[1] The text is given at the end of this volume. [↑]
[2] Makanṭa, to obliterate, but the meaning of the narrator appears to be more nearly expressed by the word I have inserted. [↑]
[3] When a woman has more than one husband (brothers always), she goes through the marriage ceremony with the eldest, and is formally given to him only. [↑]
No. 217
The Yakā of the Akaraganē Jungle
In a certain country there are a woman and a man, it is said. The man has worked in a rice field; in it he also built a watch-hut. The man is in the watch-hut every day.
At the time when he is thus, a beggar came to the man’s house. Afterwards the man having heaped up a great many coconut husks in the watch-hut [for making fires at night], told the beggar to go to the watch-hut. The beggar went to the watch-hut.
Afterwards this man having gone to the watch-hut and set fire to the watch-hut, came back, and said at the hand of his wife, “You say, ‘Our man, having been burnt at the watch-hut, died.’ ”[1] Furthermore he said, “Every day when I say ‘Hū,’ near the stile of the rice field, put a leaf-cup of cooked rice for me”; having said it the man went into the jungle.
After it became night, the man having come to the rice field cried “Hū” near the stile. Then the woman brought the cooked rice and placed it there; having placed it there the woman went home. The man ate the cooked rice, and went again into the jungle.