Three Sayings for Thirty Tamlung

Khmer Tales · @khmer.tales

A young husband longed to learn something truly useful. He took thirty tamlung of silver, said goodbye to his wife and went from province to province looking for a teacher. He heard many famous masters chant their spells, but none of it spoke to him.

Far from home he met an old man, who asked what he was looking for. "I have three teachings," said the old man, "and they cost thirty tamlung. Hold on to them and you will never come to grief." He recited them: "Busy hands, full belly. At night, don't talk with women. When you're hungry, don't rush to eat."

The young man liked them, paid all thirty tamlung and learned them by heart. Then the old man handed the silver back. "If you can keep these three," he said, "they're yours for nothing."

He got a ride home on a merchant junk. All the way he repeated the teachings, and he scrubbed, mended and cared for the boat as if it were his own. Busy hands, full belly: the captain grew fond of him and fed him well every day.

One day they stopped at a temple hall where a feast had been laid out with no one around. The crew ate and drank until they fell asleep. He was hungry too, but he remembered: when you're hungry, don't rush to eat. "Food left like this is meant for someone," he thought, and hid up in the roof beams.

At noon a giant arrived, furious that someone had eaten his offering. His magic club flew about by itself, beating the sleeping sailors black and blue until they fled to the boat and sailed away in terror. The young man was so frightened that he leapt down from the beams with a great yell, and the startled giant ran off and left the club behind.

He walked home with the club and arrived late at night. He hid it under the stairs beneath a stone. His wife asked where he had been and what he had brought, but he only said, "I'll tell you in the morning." She coaxed and coaxed. At last he broke the second teaching and told her everything, even where the club was hidden.

While he was away, his wife had grown fond of another man, and that man was listening below the house. Before dawn he crept under the stairs and took the club. In the morning the young man found only the stone. "I broke my teacher's words," he groaned, "and now the club is gone."

He tied a rope round the stone and dragged it from one official to the next, asking them to find the thief. They all laughed him out of the door: who ever heard of a club that beats people by itself, or of a stone for a witness? At last he dragged it before the king. The king listened carefully and told his court, "Where there's a ditch, there's water flowing. He wouldn't say it if there were nothing to it."

The king sent the young man a flask of royal perfume, a scent no one else in the land possessed, for him and his wife to wear to three nights of dancing at the palace. The young man stayed home with a "headache" and gave the perfume to his wife. She shared it with the other man, and the two went to watch the dancing side by side. The king's officers simply followed the scent and brought them before the king, and the man confessed to taking the club.

The young man felt no anger. He asked the king to pardon them and left them his house and everything in it. Then he gave the magic club to the king. The king opened his treasury and told him to take whatever he liked. He chose only an old rusty knife lying under the storeroom and a little silver for the road. The courtiers laughed at him for a fool.

In the next kingdom he found a rich man holding funeral rites for himself: the king had ordered a finely carved cart by the next morning, on pain of death, and he could never finish in time. "Just feed me," said the young man, and with his old knife he built, carved and painted the cart in a single night. Busy hands, full belly, once again.

The grateful rich man gave him his daughter in marriage. That night, to test her, the young man pretended to be drunk and was sick on the sleeping mat, and the girl shrieked that she would never put up with a drunkard. In the morning he gave her back to her father, untouched, and walked on.

In a third kingdom the lords took turns guarding the end of the royal hall at night, and the king himself crept out to test them; any guard he found asleep was severely punished. When one lord's turn came, his family wept as if he were already lost. The young man offered to take his place for a meal. He sat awake all night with his knife, and when a figure crept up in the dark he seized it and pressed the blunt back of the blade against it. "Who goes there? The king ordered me to guard this hall!" "It is the king," came the answer.

The young man knelt and begged forgiveness, but the king only smiled. He had been looking for someone who would truly stay awake to protect him. He made the young man his chief minister, and years later, having no son of his own, he gave him his daughter's hand and the throne.

In the end he had paid nothing for the three teachings, yet they had fed him, saved him and raised him to a throne, and the one he broke had cost him his home. As the old saying goes, true words never die. Retold for Akahs Media from Khmer oral tradition.