Brief synopsis of "The Broken Pot":
The fascinating story behind this short Indian Tale, is that according to the translator
Joseph Jacobs, the age old saying
"Don't count your chickens before they are hatched" can be traced back to this tale and the
Indian culture. I don't imagine there are many educated people who've never heard that saying, so it's quite interesting that it derived in India.
I'd also suggest that this tale would also teach the lesson:
"Don't put all of your eggs in one basket" - since this
miser had put all the rice he'd spent so much time begging for in one pot, and when the broke the pot - his many hopes and dreams were dashed. At any rate, it's an intersting tale and one a young child would probably be able to understand.
This tale also shares a lesson that's near and dear to my heart:
"It takes money to make money" - a saying that is
so true. While he may have been counting chickens, and putting his eggs all in one basket - he was also adept at thinking of ways to parlay a little bit into so much more.
a fairy tale from Indian Fairy Tales
by Joseph Jacobs, 1890
THE BROKEN POT
There lived in a certain place a
Brahman, whose name was Svabhavak
ri pana, which means "a
born miser." He had collected a quantity of rice by begging, and after having dined off it, he filled a pot with what was left over. He hung the pot on a
peg on the wall, placed his couch beneath, and looking intently at it all the night, he thought,
"Ah, that pot is indeed brimful of rice. Now, if there should be a famine, I should certainly make a hundred rupees by it.
With this I shall buy a couple of goats. They will have young ones every six months, and thus I shall have a whole herd of goats. Then, with the goats, I shall buy cows. As soon as they have calved, I shall sell the calves. Then, with the calves, I shall buy buffaloes; with the buffaloes, mares. When the mares have foaled, I shall have plenty of horses; and when I sell them, plenty of gold. With that gold I shall get a house with four wings. And then a Brahman will come to my house, and will give me his beautiful daughter, with a large dowry. She will have a son, and I shall call him Somasarman. When he is old enough to be danced on his father's knee, I shall sit with a book at the back of the stable, and while I am reading, the boy will see me, jump from his mother's lap, and run towards me to be danced on my knee. He will come too near the horse's hoof, and, full of anger, I shall call to my wife, 'Take the baby; take him!' But she, distracted by some domestic work, does not hear me. Then I get up, and give her such a kick with my foot."
While he thought this, he gave a kick with his foot, and broke the pot. All the rice fell over him, and made him quite white. Therefore, I say, "He who makes foolish plans for the future will be white all over, like the father of Somasarman."
NOTES: THE BROKEN POT.
Source.--Pantschatantra, V. ix., tr.
Benfey, ii. 345-6.
Parallels.--Benfey, in S 209 of his
Einleitung, gives bibliographical references to most of those which are given at length in Prof. M. Muller's brilliant essay on "
The Migration of Fables" (
Selected Essays, i. 500-76), which is entirely devoted to the travels of the
fable from
India to La Fontaine. See also
Mr. Clouston,
Pop. Tales, ii. 432
seq. I have translated the
Hebrew version in my essay, "
Jewish Influence on the Diffusion of Folk-Tales," pp. 6-7.
Our
proverb, "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched," is ultimately to be derived from
India.
Remarks--The stories of
Alnaschar, the Barber's fifth brother in the
Arabian Nights_, and of
La Perette, who counted her chickens before they were hatched, in La Fontaine, are demonstrably derived from the same Indian original from which our story was obtained. The travels of the "
Fables of Bidpai" from India to
Europe are well known and distinctly traceable. I have given a rough summary of the chief critical results in the introduction to my edition of the earliest
English version of the
Fables of Bidpai, by
Sir Thomas North, of Plutarch fame (
London, D. Nutt, "
Bibliotheque de Carabas," 1888), where I have given an elaborate genealogical table of the multitudinous versions. La Fontaine's version, which has rendered the fable so familiar to us all, comes from
Bonaventure des Periers,
Contes et Nouvelles, who got it from the
Dialogus Creaturarum of Nicholaus Pergamenus, who derived it from the
Sermones of Jacques de Vitry (see Prof. Crane's edition, No. li.), who probably derived it from the
Directorium Humanae Vitae of
John of Capua, a converted Jew, who translated it from the Hebrew version of the Arabic
Kalilah wa Dimnah, which was itself derived from the old
Syriac version of a
Pehlevi translation of the original Indian work, probably called after Karataka and Damanaka, the names of two jackals who figure in the earlier stories of the book. Prof. Rhys-Davids informs me that these names are more akin to Pali than to Sanskrit, which makes it still more probable that the whole literature is ultimately to be derived from a Buddhist source.
The theme of
La Perette is of interest as showing the
literary transmission of tales from Orient to Occident. It also shows the possibility of an influence of literary on
oral tradition, as is shown by our
proverb, and by the fact, which Benfey mentions, that La Fontaine's story has had influence on two of Grimm's tales, Nos. 164, 168.
from Project Gutenberg (public domain)
Indian Fairy Tales index
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