It is difficult to understand how the condemned persons escaped. The interesting fact of the tale is the reference to the presentation of human offerings at a temple devoted to either one of the demons or the goddess Kālī. The Sinhalese expression, deviyan wahansē, deity, given in the text, might be applied to either.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 91, it is related in one story that “whenever a man is found at night with another man’s wife, he is placed with her within the inner chamber of the Yaksha’s (Maṇibhadra) temple.” In the morning the man was punished by the King; the country in which this occurred is not stated, but it was far from Tāmraliptā. When a merchant and a woman were so imprisoned, the merchant’s wife, hearing of it, went at night with offerings, and was permitted to enter. She changed clothes with the woman, and sent her out; and in the morning, as the woman in the temple was found to be the merchant’s own wife, the King dismissed the case, and freed the merchant “as it were from the mouth of death.” Thus the usual punishment appears to have been death, as in the Sinhalese tale.
[1] Prayōga parannāwanta ga͞enī. [↑]
[2] Man̆gulak, a word which usually means a [wedding] feast, but is often used in the villages to signify the bride. [↑]
[3] Kasādē, literally “marriage,” here also used to signify the bride. [↑]
[4] That is, merely because he was inclined to go. [↑]
[5] The narrator omitted to make the woman explain the last two cryptic sayings. The final one, that he was to go mounted on the back of two dead ones, of course means that he was to wear a pair of shoes or sandals. [↑]
[6] Puseka, also pusē later on. Doubtless this is the Tamil pūsei (Skt. pūja), one meaning of which is food given as a religious offering. Puseka is puse + eka, one, used in such instances to express the definite article, as in kōṭeka, the coat. [↑]