UPDATE. You can read another version of this story by the modern fabulist Suniti Namjoshi here: The Brahmin and his Small Gods.
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THE BRAHMAN AND HIS IDOLS
Once upon a time there lived a Brahman who, though married, was childless. All the same, however, the Brahman loved his wife.
He had a good many idols of different metals in the house for worship. Having had a moderate income from his rent-free lands, the Brahman passed his days happily in the worship of his family gods. Neither cares nor anxieties ever crossed his mind, till one day he was disturbed by the thought of finding out which of the gods, whose images he worshipped, was the most powerful. He considered the merits of the idols one by one, but failed to decide about their comparative superiority. He meditated for days together, but yet was in the same state of doubt and indecision.
The question sat heavily upon his mind and disturbed his peace. His looks showed that he was unhappy. His wife perceived this change and enquired of its cause, but he would give no reply.
By and by he became demented. He would come out of the house and wander aimlessly through the streets of the village with the question constantly on his lips as to which of his idols was the best. Men mocked, boys ran after him, and the village grew too hot for him altogether. He then took shelter in a neighbouring forest, though his wife tried her best to dissuade him.
One day as he was wandering listlessly in the forest, he saw a woodcutter, and questioned him as to the relative superiority of his family idols. The woodcutter taking him for a mad man wantonly replied, "The idol that stands the best test under a smith's hammer is the most powerful."
The Brahman readily accepted the answer and returned home. The first thing accordingly that he did was to get a hammer from the nearest blacksmith, and with it he began striking his idols in order to test their toughness or power as he called it. All the idols, as could be expected, broke to pieces save one, which being made of solid bronze stood the proof of the hammer. The Brahman selected this image for his worship, and flung the shattered pieces of the other images into a tank.
His wife, however, wept at the sacrilege, scolded him, and tried to bring him back to his senses, but to no effect. She was frightened, too, at what her husband had done, as she expected that the wrath of the gods would fall on their heads.
The idol that passed the hard ordeal of the hammer was an image of Sri Krishna-ji. The Brahman began worshipping it with deep devotion. He would sit before it for hours together forgetting hunger and thirst. So very absorbed did he become in his thoughts while worshipping that he could not catch even the sound of drums if beaten near him. In short, he became, while engaged in worship, so thoroughly absorbed in the meditation of his idol that he hardly perceived the existence of the outer world for the time.
An incident happened one day which made the Brahman still firmer in his new faith. He had performed the Puja with his accustomed zeal, but when he rose he found, to his utter surprise, that the offering of rice and fruits which he had placed before the idol had disappeared. His joy knew no bounds, as he believed that Sri Krishna must have partaken of them himself. Thenceforward his faith in the idol became unshaken; more so, as he found that the offerings disappeared every day with the most unfailing regularity.
One day as the Brahman had just opened his eyes accidentally in the midst of his meditations before the idol, he saw a big rat running into a hole in the Puja room. His firm faith in the powers of the idol was shaken. He now began to think that it was the rat and not the idol that had been daily eating the offerings of his Pujas.
The doubt destroyed the serenity of his mind. When he sat down to worship the next day, he could not concentrate his thoughts as on previous days, and remained consequently quite alive to the external world. The rat, as was its wont, came and was caught by the Brahman. He now began to think that the woodcutter must have misled him. The idol he was worshipping could never be the most powerful; for, if that had been so, the rat would not have been allowed to eat his offerings. The idol instead of being the all-powerful one was evidently a powerless image.
His faith in the figure was shaken, and he consigned it to the same tank in which lay the broken remains of its former companions. The rat, thought the Brahman, must be more powerful than all the idols, and, therefore, was the most proper object of worship. So the rat was duly installed on the throne vacated by the idol and he went on worshipping it with the same fervour and devotion that he had paid to the idol.
The rat proved to be a god thoroughly alive, as it ate up the offerings before the very eyes of the Brahman himself. It so happened that one morning as the Brahman was deeply engaged in his meditation before the rat-god, a cat sprang upon it and tore it away from the throne.
"What!" thought the Brahman, "the cat must be more powerful than the rat or else why the rat should allow itself thus to be carried off by the former. The cat then was the fittest object of worship."
Now the cat occupied the place of the rat, and the Brakman began worshipping her with great devotion. The cat grew fat and fatter on the milk offered to her by her worshipper. The Brahman would reserve the greater portion of the milk from his cow for the cat, and would himself drink but very little of it.
His wife did not like this, but there was no help for it, as the least wish of the Brahman was law in the house. She, however, hated the creature.
One day the cat wishing for more milk than was allowed to her overturned the milk-pan. The Brahman's wife, who was peeling some vegetables with a knife at the time, flung it in a rage at the cat. The weapon hit the creature in a vital part and it dropped down dead.
The lady was frightened at this act of hers, as she knew that her husband would not spare the killer of his feline deity. She apprehended the direst consequence. There was, however, no help for it. She disposed of the dead cat in the best way she could. But what excuse would she make for the cat's disappearance to her husband? How would she account to her husband for the cat's absence when he would enquire about it. These were the thoughts that troubled her sorely, and she became very uneasy in mind. Failing to devise any excuse, she thought it best to allow things to take their own course and resumed her household work which the cat's death had interrupted for the moment.
The Brahman who had been out when the catastrophe upon his deity had fallen came home, bathed and entered his Puja room. The cat was so fond of him that no sooner would he enter the room than she would come to him mewing and wagging her tail, and would caress his legs by rubbing herself against them. But now there was no Mother Tabby to welcome him. The Brahman called out for the pussy, but she did not turn up; he called again and again but to no purpose.
The Brahman called his wife and asked her what had become of the cat. The wife, fearing to tell a lie to her husband whom she was enjoined by the Shastras to worship as her god, told him what had really happened.
The Brahman, much to his wife's relief, looked at the death of the cat from a point of view different from that which his wife had expected. He exclaimed, "My dear! thou art even more powerful than the cat as it has succumbed to thy strength; so I must worship thee henceforth."
The wife got ashamed, bent down her head, but dared not reply. The Brahman took her into the Puja room and made her sit down on a dias, the throne on which his former idols had sat not being big enough to hold her. He began worshipping her as the most powerful deity of all he had known.
A few days passed in this way. And they were days of hard trial for the Brahman's wife. It was very difficult for her to have to sit still and in the same posture for hours together, while the husband worshipped her. She was always afraid of causing disturbance by changing her position or moving.
One day the worst that she had apprehended happened; she actually moved and roused the Brahman from his deep reverie. Instantly he gave a slap right across her cheek and she was stunned and fell down senseless.
The Brahman soon realized what he had done, hastily fetched some water and bathed her face and eyes with it, and the wife slowly came to regain her consciousness. The Brahman dismissed her with kind words.
When he was alone, he thought that the wife certainly was not the most powerful person in the creation as she had fallen senseless under his blow, and that he himself was the most powerful. And now true knowledge dawned upon him. He began to perceive the importance of his own self. He found that his arm that gave the blow to his wife was a mere instrument of him but that the strength which moved it must be somewhere in his person. He should worship that strength or the Maha-Shakti in him. He should know his own self and realize it. For this purpose he began worshipping his inner self. In due course of time, by this process, he knew the great Spirit working in and through himself and every other thing in the universe, and was liberated from the bonds of karma (action).
CHAIN: man worships metal idol - rat - cat - wife - self
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