The Orient Pearls/A Feast of Fists
THE ORIENT PEARLS.
A FEAST OF FISTS.
Once upon a time there lived a young Brahmin and his wife in what would, judged even by the standard of asceticism of their class, be deemed extreme poverty. Dragging along a sort of dead-and-alive existence upon scanty and miserable fare, they were too proud to beg or borrow, and too honest to steal.
Yet, for all this, their faith in Providence never wavered, but, on tho other hand, they discerned in their present distress its iron hand forging for them a closely veiled destiny through its ever mysterious ways.
Fortified in this belief, they bore with philosophy their adversity until the gloom thickened around them, unrelieved, as it seemed to them, by a single redeeming gleam of hope.
One day, maddened by the sight of his starving wife (for to such straits had they been reduced) the young Brahmin set out towards the forest in search of wild roots and fruits for her, but alas! no sooner had he got there than he found the forest on fire and its denizens, terror-stricken, fleeing away in all directions.
Thus disappointed, he sat down at the foot of an ancient banyan-tree, under which a whole army might well have bivouacked, and began to pour forth his woes to the four winds of heaven in loud cries and lamentations after the fashion of all Orientals.
As the shades of evening fell, Haro and Gouri, guardian deities and succourers of humanity in distress, happened to be walking the earth, and his cries and lamentations reached their ears. "Hark, lord!" said Gouri, addressing her spouse, "Is not that the cry of some mortal lamenting his lot? He must be in sore distress. Let us go and relieve him."
Haro, annoyed at the idea of his walk being cut short, tried to dissuade her, saying: "Fair goddess! suffering is the badge of mankind. Indeed, these mortals bring down suffering upon their own heads by sheer demerit, and suffer they must, do all you can, until they have passed through the usual cycles of birth, death, and rebirth, again and again, working out demerit by merit in the process, and thus paving the way for final absorption into the Deity, the source of their being. So why trouble about these wretches?"
The goddess, whose feminine heart refused to be convinced by his male logic, insisted upon Haro accompanying her to the spot whence the cry arose, and Haro was obliged to give in to his headstrong spouse.
As soon as the Brahmin saw Haro and Gouri, whom he recognized by the halo around their heads, coming towards him, he set up a still louder wailing as if to move them, specially the goddess, to pity.
They asked him what his mind oppressed,
What woe lodged in his priestly breast.
The youth then told Haro and Gouri, between sobs and tears, of the domestic tragedy enacted from day to day—of the starving of his young wife and himself—and pointed, in corroboration, to his ribs, which were almost visible in his emaciated frame—a sight and a tale which could not but tell even upon the most callous of gods.
The tale their hearts to pity moved—
A magic cup the gods approved,
A cup so bounteous, so designed,
As could, at once, feed all mankind.
Haro then presented the Brahmin with the magic cup which, he took pains to assure him, had the miraculous power of producing toothsome dainties of any kind and in any quantity whatsoever for the mere asking.
Overjoyed with his present, the Brahmin thanked his divine benefactors in Oriental hyperbole, and no sooner were their backs turned upon him than he put the cup at once to the test—and lo and behold! true to the word of the gods, there began to flow, in a continuous stream, delicacy after delicacy, such as had never been tasted by mortal lips before, and the Brahmin ate and ate until he could eat no more. Then, taking the cup up in his hand, and carefully wrapping the remainder of the food in the folds of his turban, he turned his steps homeward.
On the way, however, while passing by a cottage, he heard some little children crying for more bread and milk than their poor parents could give them. He walked in, and generously offered the children as much bread and milk as they desired out of the magic cup, and while he was watching them eat and drink, and talking with their parents, the cup was secretly removed, and another substituted in its place, which was in no way distinguishable from it except by the eyes of gods.
After the children had made a good meal and quieted down, the Brahmin got up and, amidst the vociferous thanks of their parents, took his leave.
He now hurried home, and, arriving late at night, as he had to walk a long distance across the fields, found his wife sitting up anxiously waiting for him. As soon as she caught sight of her husband, she rushed forward to receive what he had brought, and, seeing a cup in his hand, fancied it contained something for her to eat. She seized the cup with eagerness, for she had not broken her fast that day, but, finding it empty, threw it straight away. The Brahmin, however, immediately rushed up and caught it before it could touch the ground.
"What a silly thing you have done!” said the Brahmin to his wife in a tone of rebuke. "You have desecrated the gift of the gods." Having told her all about the cup, and how and where and from whom he had received it, he said, "Do not fancy the cup is empty! Ask of it whatever you wish to eat, and that you will have at once, and in any quantity."
"I am dying of hunger," replied the wife in a tone of penitence. "I do not hanker after delicacies, but a little of the coarse fare I am used to will quite content me."
As she said this, she wept and repented of her sacrilege in contemptuously throwing away a sacred gift—of her folly in attempting to kill, as it were, the goose that was to lay golden eggs for the rest of their mortal lives.
