In the city of Vardhaman, there lived a wealthy merchant named Dantila. He held a great reception for his wedding. He invited the king, the queen, their ministers and all the rich and influential persons in the city. Gorambha, a sweeper in the royal household also attended the reception. Dantila saw him occupying a seat reserved for the nobles of the king, he ordered his servants to throw Gorambha out of his house.
Gorambha felt insulted and thought to himself,
“I am a poor man and so cannot give any reply to such a wealthy person as Dantila. I must some how see that Dantila realises his mistake.”
Then he hit upon a plan to take revenge on Dantila.
One early morning when the king was still asleep, Gorambha entered the kind bedroom and started sweeping, began loudly murmuring in sleepy voice,
“Oh, how arrogant is Dantila! He has the guts to lock the queen in his embrace.”
Hearing this, the king demanded to know whether what Gorambh was murmuring is true. Did Dantila embrace the queen? To this question Gorambh replied,
“Oh, your majesty, I don't remember nor do I know what I was saying because I was drowsy having spent the entire night in gambling,” the sweeper told the king.
Not satisfied with his reply the king thought that it was possible that the sweeper had seen Dantila, who had equal access to the royal household as Gorambha, embracing the queen. He remembered wise men saying that men were likely to talk in their sleep about what they did, and saw in the day.
Convinced that Dantila had embraced the queen, the king barred Dantila from entering the royal household.The merchant began grieving his fate though he had not done any harm to the king or his relatives even in his dreams.
One day as Dantila was trying to enter the king's palace he was barred by the king's men. Seeing this Gorambha told them,
“You fools, you are barring the great Dantila who has won the king's favours. He is powerful. If you stop him, you will meet with the same fate as I did at the hands of Dantila one day.”
The merchant thought that it was not right on his part about how he behaved with Gorambha on the party day. One evening he invited the sweeper for tea and presented him with expensive clothes and told him, “Friend, I had never meant to insult you. You had occupied a seat I had set apart for the learned. Kindly pardon me.”
This pleased, the sweeper and he promised to himself that he would win the kin's favour for Dantila again. The next day, Gorambha repeated the same drama of pretending to talk irrelevantly, that the king was eating cucumber in the rest room. “What nonsense are you talking? Did you ever see me doing such things?” the king demanded to know.
“No, your majesty. I do not know nor do I remember what I was saying because I was drowsy having spent the entire night in gambling,” the sweeper said.
The king then realized that if what the sweeper had said about him was not true what he had said about Dantila also could not be true. A person like Dantila could not have done what Gorambha had told him.
The king also found that without Dantila the affairs of the state had suffered and civic administration had come to a standstill. The king immediately summoned the merchant to his palace and restored to him all the authority he had enjoyed before he fell out of king's favour.
“That is why we must know that pride goes before fall.”
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