Story 95 - The Story Of The Two Liars

THERE are two Liars called the Eastern Liar and the Western Liar, it is said. The Eastern Liar was minded to go to seek the Western Liar, it is said.^[1] Should you say, “What was that for ?” it was for telling lies in competition (i.e., a lying match), it is said.

Tying up the packet of cooked rice from one and a half amunas^[2] of uncooked rice, and the flesh of twelve goats, and bringing it for the [mid] day food, he went to the house of the Western Liar. At the time when he was going there, the Liar was not at home; a daughter of his was there. He gave her the packet of cooked rice to put away. She took the packet of cooked rice with the point of the needle with which she was sewing and sewing, and put it away.

The Eastern Liar [asked] the female child,

“Where is thy father ? In the forest ?”

Thereupon the child [said],

“Our father [in order] to cover up the thundering went to skin a mosquito, and come back.”

Thereupon this very Liar, having become afraid, thinks,

“At the time when this very child told lies to this degree, when her father has come to what extent will he tell lies ?”

Thinking it, and asking for the packet of cooked rice again, he went off back again. Because it was not yet day^[3] [enough] for eating in the daytime,^[3] having hung the bundle of cooked rice on a large Banyan tree he went to sleep.

After that, at the time when the Western Liar, cutting sticks and creepers for a house and placing them under his armpits, was coming, the little female child who was at the house having gone in front [of him], says,

“A man came to seek you,”

she said.

Thereupon the man asked,

“Where ?”

“Look; he went there,”

she said.

Thereupon this very person, taking those sticks and creepers, and turning to the same quarter, went in chase of him.^[4]

At that time the Eastern Liar had gone to sleep. Having heard the sound of the coming of the Western Liar, he arose. That person having become frightened at the sound of his (the Western Liar’s) coming, to take the packet of cooked rice seized the branch on which is the packet of cooked rice. Thereupon the tree, being completely uprooted, came into his hand. Taking also the tree itself, the same person having got in front ran away. This very person (the Western Liar), for [the purpose of] looking who it is, began to drive this very person backwards.

Having heard this very sound, and having said,

“Something is coming to happen in the country,”

an elephant-keeper who looked after a hundred tusk elephants, having sent off the elephants to their food and having become afraid, was looking about. Through that very despondency [which he felt] that some danger was coming to arrive at this very village, he said,

“I must go to some other quarter”;

and folding up the cloth in which he was dragging (= carrying) them, and in which were the whole hundred tusk elephants, he bolted.

Then having gone to an outer open place, and having unfastened the cloth, when he looked [inside it], only the two white lice called Gourd and Ash-pumpkin were [there], having eaten the whole hundred tusk elephants.

North-western Province.

 

Note:

Nonsense stories such as this are rather unusual in the East. There is one in No. 29, vol. i, and an Indian one is quoted after it. No. 130 in this vol. is another Sinhalese variant, and No. 263 in vol. iii, is also a tale of this type.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Compare the beginning of the last variant at the end of the previous story.

[2]:

Eight and a half bushels.

[3]:

Dawal.

[4]:

Pannagana giya.