In a certain town there lived a poor brahmin named Devasharma. He had no wealth at all except what people gave him — and one festival day a kind householder filled his begging bowl with barley flour, enough to last many days. Overjoyed, Devasharma poured the flour into a clay pot, hung the pot on a peg above his bed, and lay down beneath it, gazing at his treasure until his eyes grew dreamy.
“Times of famine will come,” he murmured, “and then flour will be precious. I shall sell this pot for a hundred silver coins. With a hundred coins I shall buy two fine goats. Goats multiply quickly — soon I shall have a whole herd, and I shall trade the herd for cows and buffaloes. The milk and butter I sell will make me rich, and with those riches I shall buy fields and a grand house with courtyards.”
The dream rolled on, sweeter and sweeter. “Seeing my wealth, some worthy man will give me his daughter in marriage, and we shall have a fine son. I shall name him Somasharma. When he begins to toddle, he will wander near the horses, and I shall call out to my wife, ‘Take the baby!’ But she, busy with her housework, will not hear me — so I shall jump up, and I shall teach that horse to stay away from my boy — like this!”
And lost in his dream, Devasharma kicked out with all his might. His foot struck the pot above him — it shattered — and the whole precious store of flour poured down over him, turning the daydreaming brahmin white from head to toe. He sat in the wreckage of his herds, his mansions and his little Somasharma, all vanished with one kick into a cloud of barley dust.
So it goes with those who spend the fruits of tomorrow before doing the work of today: he who builds castles in the air loses even the pot on the peg.