A Cheap Poem -- KRIYA YOGA DISCUSSION BOARD

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Date Posted: 15:52
Author: ketch - 20 May 2001
Subject: A Cheap Poem

.....Frequently I was saved only just in time by recalling the couplet of Bharavi, the great Sanskrit poet. His ear was so delighted with it that he immediately ran into the market and announced that he had a poem for sale. People asked: "What is your price?" He said "A lakh of rupees" (i.e., seven thousand pounds). "How long is it?" "Two lines." This provoked jeers and laughter. However, one very rch merchant paid the price, for he said: "Bharavi is a very good poet", and later had the precious words copied in letters of gold on the door of his best room. No translation can render their music, barely their sense:

Never act rashly, for rashness lets in a
host of calamities.

Not long after the merchant's business led him to Baghdad and Cairo, and sixteen years were gone before he returned home. He was about to enter his wife's apartment when he heard talking within and, listening, recognised a young man's voice as well as hers. Muttering to hiself: "Was I mistaken in her? Has she deceived me?" he drew his sword, when suddenly his eye caught the words of gold and he let the blade slip back in the scabbard, then entered the room. His wife ran to meet him with exclamation of joy, and when she had kissed his feet, called to her companion: "Come and worship your father whom we have mourned these many years!" "Golden words indeed," the merchant would say, retelling the story. "They were cheap indeed, at a lakh of rupees."

From "The Autobiography of an Indian Monk"
Shri Prohit Swami

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