Petbarvni jelen

Besedilo

Petbarvni jelen

Long ago in India, there lived a deer whose coat was of five colors and whose antlers were white. It dwelt deep in the mountains, unknown to humankind. A great river flowed at the foot of the mountain, and on the mountain lived a crow, with whom the deer passed its days in friendship. One day a man was swept down the river and was on the point of drowning. “Someone save me!” he cried. Hearing his cries, the deer was overcome with pity and swam out into the river to rescue him. Overjoyed that his life had been spared, the man pressed his hands together and said to the deer, “How can I ever repay your kindness?” The deer replied, “What need is there to repay me? Only never, on any account, tell anyone that I live on this mountain. My coat is of five colors. If people learn of me, they will surely kill me for my hide. It is for fear of this that I live hidden in these deep mountains, taking care that no one should know of me. Yet when I heard your cries, pity made me forget my own safety, and I came to save you.” “Indeed, you are right,” the man replied. “I shall never breathe a word of it.” He pledged this over and over, then departed. Returning to his village, he passed the months and days without telling anyone. Now it happened that the queen of that country had a dream in which she saw a great deer with a coat of five colors and white antlers. Upon waking, she said to the king, “I have had such a dream. Surely this deer must exist somewhere in the world. You must find it, capture it, and give it to me.” The king therefore issued a decree: whoever found and brought him a deer of five colors would be rewarded with gold, silver, jewels, and other treasures, as well as a province. Hearing this, the man whose life had been saved went to the palace and said, “The deer of the colors you seek lives deep in the mountains of that province. I know where it dwells. Give me hunters, and I shall capture it and bring it to you.” The king was greatly pleased. Taking many hunters with him, he set out in person, with the man as his guide. They entered the deep mountains, where the deer lay in its cave, knowing nothing of their approach. Its friend the crow saw them and, greatly alarmed, cried out, then tugged at the deer’s ear with its beak until it woke. “The king has surrounded this mountain with a host of hunters,” the crow told it. “They are about to kill you. There is nowhere left to flee. What are you to do?” With this, the crow flew away in tears. Startled, the deer walked toward the king’s palanquin. The hunters nocked their arrows and were about to shoot, but the king said, “The deer comes to us without fear. Surely there must be a reason. Do not shoot.” The hunters lowered their arrows, and the deer knelt before the palanquin and spoke. “Fearing what the color of my coat might bring upon me, I have lived hidden deep in these mountains. How, then, did Your Majesty learn where I dwell?” The king replied, “The man with the birthmark on his face, standing beside my palanquin, told me, and so I have come.” The deer looked and saw the man with the birthmark beside the palanquin. It was the very man whose life it had saved. Turning to him, the deer said, “When I saved your life, you said that nothing could ever fully repay my kindness. And so you pledged, again and again, never to tell anyone that I was here. Yet now you have forgotten that kindness and would have me killed. When you were drowning, on the very brink of death, I swam out to save you without a thought for my own life. Do you not remember your boundless joy?” Deeply grieved by his betrayal, the deer wept, tears streaming down its face. Then the king too shed tears and said, “Though you are a beast, you showed compassion and saved a human life. This man, consumed by greed, has forgotten the kindness done him. He is the one who should be called a beast. It is gratitude that makes us human.” He had the man seized and beheaded before the deer’s eyes. Then he proclaimed, “From this day forward, no one in my realm shall kill a deer. Whoever disobeys this decree and kills so much as a single deer shall at once be put to death.” With that, he returned to his palace. And it is said that from that time onward, peace prevailed throughout the realm, and the land prospered.