Plight of being Poor

Plight of being poor

There is a verse in The Panchatantra

I will here tell the meaning for that and not the verse as I am not able to locate it now.

It tells about the pangs of poverty.

A beggar was standing on the road and he saw the corpse of a rich man passing by that way to the graveyard.

Instantly the beggar called the rich man's corpse as friend's corpse (only the rich find the friends in a jiffy. Probably the rich man when he was alive would have driven out the beggar a thousand times, also, who knows).

He addressed the corpse as O! friends corpse, arise and give me your wealth.

I am oppressed by poverty. Please lift my heavy weight of poverty.

You are good and dead ( a rich man is always a good man).

You are good and dead and what use is your money now for you. Instead you can give that to me, who am a poor beggar
.

The corpse didn't make any move (after all it is a corpse).

Then the beggar thought 'It is better be dead than be poor'.