Story 222 - The Assistance which the Snake gave

IN a certain country the King’s elephant every day having descended into a pool,, bathes. In the water a Water Snake (Diya naya) stayed.

One day a beggar went to the pool to bathe. As soon as he came the Snake came to bite him.

When it came, the man having beseeched it and made obeisance, said,

“Ane ! O Lord, for me to bathe you must either go to the bottom or come ashore.”

“If so, because thou madest obeisance to me I will give thee a good assistance,”

the Snake said.

“The King’s tusk elephant every day comes to the pool to bathe. When it is bathing I will creep up its trunk. Having gone to the city from that place, the tusk elephant will fall mad on the days when it rains.^[1] Then doctors having come, when they are employing medical treatment they cannot cure it.

After that, you, Sir, having gone to the royal palace must say,

‘Having employed medical treatment I can cure the tusk elephant.’

Having heard it, the King will allow you to practise the medical treatment.

Should you ask,

‘What is the medical treatment ?’

[it is this:]—Having brought a large water-pot to the place where the tusk elephant is, and placed the elephant’s trunk in the water, and covered and closed yourself and the tusk elephant with cloths, and tapped on the forehead of the elephant, [you must say],

‘Ane ! 0 Lord, you must descend into the water-pot; if not, to-day I shall cut my throat (lit., neck).’

Then I shall descend into the water.”

This was all done as the Snake said.

The beggar tapped on the tusk elephant’s forehead, and said,

“Ane ! O Lord, you must descend into the water-pot; if not, to-day I shall cut my throat.”

Then the Snake came down the tusk elephant’s trunk into the water-pot, as he had promised.

The beggar then took the tusk elephant to the King; it was no longer mad. The King rode on it along the four streets, and came back to the palace, and descended.

Then he asked the beggar,

“How didst thou cure this sickness ?”

The beggar said,

“I caused a Water Snake to come down the tusk elephant’s trunk into the water-pot, and thus cured him.”

Then the King went with the beggar to look at the Snake. When he saw it in the water-pot he ascertained that the man’s statement was true. After that he gave offices to the beggar.

Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.

 

Notes:

Dr. J. Pearson, Director of the Colombo Museum, has been good enough to inform me that the water-snake termed diya naya in Sinhalese (lit., Water Cobra) is Tropidonotus asperrimus. Though neither large nor venomous, snakes of this species sometimes attacked my men when they were bathing at a pool in a river, or endeavoured to carry ofi fishes which they had placed in the water after stringing them through the gills on a creeper. They did this even when the man held the other end of the creeper.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The narrator explained that when the rain came the snake would twist about inside the elephant’s head, and drive it mad.