The Brahman Who Lost His Treasure

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Brahman who lost his treasure from the Sanskrit. There
is a city named Servasti, and in it there lived
in old time a king of the name of Prazenashit.
And one day a strange Brahman arrived in that city.
A merchant, thinking he was virtuous because he lived on
rice in the husk, provided him a lodging there in

(00:21):
the house of a Brahman. There he was loaded by
him every day with presents of unhusked rice and other gifts,
and gradually by other great merchants also who came to
hear his story. In this way, the miserly fellow gradually
accumulated a thousand dinars, and going to the forest, he
dug a hole and buried it in the ground. And

(00:44):
he went every day and examined the spot. One day
he saw that the hole in which he had hidden
his gold had been reopened, and that all the gold
had gone. When he saw that hole empty, his soul
was smitten. And not only was there avoid in his heart,
but the whole universe seemed to him to be avoid also.

(01:05):
And then he came crying to the Brahmin in whose
house he lived, and when questioned, he told him his
whole story, and he made up his mind to go
to a holy bathing place and staff himself to death.
Then the merchant who supplied him with food, hearing of it,
came there with others and said to him, Brahman, why

(01:26):
do you long to die for the loss of your wealth? Wealth,
like an unseasonable cloud, suddenly comes and goes. Though plied
by him with these and similar arguments, he would not
abandon his fixed determination to commit suicide, for wealth is
dearer to the miser than life itself. But when the

(01:47):
Brahmin was going to the holy place to commit suicide,
the king Prasenajit himself, having heard of it, came to
him and asked him, Brahman, do you know of any
mark by which you can recognize the place where you
buried your dinars. When the Bramin heard that, he said,
there is a small tree in the wood there I

(02:08):
buried that wealth at its foot. When the king heard that,
he said, I will find that wealth and give it
back to you, or I will give it to you
from my own treasury. Do not commit suicide, Bramen. After
saying this, and so diverting the Braman from his intention,
of committing suicide. The king entrusted him to the care

(02:30):
of the merchant and retired to his palace. He pretended
to have a headache, and sending out the door keeper,
he summoned all the physicians in the city by proclamation
with beat of drum, and he took aside every single
one of them and questioned him privately in the following words,
what patience have you here? And how many? And what

(02:52):
medicine have you prescribed for each? And they, thereupon, one
by one answered all the King's question. Then one among
the physicians, when his turn came to be questioned, said this,
the merchant matri data, has been out of sorts, O King,
and this is the second day that I have prescribed

(03:14):
for him nargabala. When the king heard that, he sent
for the merchant and said to him, tell me who
fetched you the nargabala. The merchant said, my servant, your highness.
When the king got this answer from the merchant, he
quickly summoned the servant and said to him, give up

(03:34):
that treasure belonging to a Brahmin, consisting of a store
of dinars, which you found when you were digging at
the foot of a tree for Nargabala. When the king
said this to him, the servant was frightened and confessed immediately,
and bringing those dinars, left them there. So the king,
for his part, summoned the Brahman and gave him who
had been fasting in the Meanwhile, his dinars lost and

(03:57):
found again, like a second soul external to his body.