The King said, “Bola, it is indeed a bird that is in my hand”; and having called the Vedarāla, and given him many offices, and a house, told him to stay at that very city.
Afterwards the Vedarāla, thinking, “They will call me again to tell sooth,” having put away the things that were in the house, and having set fire to the house, said, “Kurulu-gama Appu’s sooth-saying is finished from to-day. The sooth books have been burnt.” Having made it public he stayed at that very city.
North-western Province.
The second discovery of the sooth-sayer is extracted from a variant by a washerman, the rest of the story having been written by a man of the cultivating caste.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 272, there is an account of a pretended sooth-sayer, a poverty-stricken Brāhmaṇa. He first hid a horse, and when application was made to him to discover it, he drew diagrams and described the place where it would be found. After that, when a thief stole gold and jewels from the King’s palace he was sent for and shut up in a room, where he began to blame his tongue, jivha, which had made a vain pretence at knowledge. The principal thief, a maid called Jivhā, overheard him, and told him where she had buried her share of the plunder. Afterwards the King tested him by placing a frog in a covered pitcher. He expected that he would be killed, and said, “This is a fine pitcher for you, Frog (his father’s pet name for himself), since suddenly it has become the swift destroyer of yourself in this place.” He was thought a great sage, and the King presented him with “villages with gold, umbrella, and vehicles of all kinds.”
There is another story of a pretended sooth-sayer in vol. ii, p. 140, of the same work, but it does not, like the last, resemble the Sinhalese tale.
[1] Equivalent to saying, “What things do you know?” Sāēstara, the noun used, means sooth, knowledge of things, and science. [↑]
[2] The title “Vedarāla” is applied both to native medical practitioners and to demon expellers, who are also sooth-sayers. [↑]