View Passage |
Pride Goeth Before a Fall (excerpt)
Indian Fairy Tale

In a certain village there lived ten cloth merchants, who always went about together. Once upon a time they had travelled far afield, and were returning home with a great deal of money which they had obtained by selling their wares. Now there happened to be a dense forest near their village, and this they reached early one morning. In it there lived three notorious robbers, of whose existence the traders had never heard, and while they were still in the middle of it the robbers stood before them, with swords and cudgels in their hands, and ordered them to lay down all they had. The traders had no weapons with them, and so, though they were many more in number, they had to submit themselves to the robbers, who took away everything from them, even the very clothes they wore, and gave to each only a small loin-cloth a span in breadth and a cubit in length.

The idea that they had conquered ten men and plundered all their property, now took possession of the robbers' minds. They seated themselves like three monarchs before the men they had plundered, and ordered them to dance to them before returning home. The merchants now mourned their fate. They had lost all they had, except their loin-cloth, and still the robbers were not satisfied, but ordered them to dance.

There was, among the ten merchants, one who was very clever. He pondered over the calamity that had come upon him and his friends, the dance they would have to perform, and the magnificent manner in which the three robbers had seated themselves on the grass. At the same time he observed that these last had placed their weapons on the ground, in the assurance of having thoroughly cowed the traders, who were now commencing to dance. So he took the lead in the dance, and, as a song is always sung by the leader on such occasions, to which the rest keep time with hands and feet, he thus began to sing:

"We are enty men,
They are erith men:
If each erith man,
Surround eno men
Eno man remains.
Tâ, tai, tôm, tadingana."

The robbers were all uneducated, and thought that the leader was merely singing a song as usual. So it was in one sense; for the leader commenced from a distance, and had sung the song over twice before he and his companions commenced to approach the robbers. They had understood his meaning, because they had been trained in trade.

When two traders discuss the price of an article in the presence of a purchaser, they use a riddling sort of language.

"What is the price of this cloth?" one trader will ask another.

"Enty rupees," another will reply, meaning "ten rupees."

Thus, there is no possibility of the purchaser knowing what is meant unless he be acquainted with trade language. By the rules of this secret language erith means "three," enty means "ten," and eno means "one." So the leader by his song meant to hint to his fellow-traders that they were ten men, the robbers only three, that if three pounced upon each of the robbers, nine of them could hold them down, while the remaining one bound the robbers' hands and feet.

Read the passage on the left to answer the following questions:

48)
Which is the best statement of the theme of this passage?
A) Dancing can be used in more ways than just entertainment.
B) Merchants are often beset on the road by vicious thieves.
C) Traders should be more careful when traveling through the woods.
D) When everyone else gives up, a clever person can come up with a solution.
49)
Which event from the story reveals a cultural practice?
A) The merchants make money selling cloth.
B) The thieves beset and steal from the merchants.
C) The merchants know how to dance and sing songs.
D) The thieves are uneducated, but the merchants are not.
50)
How does the lead merchant transform the traditional song he and the other merchants sing?
A) He changes the tune and melody of the song.
B) He does not dance like the rest of the men do.
C) He changes the song's words into instructions.
D) He changes some of the basic moves of the dance.
51)
Which narrative point in the story creates the most suspense?
A) when the lead merchant begins singing for the dance
B) when the ten merchants are returning home with a lot of money
C) when the clever merchant pondered over how to defeat the thieves
D) when the thieves force the merchants to strip down to loin cloths
52)
Which character in this story comes the closest to being a "complex character"?
A) the three thieves
B) the ten merchants
C) the merchant who leads the dance
D) the merchants who gave up fighting