Far away in a valley in the Himalayan mountains lies a little village,
where once lived a good man who had his home beside a field in which
grew a beautiful mulberry tree--so big and so beautiful that it was
the wonder of the country round.
Hundreds of people were wont to gather together beneath it, and the
poor carried away basket loads of its fruit. Thus it became a meeting
place where a mela, or fair, was held when the fruit season was on.
Now the fame of it reached a certain Rajah who had rented out the land,
and one day he came with all his retinue to see it.
"There is no such tree in the Royal Gardens," said the Grand Vizier.
"It is not meet that a subject should possess what the Rajah hath not,"
added the Prime Minister.
The Rajah replied not a word, for his heart was filled with envy; and
that night, before going to bed, he gave orders that, on a certain
day, in the early dawn, before anybody was astir, a party of armed
men should take their axes to the village, and fell the mulberry
tree even with the ground. But ill dreams disturbed the Rajah's rest,
and he could not sleep.
Could it be fancy, or did he really see a strange man standing
before him?
The strange man spoke: "O King, live for ever! I am the spirit
of a Bunniah (or merchant) who died in yonder village many years
ago. During my lifetime I defrauded the people. I gave them short
measure and adulterated their food.
"When I died and passed into the Land of Unhappy Spirits, the Gods,
who are just, O King! decreed that I should give back what I had
stolen. My soul therefore went into a mulberry tree, where year after
year the people gather fruit, and regain their losses.
"In one year more they will be repaid to the uttermost cowrie;
[4] but you mean to destroy the tree and drive my soul I know not
whither. Wherefore have I come to plead with you to spare it this
once, for when a year is past it will die of itself and my soul find
its way to that Land of Shadows which is the abode of the Gods--where
it will find peace."
So the Rajah listened, and the strange man went away.
For one year longer the people sat as before under the cool shadow
of the mulberry tree, and then it died. And was that all?
No: when they cut it down there was found deep in the earth one living
root, and that they left, for who can destroy the soul?
Hindu Proverb.--"Pün ki jar sada hari." (The roots of charity are
always green.)