Please pay me for the yogurt.

Jagannath Puri, we saw the king of… the descendent of the King of Orissa. The present King, of course he has no other kingdom, per se, he still goes in procession with bands on his elephant and he performs this function, sweeping the roads. Originally, according to the Pandas of uh, in the uh… of Orissa, that Indradumnya Maharaja, I believe was the original King, he was supposed to marry another uh, neighboring, princess, but one day saw that he swept the road in front of Lord Jagannath, the person, wearing these…

That’s a special dignitary also came to sweep.

When he uh, saw that this Maharaj Indradyumna was uh, sweeping the road, then he felt very, insulted that, “My daughter is going to marry a street sweeper. No King will sweep.” So, they took this to be a great offence against Lord Jagannath. Then there are a few other things said also, which made it more offensive, so, Indradyumna declared war against him, and the Maharaja went out to uh, attack the kingdom.

On the way, according to the history handed down by those local priests, that, there was one lady selling yogurt, who was carrying a… a package of yogurt on her head and when she saw…, these two generals came up to her, one on a white horse and one on a black horse, and said, “Give us some yogurt, we are very hungry.” So she said, “Well, you have to pay me.”

“We don’t have any payment. You get it from the King behind us, you give this ring to him.” And well, the…the general on the white horse gave a ring, saw it was a very valuable golden ring, so she took it and gave the yogurt, which they drank and uh, when the King came, then this uh, old uh, village lady came up and said that “Please pay me for the yogurt.”

“Why? Why?”

After great trouble, the king would… finally she got to the King and said, “Oh, your two generals took my yogurt, and they didn’t pay. You are supposed to pay me.”

He said, “What two generals?” He said, “My generals are all here.”

“No, there was one on a white horse, one on a black horse.”

“What did they look like?”

“One was black colored, and one was, white, and they gave me this ring to give you.” And look it was the ring of Jagannatha from the description! Krishna and Balarama, Themselves had come up and taken the yogurt from her, so then he gave her a whole village, made her a… made her a countess and he knew that now his, campaign would be victorious.

H.H. Jayapataka Swami Maharaj

25th Sep, 1983 SB class @ New York, USA