Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
A variant related by a Potter is nearly similar, except that both persons instituted lawsuits for the recovery of the elephant and the waterpot. The judge who tried the cases was the celebrated Mariyada Rāman, termed by the narrator “Mariyaddurāme,” a word which suggests the name Amīr Abd ur-Rahman.
There is also a Chinese variant, given in Chinese Nights’ Entertainments (A. M. Fielde), p. 111, in which a dishonest old woman lent a newly-married girl her cat, in order to kill the mice. The cat ran home, and the woman then applied for its return, praised its excellence, and estimated its value at two hundred ounces of silver. The girl discovered that her father-in-law had once lent the woman an old wooden ladle, and when the old woman called again about the cat she reminded her of it, and demanded its return. The cases were taken before a magistrate. The girl claimed that the ladle was made from a branch which fell down from the moon, and never diminished the food, oil, or money from which anything was taken by means of it; and she asserted that her father-in-law had refused an offer of three thousand ounces of silver for it. The magistrate decided that the two claims balanced each other.
No. 204
How a Girl took Gruel
In a certain country there are a girl and the girl’s father, it is said. While they were there, one day the man went to plough, saying to the girl, “Bring gruel to the rice field.” They spring across a stream as they go to the rice field.
The girl, cooking gruel, pouring it into a wide-mouthed cooking-pot and placing the pot on her head, goes away to the field. While going there she met a Prince near the river. The girl asked at the Prince’s hand, “Where are you going?” Having told him to sit down and given to him from the gruel, she said, “Go to our house and wait until the time when I come after giving the gruel to father;” and placing the gruel pot on her head she went to the far bank of the river.
Then the Prince asked, “Are you coming immediately?”