Well then, as this corpse—the above-mentioned corpse—was coming to pass in front of the house of its owners, the above-mentioned son said to his mother and sisters, “They are now taking our father’s corpse [and are about to pass] in front of our house. Having seen it, don’t anyone of you lament.” This word the mother and sisters accepted. But because this son thinks there is uncertainty if they will lament, having ascended a Murun̆gā tree that was in front of the doorway he remained [there].
At the time when he is thus, as they are taking the corpse in front of the said house, that mother and the sisters, unable to go on restraining their grief, cried out, “Anē! O our father!”[3] There and then, the son who was in the Murun̆gā tree, breaking a branch also from the tree jumped down, and was as though dead.
At that time that mother and the sisters, calling out, “Anē! O my son! Anē! O our elder brother!” and having come running, and gone, taking the son, into the house, gave him medicine and began to attend to him. Thereupon the people who were carrying that corpse thought, “They are crying owing to that woman’s son’s having died,” and went away.
By this means the people of the thief’s family, not tasting (lit., eating) death from the King, escaped.
Western Province.
In The Orientalist, vol. i, p. 59, Mr. W. Goonetilleke gave the story as it was related in the Supplement to the Ceylon Observer. The thief passed through a small pre-existing tunnel into the King’s palace, and after feasting inside stuck fast in it on his way back, and ordered his son to cut off his head and escape with it. The youth acted accordingly and threw it in a weighted basket into the river. The rest of the story agrees with those given above.
In the story related by Herodotus (Euterpe, 121, 1) of the robbery of the treasury of King Rhampsinitus, the thief entered by removing a loose stone, laid for the purpose by his father when he was building the treasury. He did not feast inside the palace nor stick fast on his way out, but was caught in a trap laid for him in the treasury. His brother entered, and at his own request cut off his head to save the family reputation. The King hung the body from the wall, and stationed sentinels who were commanded to arrest anyone who wept on seeing it. The brother made them drunk and carried off the corpse by his mother’s orders. After vainly making use of his daughter as a bait for the thief, in the end the King forgave him on account of his cleverness and married his daughter to him.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. ii, p. 93, Karpara, one of two thieves, broke through the wall of the palace and entered the room of the Princess. She fell in love with him, but he remained too long, and was arrested and hanged; while being led away he signalled to his friend to carry off the Princess. The friend, Ghaṭa, at night dug a tunnel into the palace, found the Princess in fetters, and brought her away. The King set guards near Karpara’s body to arrest anyone who came to burn the corpse and perform the funeral rites, but Ghaṭa tricked them, lamented over the body, burned it, and threw the remains of the bones into the Ganges. Although the King offered half his kingdom if the thief would reveal himself, Ghaṭa left the country with the Princess. The translator mentioned European and other parallels (pp. 93 and 100).
In A. von Schiefner’s Tibetan Tales (Ralston), p. 39, a weaver went with a clever nephew to break into a house. As he was passing feet foremost through the hole they made, the people inside seized his feet and began to drag him through, so the boy cut off his head and decamped with it. The King ordered the trunk to be exposed at the cross-roads in the main street, in order to arrest anyone who wailed over it. The youth, personating various people, wailed over it as a madman, burned it, presented cakes, and threw the bones into the Ganges. The King then set his daughter at the river bank as a bait, and left a guard near. After sending down a number of floating water vessels the thief covered his head with one, and swam to the Princess, who afterwards had a son by means of whom the King identified the thief, to whom he formally gave the Princess and half the kingdom. In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. ii, p. 380, the story is similar.