Episode 2 – Animal Hater 1

A quick disclaimer before we begin – there’s a cat’s version of a Stephen King horror story in today’s episode.

Today we’ll talk about Tenali Raman a court jester, who is known for his wit and takes every opportunity to humiliate his king, be cruel to animals, and somehow makes a lot of money in the process.

The character of the week is a bear-king who claims he could have easily leapt across an ocean, only if he wasnt injured. And he also happens to be my brother….. sort of.

Some context on Tenali Raman

There are many stories of Tenali Raman, there are attempts to tie them in a more-or-less chronological order.

Tenali Raman is a court jester in the Kingdom of Vijayanagaram which is ruled by Krishnadevarayar whom I’m just going to call the King now so you wont have to hear listen to me muck up the pronunciation everytime. The story is set in the 1500s.

Most of the stories are about how Tenali Raman outwits the king, his fellow courtiers, or the priesthood or all of them at the same time, all the while making lots of gold in the process. So much so that you’d wonder if the King wouldnt just go bankrupt if he paid someone everytime they humiliated him.

For this episode and the next I’ve picked stories involving animals. So let’s begin.

The carnivorous horse

Tenali Raman, was out riding his horse.

In true folk tale tale style, he was very far from home when it started pouring. That’s what happens when you go out without checking the weather forecast.

Anyway it was starting to get dark and there was no way Raman could reach home.

Luckily he saw a light on the horizon and headed there. He was in luck! It was an inn, and they had a warm toasty fire going, and food on the grill.

Raman tied his horse outside and walked in, and then he saw the problem:

there were already too many people around the fire already and there was no space for Raman, and Raman was drenched! He tried to squeeze closer to the fire, but it was cold and everyone else wanted to be closer to the fire themselves!

Tenali walked over to the innkeeper said loud enough for every one to hear – I’d like something hot to eat and drink….. Oh and I almost forget, I want an order of chicken wings for my horse. The innkeeper and everyone else was surprised – does your horse eat chicken?

Of course said Tenali, why are you staring at me as if that’s abnormal? You’ll be telling me next you havent heard of Stone Soup either.

It is abnormal, dont you know horses are supposed to be herbivores? And no, of course we havent heard of Stone Soup – that wont happen for another 400 years.

But the talk had the effect Raman wanted – almost everyone who was hogging the fire now walked out the amazing meat-eating horse.

No one had ever imagined such a thing.

Conveniently, this left Raman all alone to enjoy the warm fire. Which he did. When he was warm enough he walked out to see the crowd that was trying to gently urge the horse to eat its order of chicken wings. The horse paid them no attention of course.

By then the rain had stopped. Tenali Raman calmly left the wings for some nearby dogs and rode off towards home.

Now Horses definitely do NOT eat meat. They cant handle it. Oats is what they prefer. I got that one straight from the horse’s mouth. Unlimited knowledge, remember?

admittedly that isnt cruel unless you think it was wrong to leave the horse out in the open in the rain, and there seems to be some debate on that subject.

The next story takes it up several notches though.

Cat on a hot-milk diet

In this one, the kingdown of Vijayanagaram is overrun with rats. They’re everywhere, in people’s pantries, and barns and grain silos.

So much so that the analysts were predicting a famine.

King Krishnadevaraya(whom I’m just going to call K now because that’s a lot of syllables) decides to do something about it.

What he could really use in this situation is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but the piper has disappeared almost 200 years before.

He manages to procure a thousand cats via express delivery. The cats are distributed – one per household.

The King also gives every household a small amount of money to help feed their cat.

Now Tenali Raman in addition to being a total jerk to all animals was also incredibly selfish. He said to his wife – why should I buy milk for the cat? I’ll instead buy milk for my son.

His wife agreed, “but ” she said, ” how will you keep the cat from helping himself to the milk we buy for our son?”

We live in the 1500s, we dont have any cat-proof containers in our house.

Tenali Raman had an idea. He brought his cat home, and he bought some milk as well. 

Dont try this at home, but Tenali Raman boiled the milk so it was incredibly hot and then offered it to the cat.

The cat, thinking that all that steam looked suspicious didnt want to try the milk, even though it was very hungry.

This is where it gets bad. Tenali Raman then forced the hot milk on the cat, which obviously burnt its lips and left much deeper psychological scars.

From that day on, the sight of milk(hot or cold) would send the cat scampering in the other direction.

A few days later, the king called on all his courtiers to present their cats for inspection. I dont know what prompted him to do so, but seeing as it was his idea to get the cats in the first place, and seeing how he was paying for their care, he was perfectly entitled to do so.

Obviously Tenali Raman’s cat was the only one that looked sickly. On being questioned Raman said his cat was just scared of milk.

the King refused to believe him. Raman insisted that was true, and that he’d only given the milk to his own son because the cat hadnt consumed any of it.

They King and Tenali Raman made a bet a 1000 lashes with a whip or a 100 gold coins for Raman. Raman obviously won that bet when a servant walked in with a saucer of milk. So now he had a 100 gold coins, just for being incredibly cruel to a cat.

But it gets worse. Tenali Raman did explain the whole story of how he traumatised the cat with hot milk, and instead of punishing him or at least reporting him to the SPCA, the King laughed out loud and praised Raman for his wisdom.

Notes

That’s it for now, but we’ll continue next week with a couple more Tenali Raman stories on this theme. Some notes on the stories.

The meat-loving horse story is very similar to the Stone Soup story from Aesop’s fables, but predates it by about 400 years.

while Tenali Raman is remembered for his wit and his stories, he was also a great poet and a polyglot. Its a shame that he had to be such a jerk to animals, but then he does get his comeuppance in the end. More on that next week.

Jambavan

Jambavan is the king of bears and the king of the himalayas, who had the strength of 10 million lions. He plays a pivotal role in the Ramayana by reminding Hanuman the monkey god of his superpowers.

He’s one of the few characters to appear in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharat(which is the other great epic). He has personally witnessed at least 5 of Vishnu’s 9 avatars. Amongst other things that does make him incredibly long lived.

He mentions that Vamana, one of Vishnu’s avatars brushed his shoulder against Jambavan and left him injured. This is what prevents him from leaping over the ocean from India to Sri Lanka, a mere distance of about 21 miles.

Jambavan was born when Brahma the creator yawned, and since Brahma is my dad, that makes Jambavan sort of my brother. Yup, he gives me a bear hug everytime I meet him. Sorry, I just had to sneak that one in there.

Next week we’ll continue with more of Tenali Raman. And the character will be someone you won’t want to invite to a bottomless buffet, since they’ll probably finish all the food, and probably eat your ride home as well.

References

Vijayanagaram pictures: http://www.ghatroads.in/south-india-travel/historical-tourism-info/Hampi-Vijayanagaram
Stone chariot: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stone_Chariot_at_Hampi_1.jpg

Feedback?

Since I am several thousands of years, naturally my memory may be imperfect at times. So if you see any errors in my podcast, please point them out to me!

Bonus episode

I’m incredibly grateful for all the support from all you listeners! As a way of showing my appreciation I’m working on a bonus episode that I’ll release on Halloween!

Thank you!

From all of my family to yours(yes, Brahma included) we wish you a very Happy Diwali!
As it happens, this episode coincides with Diwali, but given we will only be starting on the Ramayana shortly, it would have been premature to do a Diwali special.
But we’ll be on the lookout for other opportunities where I can present relevant stories. One thing that can be said about the Indian culture is that there’s always a festival around the corner!