Passage 30

In English

I would relate a story in this context. There was a minister to a king who was in the habit of declaring that whatever happened was for one's good. Once the king cut his finger while slicing a piece of sugarcane. Seeing the bleeding finger of the king, the minister remarked that the cut was for the king's good. The king got so angry that he committed the minister immediately to prison. Even then the minister remarked that the prison sentence was for his own good. A few days later the king went alone for hunting in a forest and was resting under a tree. The servants of the tribal chief of the forest seized the king to be offered as human sacrifice for the tribal goddess. When the king was about to be beheaded, it was noticed that the king's finger was mutilated and such a mutilated person could not be offered as sacrifice. The king was freed. He remembered the minister's words and realised that the injury to his finger had saved him from death. He went to the prison straight and asked his minister how he could declare that the prison sentence was good for him. The minister replied that but for his being confined in prison, he would have accompanied the king and the tribal would have chosen him in the place of the king for their sacrifice.