Tenali Raman was a learned scholar and a poet in the court of King Krishnadevaraya. He was a minister in the court and was also one of the eight poets. He was famous for his wit and quick thinking.

On the Story Prism podcast, Tenali Raman tales are a collection of some of those stories.

Today's story, 'Tenali and the Great Pundit' is about how Tenali teaches a lesson to an arrogant scholar.

Free activity sheet available at www.rituvaish.com/archive-tenali-outsmarts-a-thief

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Transcript

Once, a great pundit came to Vijayanagar. He approached the king, Krishnadevrai and claimed that he was so knowledgeable that he could defeat all the king’s ministers in a debate about any subject.

The king accepted the challenge and asked his ministers to compete with the pundit. However, all the ministers were defeated as the pundit seemed to be an expert on every subject.

Children, I am sure you all love riddles. Can you ask a riddle now?

Nice, that’s really clever of you.

At last, it was Tenali Raman’s turn. Tenali showed the pundit a cloth cover in the shape of a book and told him, “I will debate with you on a topic from this great book called ‘Thilakstha Mahisha Bandhanam’.”

The pundit was stumped, as he had never heard of such a book.

The pundit asked the king for one night’s time to prepare. However, the pundit was worried that he would lose the debate as he had never heard of the book. So he packed his things and left the kingdom quietly at night.

The next day, the king and courtiers heard that the pundit had gone away during the night. The king was impressed with Tenali and told him he wanted to read the book that scared the pundit away.

Tenali laughed and said such a book did not exist. He unpacked the cloth cover only to reveal a bundle of ’til’ sticks and some sheep dung tied together by a buffalo-hide rope to form the shape of a book. Tenali had combined the Sanskrit names of the contents of the cloth cover to make up the book’s name – ‘Thilakashta Mahisha Bandhanam’. The phrase literally breaks down to "tila" (mustard), "kashta" (stick), "mahisha" (buffalo), and "bandhana" (rope), which can be interpreted as a rope made of mustard stalks used to tie a buffalo

The King was impressed with Tenali’s cleverness and rewarded him.

Moral

You should not be overly arrogant about your knowledge and wisdom.