Once there lived four young Brahmins in a certain town. There were very good friends and always worked together. Although all four were young but one of them was a complete ignorant in matters of knowledge and learning but he had a good common sense. All the other three were very learned and educated persons in matters of Holy Scriptures, but they lacked common sense as the first one had.

One day when they all were assembled, they decided, “Dears, the knowledge that we have about the holy scriptures worth nothing, until we cannot impress the king or otherwise to earn money. We have to prove our knowledge.” Thus they decided to earn money by using their learning in Holy Scriptures. As the fourth one was not learned so the other three decided to leave him behind. The three agreed to this point and one of them said, “What good is common sense. What one does with his common sense? His talents would not help us in earning money, let us leave him behind and we all three move ahead.”

The fourth one was very disappointed at this decision and even after much insistent by him, they all decided to take him with us. They agreed, “It will not be right to behave like such a manner to a dear friend. So we have to take him with us. Even if he will not able to earn money we should share a part of our earning with him.” they all agreed and as decided they all started travelling.

While they were travelling through the jungle, one of them noticed the bones of a dead lion, lying on their way. As he saw, he immediately said to the others, “Let us start using our learning. It is the time to test our learning. We have dead lion in front of us, we test our learning to bring life into it.”

While all the three Brahmins agreed but the fourth Brahmin did not agree with them. He tried hard to left this idea but no one even listened him and they all started holy rituals to breathe life into the lion. One of the Brahmins started collecting the bones of the lion and by using his learning created a skeleton of the lion.

Then the other Brahmin came forward and started using his learning and within few moments the lion was covered with flesh and skin. Now the lifeless lion stood in front of them and then the third Brahmin came ahead and initiated rituals to put life into the lion.

At this the fourth Brahmin worried and said them, “O My Friends, what are you doing all this. If the lion comes to life then he will kill all of us. Please stop doing all this and immediately leave this place.”

The other Brahmins laughed at him, “Dear, after reaching so close to our aim, are we going to waste our knowledge? You say so, because you have not such knowledge and jealous of our learning. But we would not stop now.”

The fourth Brahmin understood that there was no point in arguing with them. So he decided to climb up the tree. He requested them, “Dears, Please give me a moment. I wish to climb up a tree before you make use of our learnings.”

As they agreed with him, the fourth Brahmin immediately climbed up the tree and saw the third Brahmin use his learning to put life into the lion. Within few moments the lion became live and he noticed that the three Brahmins were celebrating their successful functioning of their learning.

The lion immediately attacked on them and killed them at the spot. The fourth Brahmin saw all from above the tree but he could do nothing but wait kill the lion had gone. As the lion went away he climbed down the tree and returned home alone.

 
The wise indeed say:

Common sense is preferable to knowledge.