A gentleman who desired to conduct the wedding procession of his son with suitable splendour borrowed, from its Mussalman owner, an elephant to accompany the procession. During the progress of the procession, the elephant died all of a sudden, through some cause unknown. The borrower, at once, went and explained the matter to the owner, and offered to make reasonable compensation. The latter would not listen to this, but insisting on his own animal being restored alive, laid his complaint before Mariada Ramanna. Seeing how matters stood, Mariada Ramanna tried his best to induce the complainant to accept compensation, but to no purpose. He then postponed the case to the following day and dismissed the parties. Meanwhile, he sent for the Defendant privately, and advised him not to appear at Court next day, until the Plaintiff should come in person and call him. He also directed him to pile up all the old crockery he could collect in his house, behind his street door and to leave it ajar, so that when the Plaintiff came to call him, in a hurry, he might push the door open, and thus damage all the pots. As soon as this happened, the Defendant was to create as much din as possible so that all his neighbours might hear him, and he was them to charge the Plaintiff with having destroyed his family pots, which had descended from father to son for generations, and were therefore set-store by. He was then to come to Mariada Ramanna and make his counter complaint.
Things happened that way and the Defendant was even more persistent and emphatic than the Plaintiff, in his demand that the indentical pots should be restored, safe and sound, and that no amount of money would compensate him for his loss. Mariada Ramanna accordingly decided both of these preposterous claims by a mutual set off, decreeing that the damaged pots wiped out the claim in respect of the dead elephant. Hence the well-known saying.
