XI
THE MAN WHO WAS ENRICHED BY ACCIDENT
THERE once lived a Brahmin and his wife, who were very poor, wanting even the bare necessaries of life. The husband was a great dolt, and his wife possessed as little sense as he. One day she spoke to her husband thus, "O lord of my life! I have heard that our king is very fond of poetry, and that he rewards every Brahmin who approaches him with a clever sloka.[1] Why don't you see him with one of your own compositions?"
The Brahmin replied, "Darling, am I fit to approach the court in my dirty clothes, and this dirty poitá?"[2] The Brahmini thereupon washed a suit of clothes for him and prepared a new poitá also, and the next day her husband started for the king's presence, though the sloka was not yet ready. He thought that he would compose it on the way, and thus went along ruminating. He racked his brains, composed some lines, and then finding them not to his satisfaction, rejected them altogether. A thousand attempts like this were made, but nothing came of them. When he was hesitating whether he should proceed forward or return, he accidently saw something that supplied him, as he thought, with the materials for a good sloka. What he saw was a bull rubbing its hoofs on a stone moistened by the water of a fountain, and he at once uttered the two following nonsensical lines:
"Khúr gharsan, khúr gharsan chikir chikir páni
Tomár moner kathá ámi sab jàni."
