The Father of Somasharma
A miser lies awake under his one pot of barley meal, working out step by step how it will make him rich, married, and the father of a son.
In a certain city lived a brahmin named Svabhavakripana — "Miserly by Nature". Of the food he got by begging he ate what he needed and put the leftover barley meal into a pot, and he hung that pot on a peg above his bed, and watched it day and night.
One night, lying half awake, he began to calculate: "This pot of meal is quite full now. If a famine comes, selling it will fetch me a hundred rupees. With that I shall buy two she-goats. They will bear young every six months, and so I shall have a large flock of goats.
"Then I shall sell the goats and buy cows; sell the cows and buy buffaloes; sell the buffaloes and buy mares. Selling the mares' foals will bring me a great deal of gold. With that gold I shall build a big house with four halls.
"Then some brahmin will come to my house and give me his beautiful daughter — and I shall have a son, and I shall name him Somasharma. When he is old enough to crawl about, I shall take a book and sit behind the horse-stalls to read.
"At that moment Somasharma will see me, climb down from his mother's lap, and come toddling in among the horses' hooves. Then I shall shout angrily to my wife — 'Take the child away!' And she, busy with the housework, will not hear me. So I shall get up and give her a kick!"
And lost in that calculation, he did kick out exactly so — and the pot broke, and all the barley meal came down over him and left him white from head to foot.
So it is said: he who worries over what has not come and cannot come lies there covered in white, like the father of Somasharma.
अनागतवतीं चिन्तामसम्भाव्यां करोति यः । स एव पाण्डुरः शेते सोमशर्मपिता यथा ॥
Moral: He who worries over what has not come and cannot come lies there covered in white, like the father of Somasharma.
From the Panchatantra, Book V — Ill-Considered Action.
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