Story 90 - The Foolish Youth

IN a certain country there are a woman and a man and a youth (their son), it is said.

While they were there, the woman having given eight panams^[1] to the youth said,

“Son, take these eight panams to the shop and bring two plates.”

After that, the youth taking the eight panams to the shop said to the trader,

“Mudalali, give me two plates.”

The trader, taking two plates, gave them to the youth.

The youth said,

“How is the price for these plates ?”

Then the trader said,

“For one plate it is seven tuttu (quarter panams); for two plates give me fourteen tuttu (= three and a half panams).

After that, the youth says,

“Mudalali, are you trying to cheat me ? You cannot cheat me. I will not give fourteen tuttu; also I did not bring fourteen tuttu. Mother gave me eight panams.^[2] For the eight panams she told me to get two plates. If you will give them for the eight panams, give me two plates.”

Having said this, and given the eight panams to the trader, while he was coming away, taking the two plates, he met with a gang of thieves. Having met with them, they asked at the hand of the youth,

“Where did you go ?”

Then the youth says,

“ Having told me to go to the shop to bring two plates, mother gave me eight panams. Taking them, and going to the shop, I asked the price for plates. Well then, the man tried to cheat me. For the two plates he told me to give fourteen tuttu. Also in my hand there were not fourteen tuttu; it was eight panams that I took. Having given the eight panams I am taking home these two plates.”

Then the men said,

“If so, don’t you go home. We are going to break [into] a house; come, and go for that.”

Afterwards the youth, having said “Ha,” went with the thieves to break [into] the house. Having gone there and bored a hole through the wall, the thieves said to the youth who went for plates,

“Go inside the house and put out into the light both all the things which you can lift and [the things] which you cannot lift. We will take them.”

After that, the youth, having crept into the house, put out all the things which the youth could lift. Having put them out, the youth could not lift the stone on which coconut was ground.

The man who owned the house was sleeping, placing his head on the stone. The youth having shaken the man’s body, awoke him. “Get up quickly. To take this stone outside I cannot lift it alone. Take hold of this a little in order to get it out,” he said.

The man having awoke at once, and seized and tied the youth, caught part of those men; part of them ran off.

The thieves who were caught, and the youth, and the man who owned the house, all went for the trial. As they were going on the road, says the youth,

“ I am not a thief at all. Our mother gave me eight panams to bring two plates from the shop. Having gone to the shop I asked the price for plates. The man tried to cheat me; for two plates he asked fourteen tuttu. I did not give them; also in my hand there were not fourteen tuttu. I only gave eight panams, and taking the two plates, as I was going away I met with these men.

Then the men said to me,

‘Where did you go ?’

they asked.

‘I went to the shop to get two plates,’

I said. Then the men said,

‘If so, don’t go home. We are going to break [into] a house; you come too.’

So I came. Having come there, the men bored a hole through the wall, and said to me,

‘Creep you into this. Put outside the things you can lift and the things you can’t.’

I afterwards crept into the house, and put outside those I could lift. I tried to lift the stone on which your head was placed while you were sleeping. I couldn’t lift it, so in order to get it out I awoke you. Well then, so much is my fault; I am not a thief. Now then, if you are going to put me in prison, put me in prison.”

After that the man said,

“I will not put you in prison; doing the work that I tell you, you can stay with me.”

The boy said,

“Ha. I will stay [with you].”

After that, having gone for the trial, and put the other thieves in prison, the man came home with that youth. In that very way, doing the work which the man told him, the youth remained a considerable time.

One day the man said,

“Youth, let us go to cut a [branch for a] plough.”

The youth said,

“Ha, let us go,”

and taking an axe, the man and the youth went to the forest on the river bank.

Having gone there, the man said to the youth,

“Cut thou this tree at the root.”

The youth cut the tree at the root. After he had cut it, the plough of the tree was not good.

Afterwards having gone near another tree, when they looked at it there was a good plough in [a branch of] the tree. When they cut the plough it would fall in the river.

The man said,

“Having gone up this tree, cut thou that plough which is to be seen.”

[He then left him].

Then the youth having gone up the tree, when he was cutting the root (lower end) of the plough while sitting down [on the branch] at the top (or outer end) of the plough, a certain Lord (Buddhist monk) came.

When the Lord looked up at the tree, having seen that the youth sitting at the top of the plough was cutting at the root, he said,

“Foolish youth ! Why, while you are at the top, are you cutting at the root ? When it is cut at the root it will fall together with thee also, will it not, into the river ? Sitting at the root [end], chop towards the top.”

Having said this the Lord went away.

The youth said,

“What does the Lord know about it ? I shall cut it this way.”

Having said this, as he was chopping and chopping, the plough being cut at the root, the plough and the youth and the axe fell into the water of the river.

Then the youth, having got up quickly, walked ashore, taking the axe and the plough. He put down the plough, and taking the axe, ran along the path on which the Lord went. Having run there he overtook the Lord. Having joined him, he said,

“Lord, as you said that I should fall into the river you must tell me the day when I shall die. If not, I shall chop you with this axe.”

The Lord, when he looked, thought that there was no means of saying otherwise; on that account he said,

“On the day when a drop of rain has fallen on the crown of thy head thou wilt die.”

The Lord then went away.

