In this episode, we’re doing a story from the Panchatantra about a bag of gold coins that keeps getting misplaced over and over again. We’ll discuss the moral in the end, but there are a few different interpretations.
The story starts with a farmer – Bhola. Bhola and his wife Bholi had a little farm and a hut right by the farm. It was a little bit of a distance from the rest of the village and also from a river that was the primary source of water for miles.
If there’s one thing that Bhola and Bholi wanted more than anything else, it was money. They had lived a difficult life so far but had not given up hope. Year after year, they had faced disappointment when they had very little yield. One year, they grew broccoli, and that was the year that Khargosh Seth and his 2000 strong rabbit farm passed through the village, buying up every carrot available in the village. The next year when they grew carrots a passing circus wanted to buy bananas instead. The following year, they grew chillies, lots of chillies and there was a major heat wave and no one bought any chillies. You get the gist.
If you’ve watched the Simpsons TV show, you might consider their plight similar to that of Ol Gil the unlucky salesman.
This year was going to be different though, Bhola and Bholi had done a ton of market research, analyzed supply chain bottlenecks and concluded that knew exactly what to grow next. Gold. True Gold to be precise. And if you’re thinking, has Narada lost it? How can anyone grow Gold in their fields? Well I’ll tell you how. True Gold is a variety of corn. Bhola and Bholi had concluded that Corn was going to be in demand the next season. People had just discovered new uses for it. It could be fed to their animals and everyone owned animals, so lots of opportunity there. It could be burnt for fuel, made into alcohol, and made into some type of plastic. Who knew? People might be eating it next!
So Bhola and Bholi grew Corn. And they had a great harvest! Bhola hired a special extra large cart to carry all his corn to the market. And there he sold it all for a hundred gold coins! Before that, he had never even seen more than a few gold coins at a time. He felt elated! Like he was at the peak of his career. Maybe he could build that castle in the air he had always wanted to build.
He returned home whistling a tune and generally very happy. When he got home, he spread the money out on the floor and rolled around in it. It wasn’t enough to swim in as Scrooge McDuck might have done, but it gave Bhola immense pleasure just the same. Ah the sweet smell of success!
But there was an interruption, as there often is when you’re having the best time of your life. Bhola may have been gullible, but he didn’t want his caller to see all the money lying around. He quickly scooped it up and put it back in its bag. Before opening the door, he hid the bag in the first thing he could see – a pot.
When he answered the door, he saw it was his neighbor. The neighbor wanted to know if Bhola would like to go with him to the market for some Shopping. I hear they have a new model out at the cart showroom. It’s supposed to have leather reins, a cup holder and alloy wheels. The neighbor was clearly enamored. And Bhola thought – why not? He could afford to buy a shiny new cart. Maybe he could even buy the whole showroom with his money.
So he went off with his neighbor, and he completely forgot the bag of gold coins in the pot.
Bholi meanwhile returned home from her shift in the fields and got to her home duties. She had to make food. And that meant that she needed to fetch water. If you’re wondering why it was okay for Bholi to do work in the fields, to cook and to fetch water while Bhola was strolling around in the Ancient Indian version of a shopping mall…. Well, that’s patriarchy for you.
Bholi took the first pot that she could find and began the long journey. No prizes for guessing that the pot she chose was the very pot in which Bhola had hidden the bag of gold coins. It’s a surprise she didn’t hear the jingle of the coins and react. Or maybe she was wearing too many bangles and couldn’t really hear the sound of the coins over the sound of her bangles. Either way, she did not detect it.
Bholi had a lucky break. She ran into Kasayee. Kasayee was the local butcher and a generally friendly chap. He did odd favors here and there just to drive more business to his store.
Of course he wouldn’t mind fetching water for Bholi! He took the pot and began walking away and said with a smile. “Just remember, Kasayee is always pleased to meet you, as he serves meat to please you! This slogan is Copyrighted and Trademarked to Kasayee Butchers LLC. I’ll see you later”
It wasn’t long before Kasayee heard the jingle from within the pot. Maybe Bhola and Bholi’s children left their marbles in the pot. He had also sensed that the pot was heavier than usual. But wait a minute the couple didn’t have any children. He quickly checked the pot and found the bag of gold coins in it! This was his lucky day! A hundred gold coins! He could retire. Then he didn’t have to do these odd favors just to drive up his business a little at a time. He dropped the pot, which he completely forgot about now. He needed to have a feast that night! No more eating leftover cuts of meat that his customers had rejected. He would buy a goat! And tonight’s menu was going to surprise his family!