However, being extremely hungry, she was going to ask the cup for her usual fare, when her husband interposed and pressed her to ask of it some tempting morsel; so she asked for this, that, and a dozen other delicacies all at once, but alas! nothing, absolutely nothing, came out of the cup. They quite thought that her desecration of the cup had caused its magic to vanish, and, at a loss what to do, they looked into it carefully, and turned it up and down several times; but not a morsel of food such as would satisfy the smallest of small microbes could they find in it. So the woman, handing it back to her husband, instead of dashing it to the ground as she had half a mind to do, sat down and began to weep, for she felt keenly her husband's cruelty in playing what she fancied was a practical joke while she was almost dying of starvation.
The Brahmin, amazed beyond measure at the failure of the divine cup to produce food, began to examine it carefully, as if there were some flaw which prevented the magic working; but he failed to discover any, and then put all the blame upon his wife, for had she not desecrated the cup? However, "It's no use crying over spilt milk," he thought, and, seeing his wife actually starving, and suddenly remembering the remains of his recent meal in the folds of his turban, he gave them to her to eat.
"Have you broken your fast, dear?" she asked him, ashamed of her conduct in desiring to satisfy her hunger before her lord had eaten. "How selfish I am!" said she. "I will not eat a morsel of this food unless you share it with me." And it was only when he had sworn to her a hundred times that he had already attended to his own wants that she could be persuaded to partake of some.
The next day the Brahmin youth again repaired to the foot of the same banyan-tree, and began to rend the air with still louder cries and lamentations than he had raised the evening before.
At night-fall Haro and Gouri were again taking their evening walk on earth, and his cries and lamentations, loud enough to rend the heavens in twain, reached their ears. "Hark, lord! hark!" said Gouri to her spouse, "another mortal seems to be in distress. Can you not do something for him too?"
Haro saw the prospect of another evening being spoilt, but, finding it impossible to dissuade his headstrong consort, he accompanied her to the foot of the banyan-tree, where the Brahmin had stationed himself. As the latter saw them approaching, he set up a still louder wailing, as if desirous of enlisting their sympathy by the strength of his cries rather than by the actual measure of his distress; for, Brahmin as he was, he had a shrewd insight into the mind of the gods.
Gouri, moved to pity by his cries, and failing to recognize him in the twilight, enquired the reason of his tears, and the Brahmin repeated, between his sobs (the characteristics of all beggars) the same story as on the previous evening.
Haro walked up close to the man, and, after rubbing his eyes and scanning the man's features well, said: "You silly man! what have you done with the magic cup we gave you only last evening? You have sold it, have you not, and come again for another? You are a dishonest rogue."
The Brahmin, taking the dust off the toes of the god, powdered his hair, or rather the top-knot of his order, and, with folded arms, protested his innocence. "I do not know, my lord," said he, "what thou art pleased to call a magic cup; both my wife and I tried it, but it conceived nothing and brought forth nothing, and my wife had to go to bed hungry. I did, indeed, find something in it at the time you presented it to me, but perhaps that was previously put there, and not produced by magic."
Now it was Haro's turn to protest that he had practised no fraud upon him, and that his cup still possessed the same miraculously productive power as before. Nevertheless, determined to prove their good faith to the Brahmin, Haro and Gouri requested to take them to his hut and show them the cup.
The Brahmin, feeling sure his divine guests would be able to produce enough food for him and his wife as well as for themselves out of the cup, readily took them to his humble cottage; but the way was long, and Haro and Gouri soon began to feel tired and hungry, for it was close upon dinner-time for the gods, and conches and bells were sounding in the temples round.
As soon as they arrived with the Brahmin at his hut, the Brahmini knew at once by the halo round their heads who her guests were, and was at a loss how to entertain them. However, shrewd, practical woman as she was, she had bartered away the useless cup for a little useful rice, and had cooked some nice curry to eat with it, and was expecting her husband to bring her another, which she intended to deal with in the same way next day.
The Brahmini washed the feet of her divine guests, and then, placing the savoury rice and curry on two broad leaves in front of them, begged them to partake of the meal; but Haro and Gouri, although their mouths were watering, refused to eat the food, owing, as they put it, to caste scruples. The gods, they said, were of superior caste to mortals; but the Brahmini easily rose to the occasion, and her feminine wit supplied her with a crushing answer to them. She coolly assured her guests that the origin of herself and her husband was as divine as they themselves claimed, for all Brahmins, she reminded them with a smile of superior wisdom, were the offspring of Brahma, the Sirdar of the gods. Putting into the hands of Haro a copy of the sacred writings, she asked him to refresh his memory.
Haro and Gouri felt quite abashed, and, without another word, fell to, and between them did full justice to the curry and rice, for with the long tramp across the country their appetites had grown keen. Nothing was left, as you may well imagine, for their host and hostess, save the usual "prasad," or sacred leavings.
After the entertainment, Haro asked the Brahmin to produce his cup, and the latter in his turn asked his wife to fetch it. With consternation she confessed that she had bartered it for a little rice with a neighbour, but offered to produce it presently. So saying, she went out and brought it back in a few minutes.
