Story of the man who submitted to be burnt alive sooner than share his food with a guest.
There lived somewhere a rich but foolish Ṭakka,[8] who was a miser. And he and his wife were always eating barley-meal without salt. And he never learned to know the taste of any other food. Once Providence instigated him to say to his wife, “I have conceived a desire for a milk-pudding: cook me one to-day.” His wife said, “I will,” and set about cooking the pudding, and the Ṭakka remained in doors concealed, taking to his bed, for fear some one should see him and drop in on him as a guest.
In the meanwhile a friend of his, a Ṭakka who was fond of mischief, came there, and asked his wife where her husband was. And she, without giving an answer, went in to her husband, and told him of the arrival of his friend. And he, lying on the bed, said to her; “Sit down here, and remain weeping and clinging to my feet, and say to my friend, ‘My husband is dead.’[9] When he is gone, we will eat this pudding happily together.” When he gave her this order, she began to weep, and the friend came in, and said to her, “What is the matter?” She said to him “Look, my husband is dead.” But he reflected, “I saw her a moment ago happy enough cooking a pudding. How comes it that her husband is now dead, though he has had no illness? The two things are incompatible. No doubt the two have invented this fiction because they saw I had come as a guest. So I will not go.” Thereupon the mischievous fellow sat down, and began crying out, “Alas my friend! Alas, my friend!” Then his relations, hearing the lamentation, came in and prepared to take that silly Ṭakka to the burning-place, for he still continued to counterfeit death. But his wife came to him and whispered in his ear, “Jump up, before these relations take you off to the pyre and burn you.” But the foolish man answered his wife in a whisper, “No! that will never do, for this cunning Ṭakka wishes to eat my pudding. I cannot get up, for it was on his arrival that I died. For to people like me the contemplation of one’s possessions is dearer than life.” Then that wicked friend and his relations carried him out, but he remained immoveable, even while he was being burned, and kept silence till he died. So the foolish man sacrificed his life but saved his pudding, and others enjoyed at ease the wealth he had acquired with much toil.
“You have heard the story of the miser, now hear the story of the foolish pupils and the cat.”