As he was passing by the farm of the wealthiest farmer in town, he saw the pen where the farmer was luckily running a yard sale! On sale were some goats too. Kasayee picked the very best of the goats and bought it for 2 gold coins. An outrageous price but something he could very easily afford.
He began leading the goat home, but then suddenly saw a bunch of thieves. If they found the bag of gold coins on him, he would lose it all. Thinking quickly he took the coins and fed them in the one place that no one would bother to look. Inside the goat. He could get it all back later that evening when cooking dinner.
The goat protested as Kasayee kept forcibly feeding it one coin after another. It said “I know we goats have a reputation of eating anything and everything, but really this is the limit” But because it was a goat, it only came out as a series of bleats which Kasayee didn’t understand.
The thieves stopped Kasayee just as he had expected and examined him and not finding any trace of money, let him go.
Kasayee thought this was an exceedingly lucky day for him! Only his conscience bothered him a bit. And not because he had taken away those gold coins from Bholi, but because he hadn’t delivered her the water. Luckily for him, at this point he saw his son on the road.
This was perfect. The lad could lead the goat back home, and he could go find the pot and give Bholi the water. He instructed the boy very severely to take good care of the goat. He had paid two whole gold coins for it.
Now, what happened next was not the boy’s fault by any means. He was just trying to do a good thing. So as he was passing by the market, he ran into two men, one of whom seemed very interested in buying his goat. That man was Bhola. You see, he had had a look at the Cart showroom and discovered that maybe those carts didn’t look so new after all. They were refurbished and what was worse, they were poorly refurbished.
He still wanted to buy something, the shopaholic within him was itching to spend some of the money to commemorate his grand success. And why not with a goat? Goats give milk, their dung can be really good fertilizer. So he convinced Kasayee’s boy to sell him the goat. The boy was happy when he sold the goat for 4 gold coins. He had made a major profit and Kasayee was going to be extremely proud of him!
Bhola went home with the goat. Bholi was surprised at his extravagance, and she said so. To which, Bhola with all the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat picked up the pot and reached in to find …. Water. And no bag. He searched frantically, but the bag of gold coins wasn’t in any of the pots. When he related the whole story to Bholi, he didn’t have her sympathy. He got an earful instead for leaving the money so carelessly. It’s not like they had a bank or a safe, but at least he could have buried the money instead of putting it in the one pot that was most likely to travel outside the home.
They were so upset, they went to bed without dinner.
The next morning though, Bholi had the duty of tending to the goat. Remember what I said about patriarchy? Anyway, Bholi noticed that the goat’s leavings were shiny. She had never known goats to poop gold before! There was the Cow in the Madhya Pradesh Folk Tale from Episode 23, but that was a different situation altogether. She called Bhola and they cleaned and counted the coins and concluded this must be the very coins he had lost. Given that the bag of coins had gone to Kasayee, and had returned via the Goat they had purchased from his son.
Well, this was a lesson, they both said at the same time. But the lessons they had learned were rather different. Bhola wanted to keep the Gold Coins on his person. And Bholi wanted him to bury it. Well, Patriarchy won over common sense, and Bhola went about everywhere with the bag on him. Bholi rolled her eyes but she saw the futility in arguing with her husband.
Things were fine for a while, until the day he took a bath. A little bit of hygiene shouldn’t hurt anyone, unless during the process you leave your gold unprotected on the river bank. The bag was hidden under Bhola’s clothes, but not so well hidden that a passing Shepherd couldn’t find it.
The Shepherd, whose name was Charvaaha, thanked his lucky stars and made off with the money. As he was walking on the road, he encountered the same bunch of thieves who had inspected Kasayee. Their practice of inspecting people was becoming so regular. They were almost like a customs and border protection checkpoint now, complete with uniforms for the thieves, and metal detectors and X-ray machines.
Charvaaha had a bunch of sheep with him, but he didn’t have the same smarts as Kasayee to think of feeding them the gold coins. So he tossed the bag into a nearby disused well. He thought he would come back for the bag later.
