Don't you have any donkey's in your country?

I thought that this short story was great, but I did have a few questions about the author's purpose. Why did the author have the poor man say that the rug that the rug expert wanted was special and lucky?

1. Was it because it was passed down from generation to generation and he thought that somehow god was on his side and he thought that it was a good luck charm. And because he thought that it had some value to him that other people couldn't see and that was so attached to it.

2. Or was it because everybody wanted to buy the rug that was so expensive and each time he would keep the rug thinking that it was a good luck charm, but really everybody just wanted to buy the rug. 

I also had another question about the story which is, did the poor merchant with the donkey know that the donkey was worth as much as it was and just tried to down play that he knew that the rug was worth a lot to get people to buy his donkeys or, did he think it was just a little piece of rug that he liked to keep for a good luck charm?