Tenali Rama and the Thieves
- 3 minute read
- Ages 6-11
- Moral Stories
Tenali Rama came home one evening and his wife told him she had heard something in the lane.
Two men had been standing at the corner watching the house for most of the afternoon, and she was fairly sure they were planning to come back after dark.
Tenali Rama went to the window and looked out.
They were still there.
The conversation
He came back and sat down, and then he said, quite loudly, in the voice of a man having a private conversation with his wife:
"I have been thinking about our valuables. With all these thieves about, keeping gold in the house is asking for trouble."
His wife looked at him.
"Play along," he said quietly. Then, loudly again: "Do you know what I think we should do?"
"What?" said his wife, loudly.
"Put everything in a box. All the gold, all the silver, every coin. And drop the box down the well in the garden. Nobody would ever look for it there. Nobody could reach it. It would be perfectly safe until we needed it."
"That is a very good idea," said his wife.
And Tenali Rama went out to the garden with a heavy box, in full view of the lane, and dropped it into the well with a large splash, and went back inside and put out the lamp.
That night
The two men came over the wall after midnight.
They did not go near the house. They went straight to the well, and looked down it, and there was nothing to be seen but black water.
So they got the bucket rope, and one of them went down, and started to bail.
They worked all night. They passed bucket after bucket up out of the well and emptied it onto the garden, hour after hour, and the water level went down very slowly, because a well is deep and a bucket is small.
By first light they had emptied a great deal of it and reached the bottom, and found the box.
It was full of stones.
The morning
Tenali Rama came out of his house at sunrise and looked at his garden.
Every bed in it had been watered, thoroughly, all night, by two men with a bucket. The vegetables had needed it for a week and he had been putting it off.
The thieves were standing there, wet through and exhausted.
"Thank you," said Tenali Rama. "I could not have done it myself."
Moral of the story
Tenali Rama never chased anyone off. He gave two thieves a reason to do a job he had been avoiding, and let them find the stones at the end of it.
Questions and answers
- How did Tenali Rama know about the thieves?
His wife had seen two men watching the house from the lane all afternoon.
- What did he say loudly for them to hear?
That they should put all their gold in a box and drop it down the well for safekeeping.
- What did he actually put in the box?
Stones.
- What did the thieves do all night?
They emptied the well bucket by bucket to reach the box, pouring the water onto the garden.
- What was the result?
The whole vegetable garden was thoroughly watered, and the thieves found nothing but stones.
Word meanings
- valuables
- Things worth a lot of money.
- bail
- To scoop water out of something.
- exhausted
- Extremely tired.
- thoroughly
- Completely and carefully.
Questions about Tenali Rama and the Thieves
Who was Tenali Rama?
A poet and adviser at the court of King Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara in the sixteenth century, famous in South Indian folk tales for his wit.
Is he called Tenali Rama or Tenali Raman?
Both. He is Tenali Ramakrishna, and appears as Tenali Rama in Telugu tradition and Tenali Raman in Tamil.
What is the moral of this story?
That a problem can sometimes be turned into a benefit. Tenali Rama did not fight the thieves; he redirected them.
How does this compare to Akbar and Birbal stories?
Very closely. Tenali Rama is the South Indian counterpart to Birbal, and many stories exist in both traditions with different names.