[1] A yellow grain, peculiar to India.
XXIII.
Good Luck to the Lucky One; Or, Shall I Fall Down?
In a certain town there lived a wealthy Brâhmiṇ. He wished to build a house—pretty large and spacious—as became his riches. For that purpose he called in a great number of soothsayers, and fixed, guided by their scientific opinion, a place for building the mansion. A certain portion of every day is supposed to be bad for doing work. This portion is sometimes called the Râhu-kâḷa—the evil time of the demon râhu and sometimes tyâjya—the time to be avoided. And abandoning carefully all these evil hours the wealthy Brâhmiṇ built his mansion in ten years. The first entrance into a new house to dwell is performed always with a great deal of pomp and ceremony, even by the poor according to their means. And our wealthy Brâhmiṇ to please the gods of the other world and the gods of this world—bhûsuras Brâhmiṇs—spent a great deal of his wealth, and with veoras and music sounding all around him he entered into his house.
The whole of the day almost was spent in ceremonies and festivities. All the guests left the place at evening, and much exhausted by the exertions of the day the Brâhmiṇ house-owner retired to rest. Before sleep could close his eyelids he heard a fearful voice over his head exclaiming:—“Shall I fall down? Shall I fall down?”
Great was the concern of the landlord at hearing this voice. He thought that some demon had taken possession of his house, and that he was going to pull down the roof of his house over his own head. That very night with as much haste as he entered the new house, he vacated it and went back to his old house.
Sirukakhaṭti perukavâḷka is the Tamil proverb. The meaning of it is “build small and live great,” i.e., build small houses without laying out much capital uselessly in houses and live prosperously; and in villages many a rich landlord would prefer small houses to big ones. The idea that he had spent a great deal of money to build a big house troubled our hero. The spaciousness of the house was one reason for the devil to come in so easily, as he thought. When he vacated his house on the very night of the day he entered it people began to talk all sorts of scandals about it. The ladies in the bathing places (ghaṭs) in rivers began to give all sorts of colour to the devils in that house. One said that when she was coming to the river she saw a company of devils dancing round and round the middle pillar of the upper storey of that unfortunate house. Another said that she observed unearthly lights in that mansion the previous night. Thus people talked and talked, furnishing new colours and new adventures out of their pure imagination for a phenomena which they never saw. And our unfortunate rich man had to lock up his house which he built after so many days, and at the expense of so much money. Thus passed six months.
In that town there lived a poor beggar Brâhmiṇ. He was in extreme poverty, and spent a great portion of the day in begging from house to house his meal and clothes. He had, poor man, seven children. With this large family he was constantly in the greatest misery. He had not a proper house to live in. A miserable hut was all his wealth in that village. Winter was approaching, and the roof of their only hut began to fall down. The increasing miseries made the poor Brâhmiṇ resolve upon suicide. He could not bring himself to do that by his own hand. He had heard of the haunted house, and resolved to go there with all his family and perish by the hands of the devils. This was his secret intention, but he never spoke of it to any one. One day he came to the rich Brâhmiṇ who was the owner of the haunted mansion, and spoke to him thus:—