Having come to a shop where they were selling foreign pots, the men of the party gave goods, and each one got a foreign water-pot. This man giving the parti-coloured dog, also got one.
Afterwards having come very close to their village, each of the men of the party, saying, “I will give four tuttu and get shaved,” got shaved. So this man gave that foreign water-pot, and got himself shaved.
In the end the man returned home without either cart, or yoke of bulls, or goods.
Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
Some Eastern variants have been mentioned above in the story of the Kitul seeds, No. 26.
In The Orientalist, vol. ii, p. 102, there is a story by Mr. A. E. R. Corea, in which a man who was going in search of work gathered some leaves on the road-side, which are eaten as a vegetable. In another district where there were no vegetables he exchanged them for fishes, a leaf for a fish. Going on, he bartered these for digging hoes, and these again for oxen, with which he set off on his return home. Having nothing to eat, he continued to give two oxen for two rice cakes, until at last he arrived at his house empty-handed.
In the Panchatantra (Dubois), a Brāhmaṇa who had been at two feasts on the same day, carried away from the second some pots of ghī—or liquid butter,—milk, and flour, and began to consider how he would acquire wealth by means of them. He would sell them, and buy a she-goat, which would have kids, and in a short time he would possess a flock. He would then sell the goats and buy a cow and a mare, by selling the calves and foals from which he would become a rich man. He would get married and have numerous children, who would be well educated and well dressed. His wife would become inattentive to her duties at the house. During her absence the children would run about near the cows, and the youngest one would be injured by them. For neglecting them he would beat his wife, and taking up his stick to beat her he smashed the pots containing his provisions.
[1] The word used, nikan, “no-act,” is employed in several senses; when a thing is given nikan, it usually means “without payment.” To come or go nikan, is to come or go without any special reason or business, and also to go empty-handed, as in a former tale. [↑]