The Two Parrots and the Robbers' Cave
Hitopadesha Stories · 1 min read
Two parrot chicks hatched from the same nest were separated when a storm scattered them from their mother — one fell near a hermit's peaceful ashram and was raised there among gentle chanting and quiet meditation, while the other fell near a den of robbers and grew up hearing only their harsh planning and cruel talk.
Years later, a traveling king, lost in the forest, happened to pass both places on the same journey. Near the robbers' den, the parrot raised there squawked out threats and warnings to alert its criminal companions, urging harm on the stranger. Near the ashram, the other parrot — genetically identical in every way — greeted the same king warmly, offering him food and gentle blessings exactly as the hermits had always done.
The king, struck by how two birds from the very same nest could turn out so completely different, remarked to his companions that it was not blood or birth that shaped a creature's true nature, but the company it grew up keeping.
Moral of the story
The company you keep shapes who you become far more than where you were born.