The Manner in which a Woman prepared a Flour Figure
H. (Henry) Parker translation
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 (dawasakdā) 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.
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, “Ōn̥ (there)! The calf that was brought from your village is loose; tie it and come back.”
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 (ismun̆dunē) of the flour figure paramour. The flour figure, crying out, is wriggling about.
Finished.
North-western Province.
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 Tripiṭaka 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, “Um̆bawaen occarawat bēruwa mama nan̥ ōkage kaewtu kanawā nāe?” 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, nŏ?”