One rogue went from Khorasan to India in the hope that there he would be able to deceive someone and make money, and two other rogues went from India to Khorasan for the same thing. So they met halfway. We sat and talked, and then an argument started: which of them is the most clever liar? They got excited and decided that everyone would tell some kind of tall tale. Whoever can’t stand it and declares that this is a lie will lose. The loser must give the winner five hundred gold coins.
Here is one of the Indian rogues began:
“My father was famous for his wealth; he had countless goods. And he also owned hundreds of thousands of buffaloes. Each one gave a sea of milk. I remember my father built a swimming pool right in the steppe, whitewashed it with lime and started fermenting the milk. As soon as the milk turns sour, a thousand buffaloes are released into the pool. The buffaloes bathe in milk, scurry back and forth, flounder - that’s where the butter gets churned. The father of the buffalos will lead the buffaloes to the ground, lower the raft into the pool and let’s collect the oil with shovels. And he pours the buttermilk straight into the steppe. Then the butter is melted - hundreds of vats of melted butter are obtained.
“We know,” said the Khorasanian, “since the buffaloes are such, the milk will indeed be excellent.” Yes, and oil too. There is nothing surprising in your story.
Now it was the turn of the second Indian rogue.
“My father was also very rich,” he began. “He kept tens of millions of chickens in a pen.” And hundreds of thousands of roosters. As soon as the chickens began to lay eggs, whole mountains of eggs grew. Father will take a rake and let's stir up the eggs. Look, after about twenty days the chicks hatch. Their father released them into the steppe, and after a while he sold them - he earned a lot of money.
“It’s a sure thing,” said the Khorasanian, “if such chickens, mountains of eggs, will really grow.” How can you rake them if not with a rake? And, of course, you can get a lot of money for chickens. And there is nothing surprising in your story. You better listen to me. My father was a very good person. I had many brothers. One day our younger brother fell ill, and the wound on his head began to bleed. We sprinkled earth on his wound, and what do you think happened?! Apparently, there was a millet seed in that little piece of land by accident. Take it and sprout! The sprout grows, and we add some earth to the root! We look, the sprout began to spike, then the ear ripened, the grains fell off, and new sprouts appeared. Look, a whole field has formed on my brother’s head! And then there's drought! What to do? The field will die! As soon as we hear about the rains, we take our brother in that direction. Well, the millet is ripe, we hired farm laborers. They climbed onto my brother’s head and spent several months harvesting. Here we sent bulls to his head, the farm laborers started threshing, we threshed a lot of millet. The harvest turned out to be significant. There are so many people who borrowed money, it’s impossible to list them! Your fathers came too. They took five hundred gold worth of millet. So pay me back!
“That’s it! What a Khorasanian! What should we do now?” the rogues from India were confused. “If you say it’s a lie, it means you lost the argument, shell out five hundred gold pieces. If you say it’s true, you lost again, pay off your father’s debt!”
They gave the Khorasan a thousand gold pieces, said goodbye to him and turned back. And the Khorasanian also went home.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru