GANESH THE MILKMAN.
ISA DÁS started on his travels, but not before he had had the joy of
seeing poor Gopal admitted by baptism into the Christian Church. The
two parted, not indeed without sorrow, yet cheered by the hope of
meeting again in a world where sickness and death are unknown.
Mr. Madden's duty was to travel through districts visited by famine, to
start relief works, and see what else could be done for the suffering
people. It was said that he carried in his camel trunks lakhs and
lakhs of rupees of Government money. As around the jar of honey swarm
innumerable flies, so around the Sahib came numbers, not only of the
poor, but sellers of grain, sellers of rice, contractors, and all those
people who pay court to the powerful and rich.
Isa Dás was Mr. Madden's confidential servant, and every one looked
upon him as a door by which they could gain entrance into a treasury of
favour. His recommendation could procure an audience with his master;
a word from him, it was supposed, would cause extortion to be winked
at, and raise the unworthy to a lucrative post. Never had Isa Dás,
even before becoming a Christian, received so much honour as he did
now; never had he heard so many flattering words. Instead of titles
of contempt, he was now called huzur (your highness), Maharaja, and
provider for the poor.
And not only low salams and compliments were offered, but rupees and
many other gifts by which men try to bribe the favour of those who can
aid them to make unlawful gains. Great was the amazement of greedy
bunniah and cheating contractor to find that the native Christian would
not so much as touch a bribe. Isa Dás steadily refused to receive any
present. As he had before given up his profitable occupation of writing
charms as being an acted lie, quite unworthy of a Christian, so he now
prayerfully resolved never to be persuaded to accept any species of
bribe.
Isa Dás was regarded as a fool by those who could not understand his
motives, and by no one more so than by Fath Shah, the Sahib's Mahomedan
bearer.
"It is only the blind man who tramples on the coin that lies in his
path, as if it were not worth the picking up," said the bearer, who
had always a sharp eye for his own interest. "Your salary is but ten
rupees; if you were clever, you could make it fifty at least." *
* I had written thirty; but my more experienced native critic induced
me to alter the number to fifty.
"There are some gains that prove losses in the end," said Isa Dás, "and
some cleverness that turns out to be worse than folly. I do not care to
follow the example of Ganesh, the seller of milk."
"What was done by Ganesh?" asked the bearer, who, as he sat smoking his
hookah, was glad to listen to a story.
"Ganesh was the possessor of a rare cow, of which the milk was so rich
and good that he was ordered to bring some twice every day to the
palace for the special use of the Rajah's little daughter. Ganesh was
well paid, yet was he not satisfied with his honest gains. He said to
himself one morning, as he was carrying the milk in a brazen vessel on
his head, 'I have two seers of milk on my head now; my cow gives less
than she gave last week, and my profits will be less. But how easily by
adding a little water I could make my two seers into three.'"
"He was the son of an owl not to have thought of that before," said
Fath Shah. "Is there any seller of milk in all Hindustan so foolish as
not to mix it with water?"
Isa Dás, without replying, went on with his story. "So Ganesh went on
to a little stream that was flowing from a fountain near and filled up
his brazen vessel with water; then, with a satisfied mind, carried his
three seers' weight to the palace."
"Yours is not much of a story," said Fath Shah. "Such things happen
everywhere, and on every day of the year."
"You have not yet heard the end," said the Christian. "After spending
some hours in gossip, and making purchases in the bazaars with the
money paid for the milk, Ganesh was returning to his home, when he was
suddenly seized by the officers of justice on a charge of murder. The
little princess and two of her attendants had been taken violently ill
after partaking of the milk. The attendants suffered greatly; the poor
little princess died."
"How could it have happened!" exclaimed the bearer.
"The wretched Ganesh was put to the torture, and in his agonies
confessed that he had mixed the milk with water taken from a certain
spring. The spring was examined, and a few feet higher up than the
place where Ganesh had filled up his vessel was found the bloated body
of a dead serpent, whose venom had mixed with and poisoned the water.
The Rajah, full of anger and grief at the loss of a favourite child,
put the wretched Ganesh to death."
"I do not see what your story has to do with taking dasturi, or
fingering bribes," said the bearer.
"The connection is this," said the Christian. "All unrighteous gains
have in them the venom of sin, and though for a while unseen, like the
poison in the milk, for every ill-gotten pice we shall have one day
to give an account. He whom we Christians own as our Lord once asked
the solemn question, 'What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?' (Mark viii. 36-37). I value mine at far more than fifty
rupees a month, nor would risk it for a crore (ten millions) of rupees."
"Your silly scruples will bring you to poverty," said the bearer.
"No fear of that," said the Christian; "it may indeed make me seem
poor as regards rupees, but in reality I shall be no loser, for it is
written, 'The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no
sorrow with it'" (Proverbs x. 22).
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