The Brahmin’s Wife and the Sesame Seeds

A wandering holy man once told this story about something that happened while he was travelling from one sacred river to the next.

“I came to a town,” he said, “and stayed in the house of a Brahmin. While I was there, the Brahmin said to his wife, ‘Today is the day of the new moon. Cook a dish of milk, sesame seeds and rice, so that we can share it with other Brahmins.’

“‘How can a poor man like you afford that?’ said his wife.

“‘My dear,’ said the Brahmin, ‘it is good to save, but we should never set our hearts on saving too much. Listen to this story.’

“And he told her about a greedy jackal.

“‘In a certain forest,’ he said, ‘a hunter set a trap. He fixed an arrow in a bow that would fire all by itself, and tied a piece of meat to it as bait. Then he went off after a wild boar. He struck the boar with a spear, but the boar wounded him so badly with its tusks that the hunter died, and the boar died too.

“‘A jackal had watched all this from far away. He crept up. He was hungry, and there was plenty of meat lying there. But he would not eat any of it, because he wanted to save it all for later. Instead, he decided to start with the little piece of meat on the bow. The moment he bit it, the arrow shot out and struck him, and the greedy jackal fell down dead.’

“‘So you see,’ said the Brahmin, ‘we must not hoard too much.’

“His wife agreed. She took some sesame seeds and spread them out in the sun to dry for the special dish. But while she was inside the house, a dog came along, sniffed at the seeds and licked them. After that the seeds were spoiled, and nobody would buy the dish she made from them.”

“So greed brings no happiness,” said the holy man. “It only brings trouble to those who cling to it.”

About this story

This little story comes from the Kathá Sarit Ságara, the eleventh-century Sanskrit “Ocean of the Streams of Story” by Somadeva, retold from C. H. Tawney’s English translation (Project Gutenberg #40588). It is told by a visiting hermit inside a longer animal tale, about a mouse who keeps stealing a hermit’s food. The tale of the greedy jackal is a story inside that story.

Many people know this tale from the Panchatantra, where the wife is called Shandili and swaps her spoiled seeds for unspoiled ones. In Somadeva’s shorter version she has no name, and the dog simply ruins the seeds.

Read the original: The Kathá Sarit Ságara of Somadeva, C. H. Tawney’s translation (Project Gutenberg #40588)

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12; the nested tale includes the deaths of a hunter, a boar and a jackal, including an arrow trap.

A closer reading

This telling places a story inside a conversation inside another story: the visiting holy man reports the couple’s debate, and the husband uses the jackal to argue against excessive hoarding. Drawing those levels helps readers keep track of whose lesson they are hearing.

The jackal chooses the small bait beside a loaded trap despite abundant food nearby. The spoiled sesame ending is less tidy: the wife has already agreed to prepare the dish when the dog intervenes. Readers can ask whether that accident really proves the holy man’s moral. A source’s stated lesson and its events do not always fit perfectly.

Try this with the story

Draw three speech frames for the holy man, the Brahmin and the jackal episode. Place the dog incident outside the inner frame. Discuss which event clearly follows from a choice and which depends on an interruption the wife did not control.

Questions to ask

• Who tells each layer of the story?
• Why is the bait a worse choice than the food already available?
• Does the dog spoiling the seeds prove the wife was greedy?

You may also like

• Meeting a New Friend — the mouse-and-hermit tale in which this story is told
• The Brahmin’s Dream — another story about a dream of riches that comes to nothing
• The Story of the Blue Jackal — another Indian fable about a jackal