THE STORY OF THE BRAHMINS WHO PUT LIFE INTO THE LION
In a certain town, there lived four sons of
Brahmins. They were great friends. Three of them were very well versed in the
shastras, but lacking in commonsense. The fourth was completely ignorant of the
shastras, but had good commonsense.
"'
"One day, these four friends had a discussion together. They" said,
'What is the good of scholarship, if you cannot impress kings in far off lands
by it, or earn money with it? So, let us travel east.'
"'
"Accordingly, they set out. When they had covered some distance, the
eldest of them said, 'One of us has only commonsense and no scholarship. Now,
no one earns the king's esteem by mere commonsense, so let us not give him any
of our share of the profits. In fact, let him go home.'
"'
"The second Brahmin turned to the one with commonsense and said to him,
'My friend, you are no scholar, so you had better go home.'
"
' "But the third one said, 'We shouldn't behave like this towards our
friend. After all, we have grown up together and played games with one another
since we were children. So let him come. What's more, he should get his share
of our earnings, for they say:
"A mean-minded man
Thinks, 'This is mine, and that is his,'
But to a generous man,
The whole world is one big family."
"Finally, the others agreed and they
all proceeded on their way. After some time, they came to a jungle and found
the bones of a lion lying there. Then one of them suggested, 'Let's put our
scholarship to test. Here lies a dead lion. We'll see if we can bring him to
life.'
" ' "And so, one of them collected
bones and made a skeleton of them. The second one put flesh and blood into it,
covering it with skin. The third one was on the point of putting the very life
back into the lion, when the fourth restrained him, 'Stop friend!" he
cried. 'For goodness sake, don't do that! Look here, if you bring this dead
lion to life, he'll kill the whole lot of us!'.
" ' "But the third Brahmin
shouted, 'You don't think I am going to waste all my learning, after we've got
so far, do you?'
'All right then,' said the fellow with
commonsense, 'but Just wait a minute, while I climb up this tree.' And off he
went up the tree.
" ' "The third Brahmin brought the
lion to life. The lion immediately set on the three of them and killed them.
The one with the commonsense waited until the lion had gone, then he got down
from the tree and went home.
"And so," continued
Suvaranasiddhi, "that's why I said,
'Commonsense is superior to scholarship:
The scholars who were devoid of
commonsense,
Put life into the lion and died as a
result.'
"They also say," he continued,
'People well versed in the shastras
But lacking in commonsense,
Become the object of ridicule,
Like the four learned fools.' "
"How was that?" asked
Chakradhara.
And Suvaranasiddhi told
The Story Of The Four Learned Fools.