The Minister says, "That Princess I neither kept nor know," the
Minister said.
Afterwards, having caused the Prince to descend from the scaffold,
the King [said], "Who is this of yours?" The Prince said, "My younger
sister."
Afterwards the King having caused the Minister to be brought, [told
him who she was, and asked], "Why did you tell lies?"
After that the Minister says, "You, Sir, will marry the Princess;
you will give the Minister's work to the Prince. Because of that."
After that, the King ordered them to hang the Minister.
The King married that Princess. [The Prince] having gone to the
Prince's [own] palace, took the kingship from the Minister [who had
been ruling temporarily]. To the Minister he gave the Minister's work
[again].
Finished.
North-western Province.
With regard to the order to hang the Prince, and the subsequent
hanging of the Minister, there is a reference to this punishment in
the next story, in which a Minister recommends that a turtle which
had frightened some Princesses should be hanged. In vol. i, p. 368,
a jackal remarked that a leopard which had been caught in a noose had
been "hanged," as though this were a well-known punishment. I think
there is no other clear instance in these stories; but in vol. i,
p. 189, a Prince found a Yaksani trying to eat a dead body which was
hanging in a tree; if this had been a case of suicide the relatives
might have removed the body. Hanging the body at the four gates of the
city after quartering it is mentioned in two of these tales (vol. i,
pp. 86 and 89, and in No. 80, p. 20 of the present volume). Hanging
is not referred to in the stories of the Low-Country Sinhalese,
where one might expect to meet with it.
In the Wevaelkaetiya Inscription (Epigraphia Zeylanica, vol. i,
p. 250), King Mahinda IV. (A.D. 1026-1042) ordered that persons
convicted of robbery with violence should be hanged. Mr. Wickremasinghe
in giving a translation of this inscription added a note to the
effect that he had not found this punishment mentioned elsewhere in
Sinhalese literature; but in the Mahavansa, ii, lxxv, vv. 166 and 196,
and in the Rajavaliya (translation), p. 66, there are accounts of
the hanging of people. In Marshall's Ceylon, p. 39, it is stated that
"the punishment of death was usually carried into effect by hanging,
or being killed by elephants." In Davy's work also, p. 182, it is
said that "the sentence of death, in cases of murder, was carried
into effect by hanging."
In the Katha Sarit Sagara (Tawney), vol. ii, p. 185, a young man who
was in love with a Princess received her portrait from a painter,
and "spent his time in gazing on, coaxing and touching, and adorning
her picture; ... he seemed to see her, though she was only a painted
figure, talking to him and kissing him, ... and he was contented,
because the whole world was for him contained in that piece of
painted canvas."
In the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton's ed., vol. i, p. 183), when
a Wazir showed his young son to a Sultan, the latter was so much
pleased with him that he said, "O Wazir, thou must needs bring him
daily to my presence."