King Krishnadeva Raya of the Vijayanagar kingdom had a desire to build a big pagoda one day. With this thought, he called his special ministers and asked them to find a good place for the pagoda. Within a few days, a good place was chosen by everyone for the pagoda. The king also liked the place and gave permission to start the work there.
The king handed over the entire responsibility of building the temple to a minister. He took some people with him and started cleaning the place. Only then during the excavation a gold idol of Shankar Dev was found there. Seeing the golden idol, greed came in the mind of the minister and he told the people to keep that idol in his house.
Some of the cleaners were special to Tenaliram. He told Tenali about the golden idol and the minister’s greed. Even after knowing all these things, Tenaliram did nothing. He kept waiting for the right time.
After a few days, the auspicious time was taken to perform Bhoomi Pujan at the place decided for the temple. After everything went well, the king started talking to his ministers in the court to get an idol made for the temple. He sought the opinion of all his ministers about it. Even after talking to everyone, the king could not take any decision regarding the idol.
The next day the king again called all his ministers to the court to discuss the idol. Only then a Jatadhari monk came to the court. Seeing the monk, everyone asked him to sit respectfully. Sitting on a seat, the Jatadhari monk told the king that Mahadev himself has sent me here. I know that you people are thinking of building a Shiva temple and the kind of idol to be installed there is being discussed here. That’s why I have come here.
The Jatadhari monk further said that Lord Shiva himself has sent me here to remove your problems. King Krishnadev surprisedly said that Lord Shiva himself has sent you. The Jatadhari monk replied, “Yes, Mahakal himself has sent me.” He said that Shiv Shambhu has sent one of his golden idols for you. Pointing his finger towards a minister, the Jatadhari monk said that God has kept that idol in this minister’s house. Having said this, the sannyasin left from there.
The minister was trembling with fear after listening to the monk. It occurred to him that how this Jatadhari would have come to know about the idol. Now he had to confess to the king that he had found a golden idol during the excavation.
Seeing all this, Maharaj looked around the court and searched for Tenaliram, but he was nowhere to be seen. That’s why after some time Tenaliram came to the court. Everyone started laughing loudly on seeing him. Only then one person said that good! So, these were those sanyasis with hair ties. You took off your hair and clothes, but forgot to take off the garland.
Seeing everyone laughing, Maharaj also started smiling and praising Tenaliram, handed over the responsibility of getting the temple work done on his shoulders.
learn from the story
The lesson from this story is that greed is wrong. One should always act simply and with a good heart. By doing this, one never has to be ashamed in front of people.
