The case for borrowing/adaptation by Beschi is definitely reasonably established. The story of the Wise men of Gotham is derived from the resistance of Gotham city folks to a new approach road that a thirteenth century king of England tried to construct to their city. Later folk traditions say that the city men feigned madness. As madness was considered as contagious by Christians then, the king stopped the project. Their ‘mad deeds’ became popular and it was in 1540 they were made into a book. The author of the collection was the traveller and physician Andrew Boorde (1490-1549). Clearly, the literary attestation of this tale cannot go back beyond the sixteenth century.

The origin of this particular anecdote, however, may not be Europe at all. It may be from India. A comparison of the way this tale was used in Hindu spiritual literature and in the literature of Christendom also reveals something about the value systems of the two civilisations.

Panchadasi is an Advaitic Vedantic treatise written by 12th jagadguru of the Sringeri Sarada Pitham, Sri Vidyaranya and his successor Sri Bharati Tirtha. It was written between 1386 and 1391 CE. The book is called Panchadasi because it has 15 chapters or prakaranas. Each prakarana takes a particular aspect of the darshana that the text supports and explains it in a way it is easier for the students to understand. The seventh prakarana of panchadasi is called 'Triptidipa Prakaranam'. It deals with the supreme satisfaction or fulfillment that arises on the realisation of the true nature of the self. Of all the prakaranas in the text, this is the largest with 298 shlokas. They are meant to explain one shloka of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (4.4.12). It is in this chapter the anecdote of the 10 travellers crossing a river and then lamenting the death of the tenth person, is described.

Both direct and indirect knowledge as well as knowledge and ignorance, can

exist at the same time in the ever knowing entity similar to the tenth person.

The tenth person because being counted as the nine, even as he sees all the

other nine persons, still being seized by fear he does not recognize himself as

the tenth.

Though being tenth with he declares his inability to find the tenth person

whom he considers as missing. This is the veiling (aavarana) created by the

ignorance.

He laments for the tenth person and cries. This grieving and lamenting caused

by ignorance is called Vikshepa by the wise.

When a person of good intention aiming to help, says to the lamenting person

that the tenth person is not dead, this indirect knowledge he believes that

indirect knowledge.

When he acquires the direct knowledge through counting that he himself is the

tenth, he becomes happy and stops grieving. [verses 22-27]

Thus, after using this humorous episode to explain lucidly a philosophical problem, the authors of Panchadasi pick up this anecdote again later in the chapter:

Hearing that the tenth man exists is an indirect knowledge is paroksha knowledge (not direct knowledge). But it is not false. Similarly, the Mahavakyas ‘Brahman exists’ is not false. The veiled nature of both the statements due to ignorance is again the same.

Through the statement 'you are the tenth person', the person is led to the path of analysis and through counting he arrives at the truth as his own experienced knowledge (aparoksha gyana). Similarly through the statement 'Self or Atman is Brahman' one through thorough analysis without doubt makes as direct knowledge, 'Self itself is Brahman'.

The knowledge that he is the tenth never gets negated. Whether he arrives at

himself by starting anywhere in the line-up he would always arrive at being

the tenth person and never would again arise the doubt of only nine persons

existing.

The Vedic statement of ‘Brahman alone as the Sat before the emergence of all existence’ is thus the indirect (paroksha) knowledge of Brahman, which when taken (as a guiding principle) and used for thorough analysis, becomes the direct (aparoksha) knowledge of Brahman in ‘Tat Tvam Asi.’ [verses 57:61]

So, here we have an anecdote that every one, from a child to an adult, can enjoy while going through a process that leads one to self-discovery.

If this story entered Panchadasi at the end of 14th century, it should have been in vogue for quite a long time as a local fable. Probably, with the Vijayanagar empire rising as a great force and started having contact with European merchants in the subsequent centuries, these kind of stories must have reached the West.

Then the story got repackaged two centuries later by Catholic missionary Beschi, but here it was serving altogether a difference purpose. Several reasons have been attributed as to why Beschi (or Veeramamuni as he called himself while he was evangelising Tamils) wrote this book. Benjamin Babington the translator had stated that the Catholic missionary was actually satirising Hindu monks. Endorsing Babington, Prof Kumaran Iswaranatha Pillai of Yaazhpanam University, Sri Lanka, elaborates: