Having waited, one day the son having thoroughly tied the mother
to kill her, on account of the manner in which he accepted the
daughter-in-law's word, she said, "Why, Bola, fool! Dead men having
arisen from the dead, will there be a country also to which they
come? [206] I came in this manner," and having told her whole story,
and employed her son, they went taking a great many carts, and brought
to the village the whole of the goods that were in the above-mentioned
rock house.
After that, this son contracted another marriage. Having seen
his wealthiness, the King of that country gave him a post as
Treasurer. [207]
Western Province.
This is also a folk-tale called "The Wicked Daughter-in-law," in
the North-western Province, the parents of the young man being a
Gamarala and Gama-Mahage. The wife wished to kill her mother-in-law
because the latter and her own mother were quarrelling. She and her
husband threw the first bed into a forest pool (eba). The incident
of the return of the robbers to the cave where they had hidden their
plunder is omitted; the Mahage simply put on a number of silver and
gold articles and carried home a bundle of others, including necklaces
and corals. She told her daughter-in-law that there were many more
at the burial ground, and the latter went to fetch them. When she
arrived there she saw a fresh corpse, and became so much afraid that
she fainted, and fell down and died.
This story is given in The Jataka, No. 432 (vol. iii, p. 303).
In the Katha Sarit Sagara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 88, a servant girl who
had absconded with her master's store of gold, climbed up a leafy tree
to escape from him. One of his servants climbed up it in search of
her. Seeing that she would be captured, she pretended to be in love
with him, and as she was kissing his mouth she bit off his tongue,
and he fell down unable to speak. Her master thought he had been
attacked by a demon, and at once ran off.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. iii, p. 141,
a woman who wished to kill her mother-in-law persuaded her husband
to believe that if she were burnt she would be re-born as a deity,
and receive continual offerings from them. They made a great fire
in a deep trench, gave a feast at it, and when the people had gone
pushed the mother over the edge into it, and ran off. She fell on
a ledge in the side of the trench and thus escaped, was unable to
return home in the darkness, and climbed up a tree for safety from
animals and demons. While she was there, robbers came to the foot
of the tree with valuable articles they had stolen, and when they
heard her sneeze ran off, thinking she was a demon. In the morning
she returned home with a heavy bundle of jewellery they had left,
told the daughter-in-law that she had become a deity and had therefore
received these valuables, and offered to send her also. The fire was
made up afresh, the man pushed his wife into it, and she was burnt up.