For many years, a Brahman practiced austerities and offered worship to the gods in order to learn something of what happens to us when we die. At last the gods favored him.

One morning, as he was bathing in the river, his spirit left him and went into the body of an untouchable cobbler’s child. The child grew up, learned his father’s business, married, and became the father of a big family. Then suddenly he became aware that he was truly a Brahman, so he abandoned everything and went to another country.

Now, just as he reached that country, the king died without an heir. So the ministers and elders resorted to the popular custom of sending an elephant and a hawk around the country to elect a successor. The people would accept as king anyone that the elephant and the hawk acknowledged.

Well, wonder of wonders, the stranger, the Brahman in the body of the cobbler, was chosen for the royal office. The elephant bowed before him, and the hawk perched on his right hand, and thus proclaimed him king in the presence of all the people.

A few years later, the cobbler’s untouchable wife came to know of his whereabouts and went to join him. Then people began to gossip and ask questions, and soon it became known that the king was a cobbler and that his wife was also lowborn. The people were outraged. Some rioted, some fled, some took to penance, and others burned themselves. Everyone was afraid of being excommunicated. The king too could not bear the shame and the chaos, and threw himself into a fire.

At once his spirit went and reoccupied the corpse of the Brahman that still lay on the riverbank, and went home. When his wife saw him at the door, she said, “You’re back already! How quickly you bathed and performed your morning prayers!” The Brahman said nothing.

He only looked surprised and wondered: “Can this be what happens when one dies? Did all this really happen? Or did I dream it?”

Just about a week after this a man came into the Brahman’s courtyard and begged for food, saying he had eaten nothing for five days. He said he had been running away from his country as fast as he could, because a cobbler had become king and polluted the whole kingdom. All the people, he said, were running away or burning themselves to escape the evil that might befall them. The Brahman gave the man some food, but said nothing.

“How can such things be?” he thought. “I’ve lived as a cobbler and raised a family for years, and then reigned asea king for several years. Just when I was convinced it was a dream, this man arrived at my house and confirmed the truth of those happenings. Yet my wife says I’ve not been absent from the house for very long this morning. I believe her, for she does not look a day older, nor is the place changed in any way.

Maybe the soul passes through various stages of existence according to a man’s thoughts and words and acts, and in the great Hereafter time is measured differently: in that time, a day is equal to an aeon and an aeon is equal to a day. Maybe.”

A folk story from Jammu, sourced from ‘Folktales from India’ by AK Ramanujan.

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