Meanwhile, Bhola had long finished his bath and was mourning the loss of his bag of gold coins yet another time. As he was passing by the disused well on his way home, the wind caught his turban and blew it into the well.
Bhola may have lost his bag of gold coins, and twice, but there was no way he was going to lose something for the third time, even if it was just a piece of cloth. So he climbed down into the well in search of his turban. Naturally he found his bag!
This was fate! It reminded him of those movies where someone keeps traveling in time, trying to change the outcome of some future event only for it to keep repeating. In another aspect, the gold was like Mary’s little lamb from the nursery rhyme. Everywhere that Bhola went, the Gold was sure to go.
He went home and was careful not to mention anything to Bholi. Otherwise her reaction would be an “I told you so” and she would make him bury the coins this time.
The next day, as Bhola was in the market he ran into Charvaaha. Charvaaha was looking distressed. Bhola listened to his story patiently. Charvaaha conveniently left out where he had gotten the gold from.
Bhola considered that he had had exceedingly good fortune and he wanted to do right by his fellow man. And because he was incredibly gullible, he immediately apologized to Charvaaha when he realized that the bag he had retrieved from the well was the Shepherd’s.
The Shepherd for his part was street smart and willingly accepted the bag. He also realized that Bhola hadn’t even bothered to check the “Property of” label on the bag. Charvaaha decided he needed to burn the evidence quickly. So he took out the coins and hid them all in the hollow of his wooden staff. It was a good sturdy staff too.
A few days passed without incident, except for Bholi telling Bhola that she had told him so, and that they should have buried the gold. And then Charvaaha tripped. He tripped right as he was walking his sheep next to the river. As he lost his balance, his staff dropped into the water and sailed downstream. And that staff was found by Bhola, who was taking another bath downstream just then.
Bhola took the staff home. It seemed like a useful thing to make a scarecrow out of. But when he got home he found another use for it. Bholi had run out of firewood, and couldn’t cook dinner unless he chopped some firewood for them. Bhola took the lazy route and decided to use the staff. But when he chopped it, all the gold coins fell out. And so yet again, Bhola and Bholi were reunited with their money. And this time you can be sure that they buried it.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The moral of the story as the original author intended it was that lost objects have a way of returning to their owner. That’s completely untrue as I’m sure many of you have experienced yourselves. And even in Bhola’s case he lost a couple of gold coins. That was the difference in price between what he paid for the goat and what Kasayee had purchased it for. What I believe Vishnu Sharma was alluding to was that usually things have a way of resolving themselves, and life is more or less a zero sum game. Kasayee and Charvaaha were dishonest and lost out in the process. Bhola stayed true to his morals and principles and came out on top.
The Panchatantra is a set of stories written by Vishnu Sharma, in response to a contest. A King in Ancient India was having a hard time managing his sons. The Princes just didn’t want to read textbooks and do homework and sit through long exams. The King was worried that they weren’t qualified to succeed him to the throne. So in an effort to force an education on the boys, he announced a contest.
Vishnu Sharma was a scholar, and he accepted the challenge of teaching the boys some wisdom!
And to do this, he thought of something new and revolutionary. He told them stories instead of boring lectures. Vishnu Sharma took creative writing to the next level.
So the Panchatantra ended up being like The For Dummies or the Idiot’s guide book series – “Wisdom for Princes – and a storybook for the rest of us”
All of these stories in the Panchatantra are actually connected to each other. At the conclusion of each story, one of the characters narrates a new story. This may remind you of the thousand and one tales from the Arabian Nights, but minus all the cliffhangers.
Thanks to Tourism and Trade, the Panchatantra tales are well known in other parts of the world.
There are variations of the story in other parts of Asia. There are some Persian variations in particular that feature a different animal.
Continuing the tradition of this show, I’ve named the characters for the roles they played. The words Bhola and Bholi both are the gendered terms for “Innocent” or “Gullible”. Kasayee means Butcher and Charvaaha means Shepherd.
Previous Panchatantra episodes are here.
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do a Jain folk tale. It’s about a necklace gifted to a King and Queen by a god. The gift turns out to be a white elephant, and causes pain, suffering, and loss. But these problems are eventually solved by a monkey.