There was once a weaver whose field used to be visited every night by an elephant of Indra, the king of heaven. it would come down from the sky and graze in his fields, leaving it devastated. He asked one of his weaver friends what animal could be doing this to his field. He said, “perhaps its the village rice-ponders. Maybe they get up in the night and visit your field”. So he had every rice-ponder in the village tied up, but the damage went on as before. He again consulted another friend, and this times time, he was told that the damage might have been caused because of the village grindstones when everyone is fast asleep. So the weaver had every grindstone in the village tied up, but the damage went on as before. But this time it got worse, looking at his situation a local suggested him to put a scarecrow in the middle of the the field.
The weaver tries this idea too, but the results were the same. This was the last time he tried something like this to prevent the field from getting destroyed. So he went one night and lay in wait in the field. And what did he see? he saw an elephant fly down and graze on the crop. As it was about to fly away, the weaver caught hold of his tail and went with it to Indra’s court in heaven. There he sat in a corner and saw the celestial dancers dance and heard them sing. Nobody there seemed to take any notice of him, he even had is fill of divine dishes in the god’s kitchen.
The next night, when the elephant was flying back to earth, he held on to its tail and came home. As soon as he landed, he told his friends of all the wonders he had seen and said, “what’s the use of living in this wretched place? Let’s all go Indra’s heaven.” the agreed, and when the elephant was back after its nightly meal of earthly crops, first the weaver clung onto its tail, his wife clung on to him and so all his kinsfolk held on too, in a long human chain. When they got pretty high, the weaver began to think to himself, ‘What a fool i was not to bring my loom with me!’ and so he let go his hold but as he panicked to fall down from such a height he tries to get a grip on the elephant’s tail. He gets hold of the glimmering shawl which covered the elephant’s back but because of the weight the shawl starts to tear off and they came tumbling down to the earth again. This time the elephant does not fail to notice what had caused his royal shimmering shawl to tear off and finds out what the weaver was trying to do and flies back to heaven. Disappointed on him, the weavers wife and friends walk away calling him a coward and a selfish man.
To prove them wrong the weaver starts to give away all his time and money on the field to attract Indra’s elephant so that he could go to heaven. But the elephant knew at once, that it was all because of the weaver’s greedy thought and not an apology. The weaver does grow a beautiful field but refuses to sell it and loses everything he had, just to bribe the elephant to come back to Earth.
Picture Courtesy: Gond Painting by Bhajju Shyam
