Story 124 - The Manner In Which A Woman Prepared A Flour Figure

IN a certain country there are a woman and a man, it is said; the woman is associated with a paramour. The woman has been brought from another country.

One day (dawasakda) the woman said,

“In our country there is a custom. Having constructed a flour figure, and having made it sit upon a chair near the hearth, we must cook cakes and offer them [before it].”

After that, the man having sought for the articles for cooking cakes gave her them.

After that, the woman, having pounded flour and made [enough] for two cooking pots, having increased the syrup for one pot, and diminished the syrup for one, and having been there until the time when the man goes somewhere or other (kohedo), told the paramour to come. After having put and smeared flour over the whole body^[1] of the man, having brought a chair near the hearth and made him sit upon the chair, the woman sitting down near the hearth cooks the cakes.

That man having come home, when he looked there is the flour figure. While the man in silence is looking on in the raised veranda, having seen that the woman puts the well-cooked cakes separately into a pot and the badly cooked cakes into another pot, and getting to know about the flour figure paramour, to make the woman get up of necessity,— a calf had been brought from the woman’s village—the calf had been tied up,—the man having gone very quietly (himimma) unfastened the calf.

Very quietly having come again to the veranda he said,

“on (there) ! The calf that was brought from your village is loose; tie it and come back.”

The woman says,

“I am unable to go;^[2] you go and tie it, and come.”

The man said,

“I will not.”

Afterwards the woman having arisen went to tie the calf. [Then] this man, having arisen from the veranda, struck the oil cooking-pot that was on the hearth on the top of the head (ismuMune) of the flour figure paramour. The flour figure, crying out, is wriggling about.

That woman having tied up the calf and come, says,

“I had prepared the flour figure. Having thrown it away that one will have come and sat there [in its place]. What shall I do ? [When] he escaped from you even so much [time], am I indeed going to eat that one’s liver ?^[3] Why didn’t you split that one’s head ?”

Having said [this] she caused the man to be deceived.

Finished.

North-western Province.

 

Note:

The woman’s remark regarding the liver is an instance of the survival of a very old expression, perhaps connected with magical practices. In the translations from the Chinese Tripitaka published by M. Chavannes in Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues, vol. i, p. 120, a girl cried,

“May I become a demoniacal and maleficent being to devour the liver of the elder brother.”

In Folk-lore of the Santal Parganas (Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 419, it is stated that witches are believed to cause people’s deaths by eating their livers.

The Sinhalese text is,

“Umbawaen occarawat beruwa mama nan okage kaewtu kanawa nae?”

The final word is merely a colloquial expletive which adds emphasis to the question. It occurs also in No. 197, vol. iii, footnote No. 1, and elsewhere. Perhaps this is the original form of the curious syllable sometimes heard at the end of questions put to acquaintances by Burghers of the lower class in Ceylon, as in the query,

“I say, man, what are you doing, no ?”

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Ænga purama.

[2]:

Mata yanda nae, lit., “There is not [an opportunity] for me to go.”

[3]:

The meaning is, “If you did not notice and punish him for so long, was it likely that I should ?”