In English
Once in the court of , there was a debate in which the eight scholars of the royal court popularly known as participated. , , , were among them. Peddanna was asking the questions and was answering them with meanings and interpretations. was watching the proceedings quietly. wanted to know who among them was the best. He wanted them to frame a meaningful sentence consisting of five letters, each letter having the same meaning in five different languages. “Whoever comes out with an answer to this question by seven tomorrow morning will be suitably rewarded,” he added. As his house was far away, Ramakrishna decided to spend the night in his brother-in-law’s house. He was provided with a comfortable bed for the night, but Ramakrishna refused to sleep on it. He said, “I have to think of an answer to a question put by the king by tomorrow morning. A bed like this is certain to put me to sleep in no time. So, provide me a cot in the cow shed.” As he was lying on the cot, at one o’clock in the night, one of the cows in the shed gave birth to a calf. Ramakrishna called out to inform his brother-in-law about this. His brother-in-law wanted to know which cow had given birth to a calf as he had given different names to his cows like , , , etc. He asked Ramakrishna, “” (which cow is that, Oh brother-in-law). When Ramakrishna heard this, his joy knew no bounds as he had found an answer to the king’s question. So, he too repeated the phrase again and again. His brother-in-law thought that Ramakrishna was behaving in this strange manner due to lack of sleep. The next morning, Ramakrishna went to the royal court and found that no one had an answer to the question. All others were so confident that it was not possible to frame such a sentence. Ramakrishna was a great devotee of the Divine Mother. He told the king that with the blessings of the Divine Mother, he had found an answer to the question. “” is the answer, he said. Everyone was intrigued. Then he explained, “‘Ye’ in Marathi, ‘Av’ in Hindi, ‘Ra’ in Telugu, ‘Ba’ in Kannada, and ‘Va’ in Tamil convey the same meaning, i.e., ‘come’.” Five languages are represented in this sentence. The previous night, Ramakrishna was constantly contemplating on the Divine Mother. It was due to his native wit and divine grace he could find an answer.