"You said you never sold the cup," said Haro, turning to the Brahmin. "What does your wife say then?"
"She must have done that after I had left home," replied the Brahmin, apologetically, "and because she had found the cup quite useless as a food-producer." Needless to say, Haro was not satisfied with this explanation; nevertheless, he took the cup in his hand to see what was wrong with it. He saw at once that it was not the cup that he had given to the Brahmin, but quite a different one; the difference, however, was indistinguishable to any eye but that of the god.
He cross-examined the Brahmin as cleverly as a lawyer, as to his previous day's movements, and had little difficulty in the end in discovering the reason why the cup had apparently lost its virtue, for the one before him was a counterfeit.
Haro gave the Brahmin another cup, saying, "You are a silly man! You did not take good care of your cup, which must have been secretly exchanged for the one you showed me. Take this to the house of your friends, for whose children you so generously produced bread and milk yesterday, and see what follows." Thereupon Haro and Gouri took leave of their host and hostess.
The Brahmin, obeying the orders of the god, went to the house of these people just at the time when they were invoking the stolen cup for their dinner; as they saw him coming, they hid the cup, and, welcoming him with outward courtesy, asked him to be seated. Seeing another cup in his hand, they now thought of robbing him of this too.
The Brahmin, guessing their thoughts, said, "Is there any nice thing you would like to eat? Just open the lid of this cup, and out it will come."
Then these wicked people, taking the Brahmin at his word, opened the lid, when, horror of horrors! out flew from within it fists innumerable, which dealt them blows on their necks, noses, and ears, and beat them black and blue.
They cried out to the Brahmin to call back his fists into the cup, and, fetching the one they had stolen out of its hiding-place, and handing it over to him, prayed him to be gone with all his devils.
Having thus recovered his cup, the Brahmin ran home merrily, and he and his wife made a sumptuous feast, such as they had never had before in their lives.
The couple now rejoiced at their good luck, but they wanted many other things besides food. So the wit of the Brahmini suggested to her husband the opening of a confectioner's shop; for, said she, with the money he would get by the sale of his sweets, they could easily supply all their earthly wants.
The Brahmin, who fell in with the suggestion, at once opened a sweetmeat stall, and his sweets, so unlike the ordinary bazaar goods, were very popular, and his fame as a confectioner came to be noised about all over the country.
Now it happened that the King of the country had a beautiful daughter, who was to be wedded to a greater Prince than himself, and he did not know how to entertain the huge party which was sure to accompany the bridegroom to the wedding.
So it befell that the King called a council and placed the matter before his councillors. The Prime Minister, who had heard of the fame of the Brahmin, summoned the latter and ordered him to take charge of the catering for the wedding party. The Brahmin jumped at the offer, seeing visions of gold floating before his eyes.
The wedding day came at last, and the whole party was entertained without difficulty. The Brahmin had produced a variety of viands, which were distributed among the guests, who were seated in separate rows, in order of rank or caste, upon cushions spread upon the ground within a temporary pavilion. They enjoyed the feast thoroughly and soon began to yawn audibly as a sign of satisfaction, or rather of Oriental politeness for it is thought that, unless one yawns, one's host cannot know whether one has really done full justice to the feast or not.
After the whole party had retired for the night, the Prime Minister said to the King before parting, "May I have, O King! thy word of honour, not to be angry with me?" These words were a sure sign that the Prime Minister was about to advise his sovereign to do something disagreeable:—
"First give thy faith, and plight a prince's word
Of sure protection by thy power and sword,
For I must speak what wisdom would conceal."
The King gave his word of honour, and the Prime Minister urged him to possess himself of the Brahmin's magic cup by force or fraud. "The King," said he, "is the foremost man in his kingdom, and whatever is excellent and best therein belongs by right to him, and the proper place for the Brahmin's food-cup is the royal kitchen."
After that the Brahmin was sent away with a large reward for his excellent catering, but his cup did not go with him.
The Brahmin departed in silence, but none the less determined to teach the King the difference between "mine" and "thine."
The following day the King held a grand durbar, and afterwards gave a farewell entertainment to his guests. Just as he was going round personally with the magic cup in his hand, distributing refreshments to each of them, the Brahmin suddenly arrived with the other cup and handed it to him.
The King, thinking his guests might like a variety in the way of sweets, asked them to try some from the new cup. He at once opened the lid, when lo! instead of sweets, out flew fists, like a swarm of hornets, dealing out hard knocks to everyone present, and there was a general stampede among the guests.
The King, thus humiliated before them, prostrated himself at the feet of the Brahmin, and begged of him to call the fists back into his cup. He did so, and the whole assembly, infuriated at the insult offered them by the King, their host, would have killed him, then and there, but for his profuse apologies for the unfortunate mistake, as he put it, which to some extent pacified them.
For once in a way "virtue" proved something more than "its own reward." The Brahmin was appointed royal chaplain or guru, and lived happily ever after.