The Farmer and the Trusting Cobra

A farmer discovered a cobra living in an anthill at the edge of his field and, out of respect for the creature's power, began leaving a bowl of milk beside the anthill every morning. In gratitude, the cobra left a single gold coin in the empty bowl each day, and over time the farmer grew comfortably wealthy from this strange, quiet arrangement.

When the farmer had to travel, he entrusted the daily ritual to his son, who performed it faithfully at first — but greed soon got the better of him. Reasoning that a creature that could produce a gold coin daily must be hoarding a vast treasure underground, the son decided to kill the cobra outright and dig up the anthill to claim it all at once. He struck at the cobra with a stick, but only wounded it before it escaped into its hole, and no treasure was ever found beneath the anthill at all — there had only ever been the coins the cobra chose to give.

When the farmer returned and learned what his son had done, he begged the wounded cobra's forgiveness, and the cobra, in time, agreed to resume leaving a coin now and then — but never again matched its former generosity, and always kept a wary distance from the farmer's home from that day forward. "We can behave as if the wound never happened," the cobra told him honestly, "but the scar of it remains between us regardless, and a hand once raised against you is never entirely forgotten, however the friendship continues afterward."