The Four Treasure-Seekers

In a certain town lived four Brahmans who were the best of friends. All four were desperately poor, and one day they sat down together to talk about it. Being poor, they agreed, was a curse. Masters scorned a poor man, relatives turned their backs on him, and all his learning and good looks were worth nothing without money in his pocket. “It would be better to be dead,” they said. “Let us find money, whatever it takes.”

They talked over every way a man can earn: begging, serving at court, farming, teaching, lending money and trading. In the end they decided that the best way was to travel to foreign lands and seek their fortune. So they said goodbye to their families and set off together.

In time they reached the Avanti country, bathed in the river Sipra and worshipped at the temple of Shiva. Travelling on, they met a great magician named Terror-Joy. They greeted him respectfully and went with him to his cell. When he asked where they were going and why, they said: “We are looking for magic power. We will go wherever we can find enough money, or else die trying. You have wonderful magic, and we have plenty of daring. Show us a way to get rich, however hard it is.”

The magician saw that they were in earnest. He made four magic quills and gave one to each of them. “Go to the northern slopes of the Himalaya,” he said. “Wherever a quill falls, its owner will find treasure.”

They followed his directions, and before long the first man’s quill dropped to the ground. When they looked closely, the soil there was all copper. “Look!” he cried. “Take as much copper as you want.” But the others said, “Don’t be silly. Even a heap of copper won’t end our poverty. Come on, let’s go farther.” “Go if you like,” he answered. “I am not coming any farther.” He took his copper and turned back.

The other three had not gone far when the next man’s quill fell. He dug, and the soil was all silver. “Look!” he shouted. “Take all the silver you want. We need not go any farther.” “Fool,” said the other two. “First copper, then silver. There is sure to be gold ahead.” But he would not go on. He took his silver and went home.

The last two walked on until one more quill fell. This time the soil was gold. “Look!” said its owner joyfully. “Take all the gold you want. Nothing could be better than gold.” “Fool,” said his friend. “Can’t you see the pattern? Copper, silver, gold. Next there will be jewels. Get up and come with me. This gold is only a heavy load.” “You go,” said the gold-finder. “I will stay here and wait for you.”

So the fourth Brahman went on alone. The summer sun scorched his body, and thirst muddled his thoughts as he wandered back and forth along the paths of the fairy country. At last he came to a spinning platform, and on it stood a man with blood running down his body, because a wheel was whirling round and round on top of his head.

“Sir,” said the Brahman, “why are you standing there with a wheel spinning on your head? Never mind that. Tell me, is there any water near here? I am mad with thirst.”

The moment he spoke, the wheel left the other man’s head and settled on his own. “My dear sir,” he cried, “what does this mean?” “It happened to me in exactly the same way,” said the man. “But when will it go away?” begged the Brahman. “It hurts terribly.” “When someone else comes here holding a magic quill like yours and speaks to you as you spoke to me,” said the man, “then it will move to his head.”

“How long have you been here?” asked the Brahman. The man asked in return, “Who is king in the world now?” When he heard the answer, King Vinavatsa, he said, “When Rama was king, I was poor. I got a magic quill and came here just as you did, and I found a man with a wheel on his head and asked him a question. I cannot count the centuries since then.”

“But how did you get food, standing here like that?” asked the wheel-bearer. “The god of wealth set this torment here to frighten treasure-hunters away from his riches,” the man explained. “Anyone who does get this far never feels hunger or thirst, never grows old and never dies. He only has to bear the pain. Now let me say goodbye. You have set me free from a great misery, and I am going home.” And off he went.

Meanwhile the gold-finder began to wonder why his friend was taking so long. He followed his footprints, and before long he found a man soaked in blood, tormented by a cruel wheel spinning on his head. It was his own companion. With tears in his eyes he asked what had happened, and the wheel-bearer told him the whole story.

“I told you again and again not to go on,” said the gold-finder. “But you would not listen. Learning is worth less than good sense.” The two friends talked for a long time, each telling stories to the other. At last the gold-finder said, “Good fortune may come by fate, but a man should still use his good sense, and you threw yours away when you ignored my advice.” Then he said goodbye to his friend and set off for home.

About this story

This tale is the closing frame of Book V, “Ill-Considered Action,” in Arthur W. Ryder’s 1925 translation of the Panchatantra. While the wheel-bearer is stuck, he and the gold-finder trade stories, among them “The Lion-Makers,” told on this site as The Four Learned Fools, and “The Musical Donkey.”

Ryder’s Brahmans begin with long rhyming speeches about poverty and the best ways to make money. This page sums those up in a few lines so the journey itself can be told in full.

Read the original: Arthur W. Ryder, The Panchatantra (1925), Internet Archive

Best for ages 9–12 — a longer adventure with a disturbing ending involving blood and continuing torment; adult preview is advised.

A closer reading

The first three discoveries establish a pattern—copper, silver, gold—that makes the fourth friend’s expectation understandable. But a pattern in three events does not guarantee a fourth improvement. His confidence grows while his information about what lies ahead does not.

The first friends are not punished for wanting relief from poverty. They accept different stopping points. The wheel makes the final choice grotesquely irreversible: the search for freedom through wealth becomes imprisonment without hunger, aging or release. The former sufferer’s escape also raises an uncomfortable question about a system that transfers pain instead of ending it.

Try this with the story

At each treasure stop, write what the friends know and what they merely predict. Choose a stopping rule that would have protected the fourth traveler, then explain whether the gold-finder can fairly call all ambition foolish.

Questions to ask

• What pattern persuades the fourth friend to continue?
• How does each earlier traveler decide that he has enough?
• Does transferring the wheel solve the suffering or move it to another person?

More stories like this

• The Four Learned Fools — a story told inside this one
• The Brahmin’s Dream — another Panchatantra tale about dreams of riches
• The Story of the Lion and the Hare — Panchatantra wit against greed