The Wrestlers

There was, once upon a time, long ago, a wrestler living in a far country, who, hearing there was a mighty man in India, determined to have a fall with him; so, tying up ten thousand pounds weight of flour in his blanket, he put the bundle on his head and set off jauntily. Towards evening he came to a little pond in the middle of the desert, and sat down to eat his dinner. First, he stooped down and took a good long drink of the water; then, emptying his flour into the remainder of the pond, stirred it into good thick brose, off which he made a hearty meal, and lying down under a tree, soon fell fast asleep. Now, for many years an elephant had drunk daily at the pond, and, coming as usual that evening for its draught, was surprised to find nothing but a little mud and flour at the bottom. ‘What shall I do?’ it said to itself, ‘for there is no more water to be found for twenty miles!’ Going away disconsolate, it espied the wrestler sleeping placidly under the tree, and at once made sure he was the author of the mischief; so, galloping up to the sleeping man, it stamped on his head in a furious rage, determined to crush him. But, to his astonishment, the wrestler only stirred a little, and said sleepily, ‘What is the matter? what is the matter? If you want to shampoo my head, why the plague don’t you do it properly? What’s worth doing at all is worth doing well; so put a little of your weight into it, my friend!’ The elephant stared, and left off stamping; but, nothing daunted, seized the wrestler round the waist with its trunk, int ending to heave him up and dash him to pieces on the ground. ‘Ho! ho! my little friend! – that is your plan, is it?’ quoth the wrestler, with a yawn; and catching hold of the elephant’s tail, and swinging the monster over his shoulder, he continued his journey jauntily. By and by he reached his destination, and, standing outside the Indian wrestler’s house, cried out, ‘Ho! my friend! Come out and try a fall!’ ‘My husband’s not at home to-day,’ answered the wrestler’s wife from inside; ‘he has gone into the wood to cut pea-sticks.’ ‘Well, well! when he returns give him this, with my compliments, and tell him the owner has come from far to challenge him.’ So saying, he chucked the elephant clean over the courtyard wall. ‘Oh, mamma! mamma!’ cried a treble voice from within, ‘I declare that nasty man has thrown a mouse over the wall into my lap! What shall I do to him?’ ‘Never mind, little daughter!’ answered the wrestler’s wife; ‘papa will teach him better manners. Take the grass broom and sweep the mouse away.’

Related Stories in This Collection

Browse more stories from the same collection to discover similar tales and morals. Story enhanced and formatted for modern readers. Originally sourced from Fairytalez.

The wrestler’s reputation had grown formidable over many seasons. His body bore the marks of countless matches – scars on his shoulders, a crooked finger that had never healed straight, the weathered face of one who had spent years in the dust of the arena. Young men from surrounding villages would journey to challenge him, seeking either glory or a beating, and rarely finding much besides the latter. Yet beneath this imposing exterior lived a mind prone to doubt.

The old warrior who visited his dwelling one evening came cloaked in simplicity, carrying only a walking staff and the smell of distant roads. He sat without introduction, observing the wrestler with an unsettling directness. When he finally spoke, his words carried the weight of genuine witness. He told the wrestler that physical strength, for all its dominion over bodies, holds dominion over nothing else. He described battles won by men who never raised a fist, victories secured through understanding rather than force. The wrestler’s pride bristled, yet something deeper stirred – a hunger for a power he could not grasp with mere muscle.

The old man proposed a test: six moons of discipline not of the body, but of the mind and spirit. The wrestler would study the movements of water, the patience of stone, the quietness of a sleeping forest. He would speak only necessary words. He would observe others with genuine attention. Through these months of apparent stillness, the wrestler discovered musculatures of the mind he had never trained, strengths that had nothing to do with the size of his arms.

When the reckoning came – when a challenger arrived with renewed confidence in his youth – the wrestler faced him with perfect calm. The victory that followed surprised everyone who witnessed it, for the wrestler had scarcely moved, had barely exerted effort, yet his opponent found himself defeated before the first true blow landed. The wrestler had learned that the strongest person in any room is often the one most comfortable with silence.

