The Farmer and the Money-lender

There was once a farmer who was always being squeezed by a money-lender. Whether the harvest was good or bad, the farmer stayed poor and the money-lender grew rich. At last, when the farmer had not a penny left, he went to the money-lender’s house.

“You can’t squeeze water out of a stone,” he said, “and since you can’t get anything more out of me, you might as well tell me the secret of becoming rich.”

“My friend,” said the money-lender, putting on a holy face, “riches come from the god Ram. Ask him.”

“Thank you, I will!” said the simple farmer. So he baked three flat cakes to eat on the way and set off to find Ram.

First he met a Brahmin priest. He gave him a cake and asked him the way to Ram, but the Brahmin just took the cake and walked on without a word. Next he met a jogi, a wandering holy man. He gave him a cake too, and got no help in return. At last he came across a poor man sitting under a tree. When the kind farmer found out that the man was hungry, he gave him his last cake, and he sat down beside him to rest and chat.

“And where are you going?” the poor man asked after a while.

“Oh, I have a long way to go, for I am looking for Ram,” said the farmer. “I don’t suppose you could tell me which way to go?”

“Perhaps I can,” said the poor man with a smile, “for I am Ram! What do you want from me?”

So the farmer told him the whole story, and Ram felt sorry for him. He gave him a conch shell and showed him a special way to blow it. “Remember,” he said, “whatever you want, you only have to blow the conch this way, and your wish will come true. But watch out for that money-lender, for even magic is no match for his tricks!”

The farmer went home to his village full of joy. The money-lender noticed his good mood straight away. “Something lucky must have happened to that silly fellow, to make him hold his head up so proudly,” he said to himself. So he went over to the farmer’s house and congratulated him on his good luck. He talked so cleverly, pretending that he knew all about it, that before long the farmer had told him everything, except the secret of how to blow the conch. Simple as he was, the farmer was not foolish enough to tell him that.

But the money-lender made up his mind to get the conch one way or another. He was wicked enough not to let anything stop him, so he waited for his chance and stole it.

He blew it every way he could think of, until he nearly burst, but he could not find the secret, and in the end he had to give up. Still, he was determined to win, so he went to the farmer.

“Now, my friend,” he said, “I have your conch, but I can’t use it. You don’t have it, so you can’t use it either. We are stuck, unless we make a deal. I promise to give you back your conch and never to stop you using it, on one condition: whatever you get from it, I get twice as much.”

“Never!” cried the farmer. “That would be the same old story all over!”

“Not at all!” said the sly money-lender. “You will still get your share. Don’t be a dog in the manger. If you have everything you want, what does it matter to you whether I am rich or poor?”

The farmer hated the thought of doing a money-lender any good, but at last he had no choice and agreed. From then on, whatever the farmer got by the power of the conch, the money-lender got twice as much. The thought of it worried the farmer day and night, until he could not enjoy anything he got.

Then there came a very dry season, so dry that the farmer’s crops began to shrivel for lack of rain. He blew his conch and wished for a well to water them, and there was the well. But the money-lender had two, two beautiful new wells!

The farmer could not bear seeing the unfair bargain repeated. The farmer brooded and brooded over it, until at last he thought of a terrible way to reverse the bargain. He seized the conch, blew it hard and cried, “O Ram, I wish to be blind in one eye!”

In the blink of an eye, it was so. But the money-lender, of course, went blind in both eyes, and as he tried to find his way between his two new wells, he fell into one of them and drowned.

So the tale ends with the money-lender dead and the farmer permanently injured: a victory with a terrible cost.

About this telling

This comic tale comes from Tales of the Punjab, Told by the People, by Flora Annie Steel, with notes by R. C. Temple. Joseph Jacobs also included it in his Indian Fairy Tales (1892), taking it from Steel and Temple’s earlier book, Wide-Awake Stories.

In his notes, Jacobs compares the tale with the Latin fable of ‘the Avaricious and Envious’ and proposes an Indian origin. That is his historical hypothesis, not a demonstrated route of transmission. Ram is the Hindu god Rama.

Read the original: Flora Annie Steel, Tales of the Punjab (Project Gutenberg #6145, The Farmer and the Money-lender)

Reading guidance: Older teen and adult readers; includes exploitation, theft, deliberate self-inflicted loss of sight, another person’s blindness and drowning.

A closer reading

The money-lender first attributes wealth to divine favour while concealing how he profits from the farmer. Later he steals the conch and calls its return a fair deal. The farmer’s agreement is constrained by that theft: receiving half the other’s benefit is not the same as freely agreeing to share his own property.

The final wish exploits the wording of the bargain. Doubling seems advantageous only while the wished-for thing is a benefit; when it becomes harm, the same rule destroys the money-lender. This is the tale’s logical reversal, but the farmer must injure himself to use it.

The ending therefore complicates both triumph and blame. The farmer has endured exploitation, so calling him merely envious misses its cause. Yet the revenge leaves him with an irreversible loss and kills the other man. Readers can recognize the injustice of the bargain without admiring self-harm as its solution.

Try this with the story

Make a two-column chart of the farmer’s and money-lender’s outcomes for a beneficial wish and the final harmful wish. Explain why the same doubling rule changes meaning. Then propose a way the stolen conch could be returned fairly, clearly as an alternative to the source’s revenge ending.

Questions to ask

• Why is the farmer’s agreement not freely negotiated?
• How does the final wish reverse the doubling rule?
• What does calling the farmer simply envious leave out?
• Why is the ending a costly victory rather than an uncomplicated happy one?

Related stories

• The Son of Seven Mothers — another tale that Joseph Jacobs took from Steel and Temple
• Harisarman — another Indian story full of tricks and cunning
• Princess Pepperina — another Punjabi tale from Flora Annie Steel’s collection