Some years after the Raja of the country was ill with cancer of the face and none of the ojhas could cure him.  At last one ojha said that there was only one medicine which could effect a cure, but he saw no chance of obtaining it and that was human excrement 12 years old.  Then the Raja sent messengers throughout the kingdom offering a reward of 200 Rupees to any one who could supply excrement twelve years old; and when a messenger came to the village where this family lived the daughter-in-law produced the packet which the old man had brought home and received the reward of 200 Rupees; and they were all delighted at making so much money by what the old man had brought home in jest.

And again it happened that the son of a Raja was bathing and he left his gold belt on the bank and a kite thought it was a snake and flew off with it.  The prince was much distressed at the loss but the Raja told him not to grieve as the kite must have dropped it somewhere and he would offer a reward of a thousand rupees for it.  Now the kite had soon found that the belt was not good to eat and seeing the snake’s skin which the old man had thrown on to the roof of the house, it dropped the belt and flew off with the skin; and the daughter-in-law picked up the belt and when criers came round offering a reward she produced it and received the money.  And they praised her wisdom and by this means the family became rich again.

IX.  The Oilman and His Sons.

There was once an oilman with five sons and they were all married and lived jointly with their father.  But the daughters-in-law were discontented with this arrangement and urged their husbands to ask their father to divide the family property.  At first the old man refused, but when his sons persisted, he told them to bring him a log two cubits long and so thick that two hands could just span it, and he said that if they could break the log in two, he would divide the property; so they brought the log and then asked for axes, but he told them that they must break it themselves by snapping it or twisting it or standing on it; so they tried and failed.  Then the old man said, “You are five and I make six; split the log into six,” So they split it and he gave each a piece and told them to break them, and each easily snapped his stick; then the old man said “We are like the whole log:  we have plenty of property and are strong and can overcome attack; but if we separate we shall be like the split sticks and easily broken.”  They admitted that this was true and proposed that the property should not be divided but that they should all become separate in mess.  But the father would not agree to this for he thought that people would call him a miser if he let his sons live separately without his giving them their share in the property as their own, So as they persisted in their folly he partitioned the property.