Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 494

FOUR FOOLISH BRAHMINS
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mins on divers occasions. Four individuals of this caste,
having each set out from a different village to attend the
feast, happened to meet each other on the road, and having
discovered that they were all proceeding to the same place,
agreed to travel together during the remainder of their
journey.
While thus walking along in company, they
were met by a soldier going in the opposite direction,
who, on passing them, greeted them with the salutation
generally made to Brahmins
that is, he joined his hands
together, put them to his forehead, and said
Saranam
(' Respectful greeting to you, my lord
') to which
ayya
the four Brahmins replied at one and the same time
;
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Asirvadam
'
!
('
Our
blessing
!
').
Subsequently they reached a well by the roadside, and
there they sat down to quench their thirst and to rest for
a while under the shade of a neighbouring tree. While
thus occupied, and rinding no better subject of conversa-
tion, one of them took it into his head to break the silence
You will admit that the soldier
by saying to the others
whom we have just met was a man of exceptional polite-
Did you not remark how he singled
ness and discernment.
me out, and how carefully he saluted me ?
It was not you whom he saluted,' replied the Brahmin
seated next to him,
it was to me particularly that he
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addressed his greeting.'
I can
You are both mistaken,' exclaimed the third.
assure you that the greeting was addressed to me alone
and the proof is that when the soldier said his " Saranam
ayya" he cast his eyes upon me
Not at all,' replied the fourth.
It was I only he
saluted
otherwise, should I have answered him as I did,
by saying " Asirvadam " ?
The altercation grew so warm that the four travellers
were at last on the point of coming to blows, when one of
them, the least stupid of the four, wishing to prevent so
silly a quarrel proceeding to extremes, cried as follows
What fools we are to be thus quarrelling for no purpose
After heaping on each other all the insults we are capable
of, and after fighting with each other like the Sudra rabble,
shall we be any nearer to the solution of our differences ?
The fittest person to settle the controversy, I think, is he
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