813. A Valid Reason to read from the Original Manuscripts...!

This was sent to me by a friend who always insisted everybody to read the “Mula Grantha” be it Valmiki Ramayana or Vyasa Bharatha. My friend felt that though there are numerous Ramayanas and Mahabharathas penned by many writers they were all bland when comparing to one written by Sage Valmiki and Sage Vyasa.

When I asked him why? He would say that modified or imitative versions were no match to the original. And in many cases the original could be twisted to favour the thoughts of the author. Now to prove that point he sent this episode through e-mail.

A young monk arrives at a monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the monastery by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks were copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head Abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

“We have been copying from the copies for centuries,” the head monk says, “but you make a good point, my son.”

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the old Abbot.

The young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing.

“We missed the R!  We missed the R! We missed the R!”

His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is sobbing uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, “What's wrong, Reverent Sir?”  

With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, “The word was.........“CELEBRATE!!!”  in the original text and while copying someone had missed the word “R” and other had replaced “E” with “I” making the word which was “CELEBRATE”   to “CELIBATE” which we followed all the while blindly.