The Brahmin and The Crooks

A brahmin named Mitra Sharma lived in a small village, and one day he performed rituals for a rich farmer who gave him a goat as a gift. When he was returning to his village, carrying the goat on his back, three crooks spotted him. The crooks were starving and wanted to cook the goat as their meal, so they hatched the plan to take away the goat from the brahmin.

The plan was to scare the brahmin so that he left the goat and ran away. To do this, one of the crooks met the brahmin on the way and asked why a pious person like the brahmin was carrying a dog. The brahmin gets indignant and carried forward with the goat. The second crook then asked the brahmin why he had a dead calf on his shoulders, and the brahmin lost his temper again and walked away.

But now the brahmin was puzzled, and a seed of doubt had crept in his mind. Lastly, the third rogue met the brahmin and he named the goat a pig and asked why a sacred priest was carrying a profane pig. This made the brahmin very anxious as by now he started wondering if the animal was actually a monster who changed shapes from time to time. He was extremely frightened and left the goat on the road to run away to his home.

The crooks then came together and carried the goat, laughing at the stupidity of the so-called highly educated brahmin. Thereafter they happily feasted on the goat.

The Brahmin Carrying the Goat

The Brahmin and the Crooks Moral
The story conveys the message that acquiring bookish knowledge is not sufficient but one should also have common sense. The story also tries to tell us that some beliefs of our caste system can sometimes be easily used against us; since the crooks tried to play with the "sacred" image of brahmins and the not-so-sacred pigs and dogs to make the brahmin get rid of the goat.