From Punjabi Folklore
Once upon a time there was a blind fakir who used to sit day by day begging at the gate of a city. As he was accounted a saint, his simple neighbours called him Hafiz (a title of honour bestowed upon any one who can say the Koran by heart). It was the custom of Hafiz to cry out at intervals in a loud voice, “Who is the beloved of God, who will let me feel, only feel, one hundred gold mohurs?”
It happened one day that a certain soldier, returning from the wars, passed by the spot where Hafiz was sitting and heard his doleful cry. Said the soldier to himself, “I vow before God that if ever I have a hundred gold mohurs, I will carry the to this good man and let him feel them!”
He had not gone far on his was, when, as if in answer to his prayer, he picked up a bag of money which had been dropt in his path, and which contained a hundred gold mohurs, neither more nor less. So the good man retraced his steps, and going up to Hafiz, he said, “Sir, by the kindness of God and yourself I have found a hundred gold mohurs. Be good enough to feel them, O good old man!”
Blind Hafiz took the soldier’s bag, untied the string, picked out the coins one by one, counting them carefully as he passed them from hand to hand, then restored them, tied up the precious treasure again, and gave the soldier hundreds of benedictions.
“But,” said the soldier, “I also want my money, good Hafiz!” At once the bind beggar set up a dismal cry, “Friends, neighbours, help! Thieves! All my wretched life I have been scraping together a little money, here a pice, there a cowrie, and now this son of a thief would rob me of all!” The people who came rushing together with great tumult instantly seized the unfortunate soldier, tore his clothes to rags, beat him to a jelly, and finally hustled him out of the town.
But the soldier, determined to have his revenge, still waited about. A cat watches a mouse, and so in like sort the soldier watched the blind fakir. By-and-by Hafiz takes up his hamzah, and begins to feel his way home, passing down into the street of the blind beggars. His house was the last in the row near to the open country, and having undone the clasp, he entered and sat down on the floor, thanking God for all his mercies. But he was not aware that the soldier had dogged his steps, and that, at that very moment, he was standing behind him with drawn sword ready to cut off his head.
“Four hundred gold pieces before,” muttered old Hafiz, “an one hundred now. Four hundred and one hundred make five hundred!” And Hafiz laughed long and merrily.
The blind man now rose up and groped his way to a corner where he turned up the earth, revealing a flat stone, which he lifted, and, lo, beneath it a brass pot! Divesting himself of his broad belt, which was heavy with treasure, he deposited that, and the gold he had just acquired, in the brass pot aforesaid, and restoring everything to its proper place, returned to his cot.
Now came the turn of the soldier. Stooping down, he slyly uncovered the brass pot, which he lifted out with the utmost care; but, as ill luck would have it, in the act of rising, he knocked his head against a shelf. Instantly the old man bounded from his seat, and seizing his stick, began to career madly round the centre of the room, revolving like a wheel, and uttering the most frightful cries. Round and round he danced like a madman, striking out right and left with his stick, breaking his waterpots to shivers and flooding his room with water. His cries were so frantic as to be heard by another blind man who lived hard by, and who now came running over to see what was the matter. But scarcely had he entered the room when Hafiz closed with him, believing him to be the robber, and over the two blind men, believing him to be the robber, and over the two blind men went on to the floor, fast locked in each other’s arms, rolling here and rolling there in the mud, and with cries and yells tearing each other to pieces.
Taking advantage of the noise, and bursting with laughter, the soldier now slipped out of the house with all his booty, and got away as fast as his legs would carry him.
Source:
Romantic Tales From The Panjab With Indian Nights’ Entertainment, Charles Swynnerton, 1908
Kotharian Lightning 