The Two Fish and the Frog
Hitopadesha Stories · 1 min read
A frog living at the edge of a lake overheard fishermen planning to cast their nets there the very next morning, and hurried to warn his two fish neighbors, Shatabuddhi (Hundred-Wits) and Sahasrabuddhi (Thousand-Wits), both known for their sharp cleverness.
Sahasrabuddhi laughed off the warning entirely. "With a thousand tricks at my command, no net could ever catch me," he said proudly. Shatabuddhi agreed, boasting that his hundred clever escapes had never once failed him. Only a third, more humble fish named Ekabuddhi (One-Wit) took the frog seriously and quietly left that very night for a distant, safer river.
The next morning, the fishermen's nets swept through the lake exactly as the frog had warned. Both clever fish, so confident in their countless tricks that neither had bothered to actually leave, were caught along with dozens of others — their thousand wits and hundred wits proving far less useful than the one plain wit that had simply chosen to act on a warning in time.
Moral of the story
One small, timely action is worth more than a thousand clever excuses for delaying it.