There once came to Vijayanagara a scholar who had, so he announced, read every book worth reading and defeated every pundit worth defeating. Kingdom after kingdom had garlanded him. In Krishnadevaraya's court he bowed gracefully and issued his challenge: "Let your best scholar debate any book with me. If I lose, I shall leave learning forever. If I win — I take the title 'Master of All Scholars' and a chest of gold."
One by one, the court pundits discovered urgent business elsewhere. The man's memory was an ocean; his tongue, a sword. The king's pride was in the dust, until Tenali Rama whispered, "Sire, I shall debate him tomorrow — on the greatest of all books."
Next morning Tenali arrived dressed as a venerable pundit, forehead striped with sacred ash, and in his arms a huge bundle wrapped in silk, tied grandly with cords. He laid it on the table with enormous care, as one lays down a sleeping child. "Honoured guest," he said, "let us debate this — the rarest of classics: the Tilakashta Mahisha Bandhana."
The great scholar's heart missed a beat. Tila-kashta Mahisha Bandhana? He had never heard the name in all his years — but how could the man who had read everything confess it? "An... excellent choice," he said smoothly. "Yet so profound a work deserves a fresh mind. Shall we begin tomorrow at dawn?" "At dawn," agreed Tenali pleasantly.
That night the scholar paced his room, ransacking his memory for even a whisper of the mysterious book, and found nothing. Before the first cock crowed, he had bundled his fame onto a horse and fled the city, leaving a note pleading sudden illness. In court, the king asked wonderingly, "Rama, what IS the Tilakashta Mahisha Bandhana?" Tenali untied the silken cords: inside lay a sheaf of dried sesame stalks — tila-kashta — bound with a rope of buffalo hide — mahisha bandhana. "Sesame sticks tied in buffalo cord, Sire. A very great work — it carried away all his pride in one night." The court's laughter, they say, was heard across the river.