The Jewel That Cleared His Name

Satrajit wore it every day of his life.

The Syamantaka had been given to him by Surya, the sun himself. A stone that blazed with its own light and produced, without fail, a measure of gold every day.

Enough to keep an entire kingdom fed through a famine.

How he held it

Satrajit was proud of it in the particular way men become proud of things given to them rather than earned.

Certain the gift said something about his own worth, rather than about the sun's generosity.

So when Krishna once suggested - gently - that a treasure like that might sit better in the royal treasury, for the good of the whole kingdom, rather than as one man's private ornament, Satrajit refused.

He left the court still glowing with the offence of having been asked at all. Muttering to anyone who would listen that a gift given to him personally was his to keep, kingdom's good or not.