28 MORAL FABLES FROM SANSKRIT LITERATURE-TALE 21

                                        

The Story of the Loyal Mongoose

There lived a man by name DevaSarmaa in a certain town. Being issueless for a long time she has brought up a female mongoose as her child.  After some time she gave the birth to a boy child. Meanwhile her mongoose also begot its kitten. The wife of DevaSarmaa loved and cared for her own boy and the little mongoose, by breast-feeding, making bath and so on. But she didn’t trust the mongoose and thought thus: the mongoose is naturally nasty kind of creature. It may hurt my child.

One day she kept her son on the bed, said her husband thus: Oh! My dear husband!  I am going to bring water.  Please take care of our child from the mongoose.  But DevaSarmaa forgot the words of his wife and went out from his house.

When he moved away from the house, as a fate, a black cobra came out from the ant-hill and crawled towards the bed in which their baby was kept.  But the little mongoose on seeing it, felt the cobra to be a natural enemy, and feared for the life of their boy child who was treated as its brother.  Immediately the little mongoose fell on the poisonous cobra fought with it. After some time the little mongoose tore the cobra into pieces.  Then it pleased with its heroism, it came out from the house to convey the incident to brought up mother none other than the wife of DevaSarmaa.

But when the wife of DevaSarma came and saw the face of mongoose besmeared with blood and its excitement, she out of fear she thought this little mongoose might have eaten my child and without thinking twice, with anger, she dropped the water-jar on the head of the little mongoose.  Being struck by the water-jar, the little mongoose being killed, dead. There the lady left the little mongoose without a second thought, she hurried in to her house, where she found her baby was   safe.  And also she watched near the bed, the black cobra was found into bits.  Then she thought about her action against the little mongoose and started beat herself on her head and chest with grief-stricken. 

At this moment DevaSarmaa came home with edible things and saw his wife was bitterly lamenting her son, none other than the little mongoose.  On seeing her husband, the lady shouted and sweared thus: Oh! The careless one! Because you didn’t do as I told you, you must now taste the bitterness of a son’s death.  Yes, this is what happened to me who acted without thinking and your carelessness.

Moral of the story:

“Apareekshya na karthavyam Karthavyam supareekshitham l

  Paschaath bhavathi santhaapo Ambaayaam nakulaarthathahll”  

A wise man should not do any activities without indiscrimination rather he should do only after examine it. Otherwise he has to repent for that action a mother who suffered for the loss of mongoose which was brought up by her own as her own child.

(This story is taken from the titled ApareekshitaKaarakam-the 5th volume of the book PanchaThanthram which has five volumes viz., MitraBedhah, MitraLaabhah, Kaakolookeeyam, Labdhapranaasam and AparikshitaKaarakam written by Vishnu Sarma was an Indian scholar.  The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE.

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