In a certain country there are a woman and a man, it is said; the
woman is associated with a paramour. The woman has been brought from
another country.
One day (dawasakda) the woman said, "In our country there is a
custom. Having constructed a flour figure, and having made it sit
upon a chair near the hearth, we must cook cakes and offer them
[before it]." After that, the man having sought for the articles for
cooking cakes gave her them.
After that, the woman, having pounded flour and made [enough] for two
cooking pots, having increased the syrup for one pot, and diminished
the syrup for one, and having been there until the time when the man
goes somewhere or other (kohedo), told the paramour to come. After
having put and smeared flour over the whole body [163] of the man,
having brought a chair near the hearth and made him sit upon the chair,
the woman sitting down near the hearth cooks the cakes.
That man having come home, when he looked there is the flour
figure. While the man in silence is looking on in the raised veranda,
having seen that the woman puts the well-cooked cakes separately
into a pot and the badly cooked cakes into another pot, and getting
to know about the flour figure paramour, to make the woman get up of
necessity,--a calf had been brought from the woman's village--the
calf had been tied up,--the man having gone very quietly (himimma)
unfastened the calf. Very quietly having come again to the veranda
he said, "On (there)! The calf that was brought from your village is
loose; tie it and come back."
The woman says, "I am unable to go; [164] you go and tie it, and
come." The man said, "I will not."
Afterwards the woman having arisen went to tie the calf. [Then] this
man, having arisen from the veranda, struck the oil cooking-pot that
was on the hearth on the top of the head (ismundune) of the flour
figure paramour. The flour figure, crying out, is wriggling about.
That woman having tied up the calf and come, says, "I had prepared
the flour figure. Having thrown it away that one will have come and
sat there [in its place]. What shall I do? [When] he escaped from you
even so much [time], am I indeed going to eat that one's liver? [165]
Why didn't you split that one's head?" Having said [this] she caused
the man to be deceived.
Finished.
North-western Province.
The woman's remark regarding the liver is an instance of the survival
of a very old expression, perhaps connected with magical practices. In
the translations from the Chinese Tripitaka published by M. Chavannes
in Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues, vol. i, p. 120, a girl cried, "May
I become a demoniacal and maleficent being to devour the liver of the
elder brother." In Folk-lore of the Santal Parganas (Rev. Dr. Bodding),
p. 419, it is stated that witches are believed to cause people's deaths
by eating their livers. The Sinhalese text is, "Umbawaen occarawat
beruwa mama nan okage kaewtu kanawa nae?" The final word is merely a
colloquial expletive which adds emphasis to the question. It occurs
also in No. 197, vol. iii, footnote No. 1, and elsewhere. Perhaps
this is the original form of the curious syllable sometimes heard at
the end of questions put to acquaintances by Burghers of the lower
class in Ceylon, as in the query, "I say, man, what are you doing, no?"