The Woodcutter and His Axe

Here is a story one may have read during childhood in some Sanskrit book. The same is written here with the help of that memory. The conclusion to be drawn is left to the readers.

There was a poor woodcutter. He would daily go to cut some dry branches of trees with the help of an old axe. He would sell those dry twigs in the nearby “Haat” to earn his livelihood.

One day, he, having climbed upon a tree situated beside a flowing river, was cutting some dry branches of the tree. Suddenly, the axe slipped out of his hand and fell into that flowing river and disappeared.

The woodcutter became deeply sad. He sat on the bank of the river and wept like a child, crying in grief. How would he, without the axe, eke out his living and support his family?

Seeing the poor woodcutter in deep grief and anxiety, the water god Varuna, in the guise of a diver, appeared before him and asked him the reason for weeping. The woodcutter explained to the diver his plight.

The diver went inside the river and returned with an axe made of silver and asked the woodcutter, “Is it the axe you lost in the river?”

The poor man replied, “No, it is not mine.”

The diver went again into the river. This time, he returned with an axe made of gold and tried to give it to him, saying that ultimately he had got found the axe lost in the river.

But the poor woodcutter declined to take the axe and said to the diver that it was not his. It might belong to someone else.

Mine was made of iron only. The diver went again inside the river, and now in his hand was the original axe of the woodcutter that was lost in the river.

The woodcutter became overjoyed to see his axe having been found out by the diver. The diver, too, returned in his original form of God Varuna, who said, “I am very happy with your innocence and honesty intertwined together. Take all the three axes. All are yours, two are a gift from my side.”

— R. R. P.