Moral

The young wrestler’s humble acceptance of defeat and honest respect for strength shows that true dignity comes from recognizing others’ gifts, not from pride in our own abilities.

Historical & Cultural Context

This tale comes from the vast ocean of Indian folk literature, a tradition stretching back thousands of years across the subcontinent. Indian folk tales were passed down orally through generations of village storytellers, each adding their own local color while preserving the essential wisdom within. The Wrestlers reflects the values, humor, and spiritual depth that characterize this ancient narrative tradition.

Reflection & Discussion

1. Why did the young wrestler feel more honor after losing than he expected?
2. How did meeting a stronger opponent change what he thought strength meant?
3. Can you remember a time when you learned something important from being beaten?

Did You Know?

• India has one of the richest oral storytelling traditions in the world, with tales dating back thousands of years.
• Many Indian folk tales were passed down through generations before being written down.
• Indian folk tales often blend real-life wisdom with magical elements to teach moral lessons.

What This Tale Teaches Us Today

Old stories keep their power because their lessons never stop being useful. Here is how this one still applies:

• Stories that have survived for centuries have done so because their lessons still work.
• Every folk tale is also a time machine – a small window into how our ancestors thought about the world.
• Reading folk tales aloud to children builds vocabulary, imagination, and a sense of cultural inheritance.

Why This Story Still Matters

The Wrestlers joins a vast global library of folk tales that human beings have been telling one another for thousands of years. Every culture has produced its own stories, but the deepest themes – courage, kindness, cleverness, loyalty, the cost of greed – appear again and again in different clothes. Modern readers who spend time with folk tales inherit something precious: a sense that people have always wrestled with the same basic questions, and that good stories can still help us find good answers. That is why these tales persist. Each one is a small tool for living, handed down quietly through generations.

Cultural Context and Continuing Influence

Folk tales like this one survived for hundreds of years through oral storytelling before any scholar thought to write them down. Grandparents told them to grandchildren, travelers traded them along roads and rivers, and mothers repeated them to babies who would one day repeat them to their own children. Each small retelling sharpened the story, discarded unnecessary parts, and polished the essential lesson. That long process of refinement is why a good folk tale feels so weighty – it has been shaped by thousands of listeners across generations, each contributing something small to the story we read today.

Modern readers sometimes wonder whether folk tales are still relevant in an age of apps and smartphones. The answer is yes, perhaps more than ever. The technology changes, but the underlying questions – about kindness, courage, loyalty, greed, family, fear, love – do not. These are the same questions that children asked around a fire in ancient India, around a hearth in medieval Ireland, around a campfire in 19th-century Korea. And they are the same questions children ask their parents today, just phrased differently. That is why a family that reads folk tales together is doing real cultural and emotional work, not simply entertaining itself.

Reading Folk Tales With Children

Reading folk tales aloud to children is one of the oldest and most effective forms of moral education. Unlike a lecture or a rule, a story slides past a child’s natural resistance and plants its lesson in the imagination, where it quietly grows. Years later, when the child meets a real situation that resembles the story – a bully at school, a dishonest coworker, a moment of temptation – the old tale rises to the surface of memory and offers guidance. That is why parents and teachers across every culture have trusted stories to do the work of raising good humans, long before formal schools or textbooks existed.

When reading this story with a young listener, try pausing at key moments and asking what the child thinks will happen next. Let them guess, even if they are wrong. That small act of prediction turns a passive listener into an active thinker. After the story ends, a simple open question – “What would you have done?” or “Who do you think was the smartest character?” – invites the child to connect the tale to their own life. Those conversations are where real learning happens, not during the reading itself but in the quiet moments that follow.

Older children and teenagers sometimes think they have outgrown folk tales. In reality, the best tales only deepen with age. A ten-year-old hears the surface plot; a fifteen-year-old notices the irony; a twenty-year-old sees the economic and political pressures on the characters; a forty-year-old understands the parents in the story for the first time. A good folk tale is a gift that keeps unfolding for decades. Families who read and reread the same stories across the years discover this naturally, and pass the discovery down.