Wedding of the Mouse
There was a hermitage belonging to the
sage Salankayana. He went one morning to river Ganga to bathe. As he was
reciting stanzas in praise of the Sun, he saw a kite carrying a mouse in its
claws. At once, the sage aimed a stone at the kite. Hit by the stone, the
kite released its prey and the mouse at once ran to the sage asking him for
protection.
The kite addressed Salankayana and said,
“O sage, you have hit me with a stone, which is not proper. Are you not
afraid of God? Surrender that mouse to me or you will go to hell.”
The sage said, “You wretched bird, my
duty is to save God’s creations, to punish the wicked, to respect the good,
to honour the teacher and worship the Gods. Why do you preach all those
irrelevant rules of conduct to me?”
The kite delivered a big lecture to the
sage on the right path. “You have no idea of what is good and what is bad.
God created all of us and at the time of creation also prescribed what
should be our food. God has marked mice, other rodents and insects to be
food for us. Why do you blame me for seeking what God has meant for me?
There is nothing wrong for anyone to eat the food marked for him. The danger
comes when one eats what is not food for him. What is meat for someone is
poison for someone else.”
“It is not proper for sages to be
violent. They are not presumed to notice what is happening around them. They
are detached from this world. Nothing that happens in the material world
should interest them. They should not discriminate between vice and virtue.
They are above everything. But by your deed today you have lost all the
gains of your penance.
The kite flew away disappointed.
The female mouse then prayed Salankayana,
“O sage, please give me shelter in your hermitage. Otherwise, some wicked
bird will kill me. I will spend the rest of my life with whatever leftovers
you choose to feed me with.”
The female mouse’s prayer moved the sage
but he thought that if he took her home, people would laugh at him. So, he
turned the mouse into a beautiful girl and took her home.
“What is this you have brought,” asked
the sage’s wife. Where did you bring this girl from?”
“She is a female mouse. She needed
protection from wicked birds. That’s why I turned her into a girl and
brought her home. You will need to shower all care on her. I will make her a
mouse again,” said the sage.
“Please don’t do that,” pleaded his wife,
“You have saved her life and therefore you have become her father. I don’t
have a child. Since you are her father, she becomes my daughter.” The sage
accepted her plea.
The girl grew into a beautiful woman and
became an eligible bride. Salankayana told his wife, “The girl has come of
age. It is not proper for her to remain in our house. The learned have said,
He who keeps an eligible bride in his
house
Forfeits a place in heaven. So do his ancestors.
“It’s all right. Look for a boy,” said
his wife.
Salankayana immediately summoned the Sun
and told him, “This is my daughter. If she is willing to marry you, get
ready to marry her.”
He then showed the Sun to his daughter
and asked her if she would marry him. She said that the Sun was very hot and
she would prefer someone else. The sage then summoned the God of Clouds, the
God of Wind and the God of Mountains. The girl rejected every one of them on
one ground or the other.
Then the God of Mountains told the sage,
“The most suitable candidate for your daughter is a mouse. He is more
powerful than I am.”
The sage then turned her into a mouse and
gave her away to a king of mice in marriage.
Moral of
the Story :
You are what you are, never ever try to change yourself in Greed or in
jealousy. |