Be honest, your Subordinates will be Honest too!

WRITTEN BY LONDON SWAMINATHAN

Post No.7616

Date uploaded in London – 25 February 2020

Contact – swami_48@yahoo.com

Pictures are taken from various sources for spreading knowledge; this is a non- commercial blog.

Yatha Raja, thatha Praja is a Sanskrit proverb.

Common man follows the king.

If he is honest and strict about it, people will also follow him.

In Baghavad Gita, Lord Krishna also says,

Whatver action a great man performs, common man follows 3-21

Tamil grammarian Tolkappiar also says,

Customs are based on the people at higher level.

Valakkenappatuvathu uyarnthor mere (In Tamil)

In Purananuru verse 187 poetess Avvaiyar also echoes the same,

A land is considered good depending upon the good people living there.

“Evvali nallavar aadavar avvazi” (in Tamil)

There is a Tamil folktale illustrating this point-

A surveyor called  a village watch man and asked him to bring two measures of green rice, raw paddy, from the field without the land owner knowing. He told him that his son liked it very much. Accordingly, he went to the field at the dead of night and brought two measures of raw rice.

The watch man used this as a pretext and from that time he went to the field every week and took two measures of grains for his own use. He continued it for long.

When harvest time came the surveyor went to see the quantity of grain. When he saw two or three sections in the field empty, plants without grains, he called the watch man and said,

Hey fellow, what is this?

Who stole the grains?

The watch man secretly told him,

Sir, this is what you yourself one day ordered.

When he saw all the paddy in this condition, as often as he asked, the watch man came and said the same thing.

The moral of the story is…..

If the head of the country is corrupt people will also be corrupt.

If you are not honest you can’t find fault with others.

Xxx

Potter and the King’s Servants

In a village a potter got his livelihood by making pots and pans and baking and selling them. The servants of the king’s palace often came to him ordering him to give them pots. They paid him nothing.

Whilst the matters were so, one day the potter saw the servants coming. He ran away from his hut and hid himself in the nearby palmyra grove.

The servants went into the house and saw only his children. So they went out without taking any pots.

They said ‘we will come tomorrow’.

While they were going home, they went through the palmyra grove.

As soon as the potter saw them, he rose up and stood out of respect.

But he showed them his back and pretended as if he was looking at the top of a tree.

The servants without looking at his face and without recognising asked him, Hey fellow, why are you looking at?

What is happening?

Oh , I am looking at the palmyra tree to find out whether I can make a plough out of it.

One of the servants said,

What? Will a palmyra tree do for a plough? You are ‘ a fool like a potter’. You don’t know anything.

As soon as he used the word ‘potter’, he got scared.

He showed his face and told them,

Who told you that I was here?

Then they identifying him said, ‘is it you potter?’

They seized him and took him to his hut.

They took as many pots as they wanted and put them on his head, one over the other, made him carry the pots all the way to their houses.

Like westerners say ‘bird’s brain’, in the olden days Tamils used to say ‘potter’s brain’.

Xxx Subham xxx