The New Speech[1]
A certain Gamarāla had a daughter, it is said. Many persons having come, ask to marry the daughter. After they have asked it, this[2] Gamarāla asks those people who come, “Do you know the New Speech?” At that time those people say, “Anē! There is not a New Speech that we know.” “If so, go you away,” the[3] Gamarāla says to those parties. Well then, those people go.
Then still a party come. He asks that party, also, in that very manner, “Do you know the New Speech?” Thereupon that party say, “Anē! There is not a New Speech that we know.” Then the man says, “If so, I will not give my girl. I will give her [only] to the man who knows the New Speech.”
In this manner, many persons having asked and asked, went away. Because even one person is not learning the New Speech, even one person does not obtain her.
A young man at yet [another] village said thus: “Anē! Father, I know[4] a New Speech. Because of it, marry and give that Gamarāla’s daughter to me,” he said.
Thereupon, he having gone asks the Gamarāla, “My son knows a New Speech. Because of it, can you marry your daughter to my son?” he asked.
Then the Gamarāla, having become pleased, said, “It is very good.”
On the following day after that the marriage took place. When not much time had gone, one day when the father-in-law and the son-in-law were getting ready to go and plough the rice field, they said at the hand of the girl’s mother, “Bring cooked rice to the rice field,” and went to plough.
While ploughing, the father-in-law’s goad having broken he went to the jungle below the rice field to cut a goad. Then that girl’s mother, bringing the cooked rice and coming to the field, asked the son-in-law, “Where, son-in-law, is your father-in-law now?”
Then the son-in-law said, “Andō! Mother-in-law, is there any stopping in the field for him! There, Ōn̥! A woman was beckoning with her hands; he will have gone on that account;” and leaving aside the quarter to which that man went, he stretched out his hand in another direction. “He went there, Ōn̥! You go, too,” he said. Afterwards the mother-in-law went there.