The Legend of a Treasure Jar

One year, a drought struck and all the crops in the fields were lost. Villagers were forced to pick wild vegetables, dig the roots of the weeds and eat the leaves to live, and it was even harder when winter came.

One day, an old monk came to the village and found that everyone in the village was pale and thin, and could hardly walk because of the hunger they were suffering from. He saw an old lady lying at her gate who could hardly get up and her son, a young man in his thirties, was also very weak when he walked towards the gate.

The old monk told the young man: “There is a stand of poplar trees at the east side of your village where you can find an old poplar tree with a piece of broken bark, and beside the roots of the poplar tree there is a small mound. Once you dig into the mound, you will find a jar of millet. Every night, you can get one scoop of millet from the jar and cook porridge with it for your mother. Remember, you are allowed to get only one scoop of millet for your family.” The young man listened to the old monk with indifference; he didn’t really care what the old monk said and carried his mother back to their house.

The mother urged her son to look for the millet, but as the son didn’t really believe what the old monk said, he didn’t go for it till it was very dark. In order to cope with his mother, he went to the poplar woods at the east side of their village in the bright moonlight with an iron lift and a gourd, and to his surprise he did find an old poplar tree with a mound at its roots. After digging two or three times, he found a jar of millet with a lid, so he joyfully got one scoop of millet as instructed. He then buried the jar where it was and went happily home.

Once he showed the millet to his mother, his mother folded her hands piously and said: “Amitabha, it must be heaven’s way to letting us have our food; we should express our gratitude for the guidance of the old monk. “The mother and son were saved, as were their friends and relatives who were told the secret and went there for one scoop of millet per family every night. It seemed that the millet in the jar always remained at the same level, no matter how many families went there for their one scoop of millet. All the families of the village went through the famine year in this way.

There was an insatiable rice trafficker in their village who, in the spring of the following year, heard the news of the treasure jar and took two of his sons to the mound at the root of the old poplar tree late one night to dig out the treasure jar with iron lifts, rope and wooden bars to carry home and make it their own fortune to enjoy forever.

They first got three sacks of millet and then keep on digging to get the jar, but they found that the more they dug, the deeper the jar became and no matter how hard they tried to dig, they could not reach the bottom of the jar. In the end, as the roosters made their first crows and the sun was rising, they dared not dig any more, so they buried the jar as it was and left for home with three sacks of millet.

But their sacks became heavier and heavier on the way home and once they arrived home, they were dumbfounded to find that all the millet in the bags had changed into sand.

After that, the treasure jar disappeared and all the villagers who heard this story cursed the rice trafficker and his sons for their greed, because they harmed both themselves and the villagers.

By Ying Ma and John
Source From KanZhongGuo