The Legend Of The Rice

: Parables and Proverbs
: Laos Folk-lore Of Farther India

In the days when the earth was young and all things were better than

they now are, when men and women were stronger and of greater beauty,

and the fruit of the trees was larger and sweeter than that which we now

eat, rice, the food of the people, was of larger grain. One grain was

all a man could eat, and in those early days, such, too, was the merit

of the people, they never had to toil gathering the rice, for, when

r pe, it fell from the stalks and rolled into the villages, even unto

the granaries.



And upon a year, when the rice was larger and more plentiful than ever

before, a widow said to her daughter, "Our granaries are too small. We

will pull them down and build larger."



When the old granaries were pulled down and the new one not yet ready

for use, the rice was ripe in the fields. Great haste was made, but the

rice came rolling in where the work was going on, and the widow,

angered, struck a grain and cried, "Could you not wait in the fields

until we were ready? You should not bother us now when you are not

wanted."



The rice broke into thousands of pieces and said, "From this time forth,

we will wait in the fields until we are wanted," and, from that time the

rice has been of small grain, and the people of the earth must gather it

into the granary from the fields.