The Brahmin’s Dream

In a certain place there lived a Brahmin whose name was Svabhavakripana. That name means “a born miser,” and it suited him very well.

He had begged for some rice. After he had eaten all he wanted, he put the rest into a pot. He hung the pot on a peg on the wall and set his bed right underneath it. Then he lay there all night long, staring up at it.

“Ah,” he thought, “that pot is full to the top with rice. If a famine comes, I could sell it for a hundred rupees! With that money I will buy two goats. Every six months they will have babies, and soon I will have a whole herd of goats.

“Then I will trade the goats for cows. When the cows have calves, I will sell the calves. With that money I will buy buffaloes, and with the buffaloes I will buy horses. When the horses have foals, I will have lots and lots of horses. I will sell them, and then I will have plenty of gold!

“With my gold I will buy a big house with four wings. Then another Brahmin will come and offer me his beautiful daughter as my wife, with a fine wedding gift. We will have a son, and I will call him Somasarman.

“When he is big enough to bounce on my knee, I will sit at the back of the stable reading a book. The little boy will see me. He will jump off his mother’s lap and run towards me, and he will run too close to the horses’ hooves! I will be so cross. ‘Take the baby! Take him!’ I will shout to my wife. But she will be busy with her work and won’t hear me. So I will jump up and kick out, like this!”

And as he thought it, he really did kick out with his foot. His foot hit the pot. Down it came with a crash, and all the rice poured out over him until he was white from head to toe.

His imagined fortune vanished, and the rice he really possessed was scattered around him.

Where this tale comes from

Joseph Jacobs took “The Broken Pot” for his Indian Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7128) from Benfey’s German translation of the Panchatantra, where it is a story in the fifth book. Jacobs’s notes discuss related versions of the broken-pot plot; these comparisons should not be mistaken for proof of the origin of every similar proverb.

Related literary versions include the milkmaid Perrette of La Fontaine’s fables and the barber’s fifth brother in the Arabian Nights. Each changes the dreamer’s possessions and circumstances.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, ‘The Broken Pot’, in Indian Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7128)

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12; includes imagined anger and a threatening kick in a family scene. Discuss the humor without excusing aggression.

A closer reading

The dream advances by treating each hoped-for sale as already successful: rice becomes goats, goats become cattle, and animals become gold. Yet the real pot has never moved from its peg. The comic reversal happens when the imaginary world produces a real movement of his foot.

Planning is not itself the mistake. He never tests the price, the costs of keeping animals, or the work his scheme would require. His imagined anger toward his wife also deserves attention: growing wealth does not make him a considerate person. Readers can question that behavior while recognizing the joke about expectations outrunning evidence.

Try this with the story

Draw the chain from rice to gold, then put an ‘if’ between every pair of steps. Choose one link and list two things that would have to happen for it to succeed. Finish with one practical action that protects the rice he already has.

Talk about it

• Which possession is real, and which possessions exist only in the dream?
• When does an imagined event cause a real loss?
• How could he turn one part of his dream into a careful plan?

More stories like this

• The Measure of Rice — another story about rice and a foolish plan