After that, the youth, taking the plough, came with the man to the man’s house. Having come there, when he had been there a long time, on a certain day a drop of rain fell on the crown of the youth’s head, and on that day he died. (The narrator did not know how he died).

The details of his death are given in the following variant of the latter part of this story:

The monk said,

“In such and such a year, in such and such a month, on such and such a day, thou wilt die.”

From that day until the time when this stated number of years and number of months and number of days had gone, having been looking [into the account], on the stated day, when it became light he said,

“To-day, having cooked amply give thou me to eat.”

Having eaten and finished, he said,

“I shall die to-day”;

and having said,

“Don’t anybody speak to me,”

went into the house, and shutting the door lay down (budiya-gatta).

The men who stayed outside from morning until the time when it became evening, remained looking out. There was not any sound from this man. Afterwards they said,

“What are we keeping this dead man for ? Let us take him and carry him away,”

and having placed a bamboo [ready], they tied [the bier] to it. Having tied it, they go away, taking it.

Between the house and the burial ground there is a hill-rice chena. Because there is no other path to go on, taking him into the chena they hurried on (lit., ran).

Then the men who watch the hill-rice chena having been there, said,

“What is this, Bola, that you are taking the corpse through the hill-rice chena ?”

and they scolded them.

Then the dead man sat up and said,

“Except that I am dead, you should see [what I would do to you],”

he said.

Then the men who took the corpse said,

“Ade ! This one is speaking!”

and dropped him. Having fallen upon a cut [pointed] stump [it pierced him, and] the man died.

North-western Province.

 

Note:

To carry a corpse through a chena is considered to be a very inauspicious act, which might have an injurious effect upon the crop. Even to carry through one the tools necessary for digging the grave would meet with strong remonstrances. In one instance, some of my labourers were refused a passage along the footpath in a village because they carried pickaxes and digging hoes, thus appearing, as the villagers objected, like persons who were going to dig a grave.

In The Orientalist, vol. i, p. 136, Miss S. J. Goonetilleke related a story about twenty-five idiots, in which the death prediction occurs. The monk stated that the idiot would die when the third drop of dew fell on his back while he was sheltering under a gourd. The drops fell when he was beneath a frame on which a gourd grew, waiting while some robbers whom he had joined entered a house in order to commit robbery. He bellowed out, " I am dead, I am dead,” and they all ran away.

In vol. i, p. 121, the editor, the late Mr. W. Goonetilleke, gave the Sinhalese story of the branch cutting, the monk’s prediction of the man’s death when a drop of water fell on his head from the roof, and his remarks when the bier carriers were scolded by the owner of a garden through which they were about to pass.

He also added variants. In one found in an Indian work called Bharafaka ava-trinsika (Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks), a stupid monk called Dandaka went to cut a post, and sat on the branch while chopping. Some passing travellers pointed out that when the branch broke he would fall and die; when he fell he therefore believed he must be dead, and lay still. The other monks came to carry him to the cremation ground; but on the way the road bifurcated, and they quarrelled as to which path should be followed. The supposed corpse then sat up and said that when alive he always went by the left road. Bystanders intervened and pointed out that as he had spoken he could not be dead, but Dandaka insisted that he was really dead, and it was only after a long argument that the monks were convinced that he was alive.

Mr. Goonetilleke also gave a translation of a similar Turkish story in Meister Nasr Eddin’s Schwdnke und Rduber und Richter, in which the man was told he would die when his ass eructated the second time. He lay down, believing he was dead. When the bier carriers were doubtful how they should pass a mudhole, the corpse sat up and said that when alive he avoided the place.

The editor also added Lithuanian, German, and Saxon variants, as well as an English one related to him by the Rev. S. Langdon, in which, however, the man broke his neck in falling from the tree.

In the South Indian account of the Guru Paramarta and his foolish disciples, annexed to the Abbe Dubois’ Pantcha-Tantra, p. 305, one of the disciples was cutting a branch when a Purohita Brahmana warned him that he would fall when it broke. After falling he ran after the Brahmana and inquired when the Guru would die. The answer was that cold at the hinder-parts is a sign of death,^[3] a remark to which the Guru’s death eventually was due.

In Indian Nights’ Entertainment (Swynnerton), p. 89, the warning was given to a weaver by a traveller, who afterwards stated that the man’s death would occur when his mouth bled. Some days afterwards the weaver saw in a glass a bit of scarlet thread stuck between his front teeth, concluded that it was blood, and lay down to die, until a customer showed him what it really was.

In the same work, p. 139, there is a story of a foolish weaver who went to steal with some thieves. When they told him to look for a suitable pole for raising the thatch of a house, he woke up the people who were sleeping outside, and asked them to lend him a pole for the purpose. An outcry was raised, and the thieves decamped.

In Indian Fairy Tales (M. Stokes), p. 30, the person who warned a youth who was cutting a branch, said he would die when he found a scarlet thread on his jacket. When a thread stuck on it in the bazaar, he went ofi, dug a grave, and lay in it until he heard a passer-by offer four pice to anyone who would carry his jar of ghi for him; he then jumped up and offered to carry it.

In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 199, a stupid boy who was sent by his mother to sell a piece of cloth for four rupees, refused six rupees that were offered for it.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Formerly this would be one shilling. The panama is one anna, si xteen being equal to a rupee.

[2]:

Eight panams were thirty-two tuttu.

[3]:

Asanam sitam jtvana nasam.