Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 32 A man who tried to cheat Yamaraja >>

“A man who tried to cheat Yamaraja”. There is a popular story from India of a man who tried to cheat Yamaraja. He consulted an astrologer and found out the exact day when he was going to die. This man was a sculptor so he knew how to work with clay very cleverly, very expertly. He made nine clay images of himself. He painted them and dressed them expertly. They all looked exactly like him. At the moment that he was supposed to die by that astrological calculation, he stood in between these nine statues of himself. Yamaraja came and he became confused. He saw ten persons looking the same, all standing in a frozen posture like this, so Yamaraja was puzzled. And he was looking and he was thinking: “This man may be the first one to actually cheat death, he is so expert.” But then Yamaraja, because he is mahajana, he is very intelligent, than he had a plan. So after looking at all these ten forms very carefully he said: “Actually whoever made these statues did a really lazy job. It’s a bad work. I’ve seen much better sculptures than this. It shows very poor taste, looks so distorted.” So the sculptor, because he was an artist, very attached, he couldn’t stand this and then he stepped forward and said: “What do you mean? These are very good statues. I am expert.” So the Yamaraja said: “All right, come on. Let’s go.”

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