A Pound of Flour

To establish his sovereignty and to purify the land after the war, Yudhishthira celebrated the great Ashvamedha, the horse-sacrifice, at Hastināpura, and it was a display of unmatched splendour: millions of brāhmaṇas and kings and poor folk gathered from every corner of the earth, and received lavish gifts of gold and cattle and grain, and everything was done in flawless conformity with the scriptures. And Yudhishthira felt a quiet pride in his heart at the perfection and the magnificence of it.

And suddenly, into the midst of the sacrificial pavilion, there came a strange weasel, half of whose body was pure shining gold; and it rolled on the ground and laughed aloud, a mocking human laugh. Listen, kings and priests, it cried; you think you have completed a grand sacrifice; but this whole horse-sacrifice and all your showy gifts are worth less than a single pound of flour once given by a poor brāhmaṇa family here in Kurukshetra. And when the offended priests demanded an explanation, the weasel told its story.

There was a poor brāhmaṇa family who lived by the strictest discipline, eating only the stray grains they gleaned from the fields after the harvest. And in a terrible famine they had fasted for days, until they gleaned at last a small handful of maize, which they ground into a single pound of flour and divided into four equal shares, one for each of them, for their only meal. And just as they sat to eat, a hungry traveller came to their door.

And without hesitation the father gave his share to the guest; and the guest ate it and was still hungry. Then the wife offered her share, over her husband's protest, saying that dharma was their common duty; and the guest ate it and was still hungry. Then the son offered his share, saying it was a son's duty to serve; and then the daughter-in-law offered hers, emaciated as she was, saying her body was dedicated to the household's service.

And the guest, who was Lord Dharma in disguise, was overjoyed, and threw off his disguise and showered flowers upon them and took all four of them in a divine chariot straight to the eternal abode, praising their sacrifice.

I was nearby, the weasel concluded, and caught the fragrance of that sacred flour, and where it touched me, one side of my body turned to gold. And ever since I have rolled in every great sacrifice in the world, hoping to turn my other side to gold as well; but no sacrifice, not even this lavish horse-sacrifice of Yudhishthira, has ever matched the purity and the love and the utter selflessness of that poor family's pound of flour; for your sacrifice is a product of wealth and pride, and theirs was a product of pure devotion.

And saying this, the weasel vanished, and Yudhishthira's pride was wholly shattered. For here, once more, and now as the judgment upon the greatest of all public sacrifices, is the truth the whole book has been teaching: that the Divine measures our offerings not by their magnificence but by the love and the sacrifice within them, and that a starving family's shared pound of flour, given whole in love, outweighs an emperor's golden sacrifice given out of pride.

The greatest offering is not the largest, but the one that gives the most of the self, in the purest love.