This is TMI Z47. Series of trick exchanges, although the idea here is not trickery, but instead entrepreneurship.
I have added the English title; the Pali title is Cullaka-Setthi-Jataka. For the Buddha's own frametale of the story, see the online edition at Sacred Texts.
The frametale is an elaborate story about a monk named "Little Wayman," and here is how the Buddha introduces the story of the past: And when they had told him word for word what they had been saying, the Master said, "Brethren, through me Little Wayman has just now risen to great things in the Faith; in times past it was to great things in the way of wealth that he rose,--but equally through me."
THE BUSINESS BEGINS WITH A MOUSE
Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares in Kāsi, the Bodhisatta was born into the Treasurer's family, and growing up, was made Treasurer, being called Treasurer Little. A wise and clever man was he, with a keen eye for signs and omens.
One day on his way to wait upon the king, he came on a dead mouse lying on the road; and, taking note of the position of the stars at that moment, he said, "Any decent young fellow with his wits about him has only to pick that mouse up, and he might start a business and keep a wife."
His words were overheard by a young man of good family but reduced circumstances, who said to himself, "That's a man who has always got a reason for what he says."
And accordingly he picked up the mouse, which he sold for a farthing at a tavern for their cat. With the farthing he got molasses and took drinking water in a water-pot.
That day the flower-gatherers, before they went, gave him flowering plants with half the flowers left on them; and thus in a little while he obtained eight pennies.
Later, one rainy and windy day, the wind blew down a quantity of rotten branches and boughs and leaves in the king's pleasaunce, and the gardener did not see how to clear them away. Then up came the young man with an offer to remove the lot, if the wood and leaves might be his. The gardener closed with the offer on the spot.
Then this apt pupil of Treasurer Little repaired to the children's playground and in a very little while had got them by bribes of molasses to collect every stick and leaf in the place into a heap at the entrance to the pleasaunce.
Just then the king's potter was on the look out for fuel to fire bowls for the palace, and coming on this heap, took the lot off his hands. The sale of his wood brought in sixteen pennies to this pupil of Treasurer Little, as well as five bowls and other vessels.
Having now twenty-four pennies in all, a plan occurred to him. He went to the vicinity of the city-gate with a jar full of water and supplied five hundred mowers with water to drink. Said they, "You've done us a good turn, friend. What can we do for you?"
"Oh, I'll tell you when I want your aid," said he; and as he went about, he struck up an intimacy with a land-trader and a sea-trader.
Said the former to him, "To-morrow there will come to town a horse-dealer with five hundred horses to sell."
On hearing this piece of news, he said to the mowers, "I want each of you to-day to give me a bundle of grass and not to sell your own grass till mine is sold."
"Certainly," said they, and delivered the five hundred bundles of grass at his house. Unable to get grass for his horses elsewhere, the dealer purchased our friend's grass for a thousand pieces.
Only a few days later his sea-trading friend brought him news of the arrival of a large ship in port; and another plan struck him. He hired for eight pence a well appointed carriage which plied for hire by the hour, and went in great style down to the port. Having bought the ship on credit and deposited his signet-ring as security, he had a pavilion pitched hard by and said to his people as he took his seat inside, "When merchants are being shewn in, let them be passed on by three successive ushers into my presence."
Hearing that a ship had arrived in port, about a hundred merchants came down to buy the cargo; only to he told that they could not have it as a great merchant had already made a payment on account. So away they all went to the young man; and the footmen duly announced them by three successive ushers, as had been arranged beforehand.
Each man of the hundred severally gave him a thousand pieces to buy a share in the ship and then a further thousand each to buy him out altogether. So it was with 200,000 pieces that this pupil of Treasurer Little returned to Benares.
Actuated by a desire to shew his gratitude, he went with one hundred thousand pieces to call on Treasurer Little.
"How did you come by all this wealth?" asked the Treasurer.
"In four short months, simply by following your advice," replied the young man; and he told him the whole story, starting with the dead mouse.
Thought Lord High Treasurer Little, on hearing all this, "I must see that a young fellow of these parts does not fall into anybody else's hands."
So he married him to his own grown-up daughter and settled all the family estates on the young man. And at the Treasurer's death, he became Treasurer in that city. And the Bodhisatta passed away to fare according to his deserts.
NOTES
[Note. The 'Introductory Story' occurs in Chapter vi. of Capt. T. Rogers' Buddhaghosha's Parables, but the 'Story of the Past' there given is quite different. See Mrs Bode's 'Women Leaders of the Buddhist Reformation' in the J. R. A. S. 1893, p. 556. See also Dhammapada, p. 181, and compare Chapter xxxv. of the Divyāvadāna, edited by Cowell and Neil, 1886. The whole Jātaka, in an abbreviated form, forms the story of 'The Mouse Merchant' at pages 33, 34 of the first volume of Tawney's translation of the Kathā Sarit Sāgara. See also Kalilah and Dimnah, Chapter XVIII. (Knatchbull, page 358).]
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