Tenali Raman was a Telugu poet and jester at the court of King Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara. Like Birbal in the court of Akbar of about the same period, he is turned into a legend by the innumerable stories of his wit and wisdom, and his uncanny skill in turning the tables on his detractors including the king himself. This story relates a series of episodes. In the first, Tenali Raman confounds a scholar contest by producing a well tied bundle of sesame stems as a recent treatise. When greedy priests fool the king on the pretext of his mother's unfulfilled wishes, Tenali Raman takes them on with the concocted wishes of his departed mother. In this and many other stories Tenali is the winner in the battles of wits.