North-western Province.
The quarrels of deaf persons through misunderstanding each other’s remarks form a common subject of folk-tales. The mistakes of three deaf people are related in Folklore in Southern India (Naṭēśa Sāstrī), p. 3 ff., and Tales of the Sun (Kingscote and N. Sāstrī), p. 1 ff.
The Abbé Dubois published another amusing South Indian variant, which recounted the mistakes of four deaf men (le Pantcha-Tantra, 1872, p. 339 ff.). The four persons in it were a shepherd, a village watchman, a traveller who was riding a stolen horse, and a Brāhmaṇa. The shepherd requested the watchman to look after his flock during his temporary absence. In reply the latter refused to let him have the grass that he had cut. On the shepherd’s return, he offered him a lame lamb as a reward for the trouble he thought the man had taken, but the watchman fancied he was being accused of laming it. They stopped a horseman who was riding past, and asked him to decide their quarrel. In reply, he admitted that the horse was not his. Each thought the decision was against him, and cursed him for it; and while the quarrel was at its height they referred it to a Brāhmaṇa who came up, who replied that it was useless for them to stop him, as he was determined never to return to his wicked wife. “In the crew of devils I defy any one to find one who equals her in wickedness,” he said. The horse-thief, observing men coming in the distance, made off on foot, the shepherd returned to his flock, the watchman, seeing the lamb left, took it home in order to punish the shepherd for his false charge, and the Brāhmaṇa stayed at a rest-house, and went home again next day.
In the Contes Soudanais (W. Africa), by C. Monteil, p. 18 ff., there is a story which resembles both this South Indian one and the Sinhalese one, in part. A shepherd in search of a lost sheep asked a cultivator about it. He replied, “My field begins before me and ends behind me.” The shepherd found the sheep, and offered it to the cultivator in payment for quarters for the night. The latter thought he was being charged with stealing it, and took him before a village headman, who remarked, “Still another story about women! Truly this can’t continue; I shall leave the village.” When he told his wife to accompany him, she said she would never live with a man who was always talking of divorcing her.
No. 15
The Prince and the Yakā
A king of a single city had one son, who was a Prince of five years. At that time, a Yakā[1] having settled in that kingdom began to devour the people of the city, and by reason of this the whole city was like to be abandoned. At last, the King and the men of the city, making great efforts, seized the Yakā, and having made an iron house, put him in it, and shut the door.
At that time it became necessary for the King of the city to go to war. After he had gone off to the war, when the King’s son one day had opened the door of the house in which was the man-eating Yakā, and was looking at him, the Yakā fell down, and made obeisance to him, and signifying his misery to the Prince, began to weep. So the Prince, pitying him, told the Yakā to go away. Then the Yakā, saying to the Prince, “It is good. I will assist you, too,” went away.