At a city there is a King who knows the Ant language. At the time when
the King and his Queen, both of them, are continuing to eat sugar-cane,
a male Red Ant (kumbiya) and the Ant's wife having said, "Let us go to
eat sugar-cane," went to the place where the two persons are eating it.
Thereupon, the male Ant says, "Ane! Bolan, the things that women eat
I cannot eat. Do you eat them. I will eat the things that the King
is eating," the male Ant said to the Ant-wife. She having said, "It
is good," out of the refuse which the King and Queen having eaten and
eaten throw down, the male Ant eats the refuse which the King throws
down, and the female Ant eats the refuse which the Queen throws down.
Then the male Ant's belly being filled, he spoke to the Ant-wife,
and said, "Now then, let us go." Then she says, "It is insufficient
for me yet." Thereupon the male Ant says, "In any case women would
be gluttonous; their bellies are large," he said.
The King, understanding it, laughed. These two filling their bellies
went away. Thereupon the Queen asks the King, "What did you laugh
at? Please tell me," she asks. The King does not tell her. Well then,
every day she asks.
The King, being unable to get rid of it, went away into the midst of a
forest. Having gone [there], while he was walking and walking in the
forest, Sakra, having seen that this King is walking about hungry,
creates five hundred Grey Monkeys (Semnopithecus) in the forest,
plucking and plucking Mora [342] [fruit]. The party are eating
[the fruits].
A female Monkey having said, "I don't want those things," quarrelled
with the male Monkey. "If so, what shall I give thee?" the male
Monkey asked.
Having seen that there is a large Mora fruit at the end of the branch,
she says, "Pluck that and give me it (dinan)."
"One cannot go there to pluck that; eat thou these," the male Monkey
said. The female Monkey said, "I will not."
Thereupon the male Monkey says, "If five hundred are able to eat these,
why canst thou not eat them?" Having said it, the male Monkey, taking
a stick, beats her well. Then the female Monkey, weeping and weeping,
was saying, "I will eat these."
The King having been looking on at this quarrel, thinks, "These
irrational animals are not afraid of their wives." Thinking, "Why am
I in this fear?" he came to the King's palace [after] breaking a stick.
At the very time when he was coming, the Queen said, "Tell me what
it was you laughed at that day."
Thereupon, at the time when the King, holding the Queen's hair-knot,
was beating her, saying and saying, "Will you ask me again?" the
Queen began to cry, saying and saying, "Ane! Lord, I will not ask
again." Thereupon the King remained [there] quietly.
North-western Province.
In The Jataka, No. 386 (vol. iii, p. 175), a Naga King gave a King of
Benares a spell which enabled him to understand all sounds. One day he
heard ants conversing regarding the food that had fallen on the ground;
on another occasion he heard flies talking; on a third he overheard
more ant talk. As he laughed each time, the Queen pestered him about
it and wanted to know the spell, to give which the Naga had warned him
would ensure his instant death. When he was about to yield, Sakra saved
him by advising him to beat his wife as the usual preliminary before
repeating the spell to her; this effectually checked her curiosity.