Smara Hari: Srila Prabhupada was very clever in giving philosophical concepts in a very clear, concise, practical way. One day he told us a story. He said, “There was a king and the king had a brahmin who was his advisor. Some of the other ministers were a little upset that the brahmin advisor would get so many facilities because he didn’t seem to do too much. They said, ‘We are so busy going around the kingdom collecting taxes and overseeing the borders and so many things but this brahmin doesn’t seem to do much, yet he has so much facility and this is upsetting us a bit and we would like him not to hang around the palace anymore.’ The king said, ‘Let me consider your request and I will discuss it with you in the morning. In the meantime I would like you to tell me the concise weight of the two royal elephants.’ The next morning he asked for the brahmin to come to his stateroom when the ministers arrived. The king asked them, ‘What is the weight of the elephants?’ They said, ‘Well, we don’t exactly know because we put them on the scale, but the scale broke and then we tried to hoist them with ropes and then the ropes broke. We have an idea but we don’t know precisely.’ The king said, ‘Punditji, I would like you to weigh concisely the two royal elephants. Can you do this for me?’ The pundit said, ‘My lord, may I have use of the royal barge?’ and the king said, ‘Yes of course.’ The pundit then asked, ‘May I have access to the grain store houses?’ and the king said, ‘Yes.’ The pundit said, ‘I will give you this information in a few hours.’ In the afternoon the pundit, said, ‘My king, the male elephant weighs so many thousand kilos and the she elephant weighs such and such.’ The king said, ‘How did you arrive at this information?’ He said, ‘Well sir, first of all, one at a time, I put the elephants on the royal barge, then I measured how much the water had been displaced.’ He said, ‘Then, bag by bag I put the rice in the barge until the same amount of water had been displaced and then we simply measured the rice.’ Then the king turned to the ministers and said, ‘So now do you understand why I keep punditji?’” Then Prabhupada went on to explain that there were four different varnas. He said that there was the brahmin class of men who were governed by lazy intelligence. He said, “This advisor was a lazy man but an intelligent man.” He said, “This is a brahmin.” Prabhupada said, “The kshatriyas are active intelligent.” He said, “The vaishyas are lazy foolish. And he said, “The sudras are active foolish.” He said, “These are the four divisions: brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya and sudra. Lazy foolish, active foolish, lazy intelligent and active intelligent.” In a very simple and concise way, Prabhupada explained the characteristics of the different orders.
Reference: Remembrances by Sidhanta Das- Folio Vedabase
