After that, having gone for the trial, and put the other thieves in
prison, the man came home with that youth. In that very way, doing the
work which the man told him, the youth remained a considerable time.
One day the man said, "Youth, let us go to cut a [branch for a]
plough."
The youth said, "Ha, let us go," and taking an axe, the man and the
youth went to the forest on the river bank.
Having gone there, the man said to the youth, "Cut thou this tree at
the root." The youth cut the tree at the root. After he had cut it,
the plough of the tree was not good.
Afterwards having gone near another tree, when they looked at it there
was a good plough in [a branch of] the tree. When they cut the plough
it would fall in the river.
The man said, "Having gone up this tree, cut thou that plough which
is to be seen." [He then left him].
Then the youth having gone up the tree, when he was cutting the root
(lower end) of the plough while sitting down [on the branch] at the
top (or outer end) of the plough, a certain Lord (Buddhist monk) came.
When the Lord looked up at the tree, having seen that the youth
sitting at the top of the plough was cutting at the root, he said,
"Foolish youth! Why, while you are at the top, are you cutting at the
root? When it is cut at the root it will fall together with thee also,
will it not, into the river? Sitting at the root [end], chop towards
the top." Having said this the Lord went away.
The youth said, "What does the Lord know about it? I shall cut it
this way." Having said this, as he was chopping and chopping, the
plough being cut at the root, the plough and the youth and the axe
fell into the water of the river.
Then the youth, having got up quickly, walked ashore, taking the
axe and the plough. He put down the plough, and taking the axe, ran
along the path on which the Lord went. Having run there he overtook
the Lord. Having joined him, he said, "Lord, as you said that I should
fall into the river you must tell me the day when I shall die. If not,
I shall chop you with this axe."
The Lord, when he looked, thought that there was no means of saying
otherwise; on that account he said, "On the day when a drop of rain
has fallen on the crown of thy head thou wilt die." The Lord then
went away.
After that, the youth, taking the plough, came with the man to the
man's house. Having come there, when he had been there a long time,
on a certain day a drop of rain fell on the crown of the youth's head,
and on that day he died. (The narrator did not know how he died).
The details of his death are given in the following variant of the
latter part of this story:
The monk said, "In such and such a year, in such and such a month,
on such and such a day, thou wilt die."
From that day until the time when this stated number of years and
number of months and number of days had gone, having been looking
[into the account], on the stated day, when it became light he said,
"To-day, having cooked amply give thou me to eat."
Having eaten and finished, he said, "I shall die to-day"; and having
said, "Don't anybody speak to me," went into the house, and shutting
the door lay down (budiya-gatta).
The men who stayed outside from morning until the time when it became
evening, remained looking out. There was not any sound from this
man. Afterwards they said, "What are we keeping this dead man for? Let
us take him and carry him away," and having placed a bamboo [ready],
they tied [the bier] to it. Having tied it, they go away, taking it.
Between the house and the burial ground there is a hill-rice
chena. Because there is no other path to go on, taking him into the
chena they hurried on (lit., ran).
Then the men who watch the hill-rice chena having been there, said,
"What is this, Bola, that you are taking the corpse through the
hill-rice chena?" and they scolded them.
Then the dead man sat up and said, "Except that I am dead, you should
see [what I would do to you]," he said.
Then the men who took the corpse said, "Ade! This one is speaking!" and
dropped him. Having fallen upon a cut [pointed] stump [it pierced him,
and] the man died.
North-western Province.
To carry a corpse through a chena is considered to be a very
inauspicious act, which might have an injurious effect upon the
crop. Even to carry through one the tools necessary for digging the
grave would meet with strong remonstrances. In one instance, some of
my labourers were refused a passage along the footpath in a village
because they carried pickaxes and digging hoes, thus appearing,
as the villagers objected, like persons who were going to dig a grave.
In The Orientalist, vol. i, p. 136, Miss S. J. Goonetilleke related
a story about twenty-five idiots, in which the death prediction
occurs. The monk stated that the idiot would die when the third drop
of dew fell on his back while he was sheltering under a gourd. The
drops fell when he was beneath a frame on which a gourd grew, waiting
while some robbers whom he had joined entered a house in order to
commit robbery. He bellowed out, "I am dead, I am dead," and they
all ran away.
In vol. i, p. 121, the editor, the late Mr. W. Goonetilleke, gave
the Sinhalese story of the branch cutting, the monk's prediction of
the man's death when a drop of water fell on his head from the roof,
and his remarks when the bier carriers were scolded by the owner of
a garden through which they were about to pass.
He also added variants. In one found in an Indian work called Bharataka
dva-trinsika (Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks), a stupid monk
called Dandaka went to cut a post, and sat on the branch while
chopping. Some passing travellers pointed out that when the branch
broke he would fall and die; when he fell he therefore believed he
must be dead, and lay still. The other monks came to carry him to
the cremation ground; but on the way the road bifurcated, and they
quarrelled as to which path should be followed. The supposed corpse
then sat up and said that when alive he always went by the left
road. Bystanders intervened and pointed out that as he had spoken
he could not be dead, but Dandaka insisted that he was really dead,
and it was only after a long argument that the monks were convinced
that he was alive.
Mr. Goonetilleke also gave a translation of a similar Turkish story
in Meister Nasr Eddin's Schwänke und Räuber und Richter, in which the
man was told he would die when his ass eructated the second time. He
lay down, believing he was dead. When the bier carriers were doubtful
how they should pass a mudhole, the corpse sat up and said that when
alive he avoided the place.
The editor also added Lithuanian, German, and Saxon variants, as well
as an English one related to him by the Rev. S. Langdon, in which,
however, the man broke his neck in falling from the tree.
In the South Indian account of the Guru Paramarta and his foolish
disciples, annexed to the Abbé Dubois' Pantcha-Tantra, p. 305, one
of the disciples was cutting a branch when a Purohita Brahmana warned
him that he would fall when it broke. After falling he ran after the
Brahmana and inquired when the Guru would die. The answer was that
cold at the hinder-parts is a sign of death, [55] a remark to which
the Guru's death eventually was due.
In Indian Nights' Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 89, the warning was
given to a weaver by a traveller, who afterwards stated that the man's
death would occur when his mouth bled. Some days afterwards the weaver
saw in a glass a bit of scarlet thread stuck between his front teeth,
concluded that it was blood, and lay down to die, until a customer
showed him what it really was.
In the same work, p. 139, there is a story of a foolish weaver who
went to steal with some thieves. When they told him to look for
a suitable pole for raising the thatch of a house, he woke up the
people who were sleeping outside, and asked them to lend him a pole
for the purpose. An outcry was raised, and the thieves decamped.
In Indian Fairy Tales (M. Stokes), p. 30, the person who warned a
youth who was cutting a branch, said he would die when he found a
scarlet thread on his jacket. When a thread stuck on it in the bazaar,
he went off, dug a grave, and lay in it until he heard a passer-by
offer four pice to anyone who would carry his jar of ghi for him;
he then jumped up and offered to carry it.
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 199, a stupid boy
who was sent by his mother to sell a piece of cloth for four rupees,
refused six rupees that were offered for it.