of the birds.

“A friend in need is a friend indeed,” cried the king; “a thousand thousand thanks!”

And away he flew up into the beautiful free air of heaven, followed by the happy pigeons, none of them ever likely to forget the adventure or to pick up food from the ground without a good look at it first.

“Your armour would not have been of much use to you, if the hunter had been allowed to carry you to his home,” said the deer. “In my opinion you and I both owe our lives entirely to Hiranya.

He is small and weak, it is true, but he has better brains than any of the rest of us, and I for one admire him with all my heart.

I am glad I trusted him and obeyed him, when he ordered me to pretend to be dead, for I had not the least idea how that could help the tortoise.”

The merchant too forgot all about him, and he felt very lonely and miserable. He had been thinking to himself how much he would enjoy all the delicious food he would get after the wedding; and now he began to grumble:

“I’m starving in the midst of plenty, that’s what I am. Something will have to be done to change this horrible state of things.”

Whilst the preparations for the wedding were going on, Vidya never came near her husband, and he lay awake a long time thinking, “What in the world can I do to make the master send for me?”

It so happened that, when he was a little boy, his father used to call him frog, and now his thoughts went back to the time when he was a happy innocent child, and he said aloud:

“Oh, frog, what trouble has come to you! That pitcher will be the death of you!”

Even Deva-Jnanin was astonished when he heard that; and so were all the other wise men. The king was delighted to find that after all he had made no mistake;