The Learned Thief and the Kiratas
A scholar turned thief spends months earning four traders' trust so he can rob them. In a forest, surrounded by robbers, he steps forward first.
In a certain city there was a brahmin — a man of deep learning who, by the fault of some earlier life, had become a thief. He noticed four brahmins from another country selling their goods there and making a great deal of money, and he thought: "By what means can I get their wealth?"
He won their confidence with well-turned quotations from the books and the sweetest of speech, and then began to serve them as a genuine servant would.
In time those brahmins sold everything, bought jewels of great value, hid the jewels inside their own bodies — cutting their thighs to do it — and set out for home. The thief, now a trusted companion, went with them.
On the way lay a terrible forest. There Kirata robbers surrounded them, stripped off their clothes and searched them, opened every bundle — and found nothing. Then the chief of the Kiratas said: "We know one of you has hidden the goods in his body. Now we shall cut you all open and look."
Hearing this, the thief-brahmin reasoned: "When they cut them all open the jewels will be found, and all four will die anyway. Better that I offer myself first; they will cut me, find nothing, and let the others go. He who gives his life for cattle or for brahmins attains the highest state."
He stepped forward and said: "Kiratas — cut me first." They cut him open, and found nothing inside. At that they concluded the party carried nothing, and let the four brahmins go.
The men whose trust he had spent months earning in order to rob them were saved, in the end, by his death.
गवार्थे ब्राह्मणार्थे च प्राणत्यागं करोति यः । सूर्यस्य मण्डलं भित्त्वा स याति परमां गतिम् ॥
Moral: He who gives up his life for the sake of cattle or of brahmins passes through the orb of the sun and attains the highest state.
From the Panchatantra, Book I — The Loss of Friends.
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