In a certain town, there lived four young Brahmins. They were great friends. Three of them were very well versed in the holy scriptures, but lacked in common-sense. The fourth was completely ignorant of the holy scriptures, but had good common-sense.

One day, these four friends had a discussion together. They said, ” What is the good of scholarship, if you cannot impress kings in far off lands by it, or earn money with it? So, let us travel east”. Accordingly, they set out.

When they had covered some distance, the eldest of them said, “One of us has only common-sense and no scholarship. Now, no one earns the king’s esteem by mere common-sense, so let us not give him any of our share of the profits. In fact, let him go home.”

The second Brahmin turned to the one with common-sense and said to him, “My friend, you are no scholar, so you had better go home.”

But the third one said, ‘we shouldn’t behave like this towards our friend. After all, we have all grown up together and played games with one another since we were children, so let him come. What is more, he should get his share of our earnings. Finally, the others agreed and they all proceeded on their way. After sometime, they came to a jungle and found the bones of a lion lying there.

Then one of them suggested, ‘Let’s put our scholarship to test. Here lies a dead lion. We’ll see if we can bring him to life.’ And so, one of them collected bones and made a skeleton of a lion. The second one put flesh and blood into it, covering it with skin. The third one was on the verge of putting the very life back into the lion, when the fourth stopped him.

‘Stop friend ! he cried.’ For goodness sake, don’t do that! Look here, if you bring this dead lion to life, he’ll kill the whole lot of us!’

But the third Brahmin shouted,”You don’t think I am going to waste my knowledge after we have come so far.”

‘All right then’ said the fellow with common-sense’, but just wait a minute, while I climb up this tree.’ And off he went up the tree.

The third Brahmin brought the lion to life. The lion immediately killed the three Brahmins.

The one with the common-sense waited until the lion had gone, then he got down from the tree and went home.

❖ Common sense is preferable to knowledge.

❖ Knowledge without common sense is useless.