Once, Emperor Bindusara of Magadha asked a question in his royal court: \u201cWhat is the cheapest way to solve the country\u2019s food problem?\u201d The ministers and other court members began to think. They reasoned that rice, wheat, millet, etc., require a lot of effort to grow\u2014and that too only if nature is favorable. In such circumstances, food can never be truly cheap. At that moment, a nobleman who enjoyed hunting said, \u201cYour Majesty, the cheapest food item is meat. It takes less effort to obtain and is also nutritious.\u201d Everyone agreed with this statement, but the Prime Minister, Chanakya, remained silent. Then the emperor asked Chanakya for his opinion. Chanakya replied, \u201cI will present my thoughts to you tomorrow.\u201d That night, Prime Minister Chanakya went to that nobleman\u2019s palace. Seeing Chanakya so late at night, the nobleman was startled. Chanakya said, \u201cHis Majesty has suddenly fallen gravely ill. The royal physician says that if we can get just two tolas (approx. 20 grams) of heart flesh from a nobleman, the king\u2019s life can be saved. So I have come to you, requesting only two tolas of your heart. In return, here are one lakh gold coins.\u201d Hearing this, the nobleman turned pale. He fell at Chanakya\u2019s feet, begging for mercy. Instead, he gave Chanakya one lakh gold coins and said, \u201cPlease take someone else\u2019s heart instead.\u201d Chanakya then went to the homes of other nobles and military officers, one by one, and made the same request. But no one was ready to part with even two tolas of their heart. On the contrary, each one offered him large sums\u2014one lakh, two lakhs, even five lakh gold coins\u2014to save themselves. By morning, Chanakya had collected about two crore (20 million) gold coins and returned to his palace. He presented the entire amount before the emperor in court. The emperor asked, \u201cWhat is all this?\u201d Chanakya replied, \u201cTo purchase just two tolas of flesh, such a vast amount of wealth was gathered. Yet, I could not obtain the meat. Your Majesty, now you decide\u2014how cheap is meat, really?\u201d Chanakya further said, \u201cLife is invaluable. We must not forget that just as our life is precious to us, the life of every living being on this earth\u2014be it human, animal, or bird\u2014is just as dear to them. The only difference is, humans can try to save their life by speaking, pleading, bribing, reasoning, or even begging. But animals and birds cannot speak. They cannot express their pain. So, does that mean we should snatch away their right to live\u2014just because they are voiceless?\u201d
\u2013 Mital Khetani (Mob. 98242 21999)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once, Emperor Bindusara of Magadha asked a question in his royal court: \u201cWhat is the cheapest way to solve the country\u2019s food problem?\u201d The ministers and other court members began to think. They reasoned that rice, wheat, millet, etc., require a lot of effort to grow\u2014and that too only if nature is favorable. In such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":["https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-06-26-at-1.53.27-PM-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"full":["https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-06-26-at-1.53.27-PM.jpeg",1122,720,false]},"categories_names":{"1":{"name":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/?cat=1"}},"tags_names":[],"comments_number":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5908,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions\/5908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omonlynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}