latter kind of people bury their money and belongings in the earth because they realise they are inured to begging, and that this is their stock
which has to remain intact. This is specially true of the beggars who beg
with a great deal of importuning and persistence. They have nothing
with which to buy their food or drink, and they, therefore, devote themselves to collecting money, gifts, andjewels, converting them into heaps.
Thus they transform small coins into larger ones, and the latter into
ash rafts. There is no trustee for them but the earth which returns to
them their trust in whole. And, therefore, this trust of the earth has become proverbial and we say (about an honest person) that he is more
trustworthy than the earth. Most beggars die from starvation as they are
hard upon themselves and stint on food and despite hard circumstances
go on accumulating wealth. They do not wish that what they have
earned through their own adverse fortune should reach someone else and
that they should will it to someone. Whatever, therefore, the treasure,
large or small, lies interred in the earth.
As regards kings, they bury treasures in the earth as they encounter
ordeals. They commit to the earth jewels and money in their fortresses
and palaces, and move their treasures in such a way that is impossible
for those transporting them from one place to the other to know where
the treasures have been buried. They are on the look-out for secret
places which are not within the knowledge of another person. There have
been kings who have not hidden the places of interment from those who
transferred the money and placed their trust in God. Some monarchs
hid them from the labourers and devised all kinds of stratagems, e.g.,
transporting the labourers in chests at night to the place of the burial,
and, the work done, taking them away in the chests, also at night, so that
they might not be able to guess where the treasure was buried. In such
stratagems it is essential not to employ the same labourer twice, so that
he may not become too eager to locate the burial ground. They thus
have their object fulfilled and the danger of its being found, removed. A
king, however, was rather careless in this transfer. The person who
supervised the burial, bored a hole in the chest in which he was conveyed, kept a bagful of rice and scattered the rice-grains on the way.
Next morning, he went to the place where the treasure was buried, and
took it out. The monarch did not know about it. He felt the need for it
twenty years after-wards but found nothing there.
These treasures lie interred intact. Sometimes accidentally people
come to know about their burial, if there are floods (and other natural
calamities). Bajkam Makani had collected his treasures with great labour
and love, and yet they remained committed to the earth as he was killed
by the spear of a Kurd. Likewise, the treasures of Abu'Ali Muhammad
bin Ilyas remained lying in the desert of Kirman as he had to leave and
