Introduction.

In a certain district, proclamation had been made of a Samaradanam being about to be held.[1] Four Brahmans, from different villages, going thither, fell in upon the road, and, finding that they were all upon the same errand, they agreed to proceed in company.  A soldier, happening to meet them, saluted them in the usual way, by touching hands and pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions to Brahmans, “Dandamarya!” or “Health to my lord!” The four travellers made the customary return, “Asirvadam!” and going on, they came to a well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the shade of some trees.  Sitting there, and finding no better subject of conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite salutation.  “You!” said another; “it was not you that he saluted, but me.”  “You are both mistaken,” says a third; “for you may remember that when the soldier said, ‘Dandamarya!’ he cast his eyes upon me.”  “Not at all,” replied the fourth; “it was I only he saluted; otherwise, should I have answered him as I did, by saying, ’Asirvadam’?”

Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by the following advice:  “How foolish it is in us,” said he, “thus to put ourselves in a passion!  After we have said all the ill of one another that we can invent—­nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference?  The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the man who occasioned it.  The soldier, who chose to salute one of us, cannot yet be far off:  let us therefore run after him as quickly as we can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation.”

This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted.  The whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook him, after running a league, and all out of breath.  As soon as they came in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of them he had directed his salutation.  The soldier instantly perceiving the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then, turning on his heel, he continued his journey.