Having eaten it, at the time when they are going, taking an axe, and a [water] gourd, and fire, two pigs having been digging and digging at a tank a pig says, “That Prince to-day will die.”
The [other] pig says, “The Prince will not die. Having constructed a funeral pyre (saeyak), the Prince will mount on it. Water-thirst having come, he will tell his wife to bring water,” it said. “She having gone, when she is bringing the water she will slip and fall and will die,” it said.
He having constructed the funeral pyre, when the Prince mounted on it a water-thirst came. He told his wife to bring water. She went [to the tank for it], and having gone slipping through the amount of the weight, she fell in the water and died. Having put his wife on the pyre and burnt her, afterwards he went home.
This story affords an illustration of a common belief in Ceylon, that cobras sometimes pair with rat-snakes. The Prince is evidently thought to have acted in a becoming manner in refusing to give the milk to the female cobra when she was improperly associating with the rat-snake during the absence of her mate.
Regarding the drinking of milk by cobras, mention is made in the Jātaka story No. 146 (vol. i, p. 311) of an offering of milk, among other things, made to Nāgas. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, F.R.S., the Secretary to the Zoological Society, has been good enough to reply as follows to my inquiry regarding the drinking of milk by cobras:—“I have not myself seen Cobras drinking milk, but I am sure that they will do so, and I see no reason to doubt it, as certainly many other snakes will drink milk.”
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. i, p. 382, there is a story the first part of which is a variant of this one, the latter part being a variant of the tale which follows. The daughter of a Nāga King was beaten by a cow-herd, and complained to her father that the King of the country had done it. The Nāga went at night as a snake, and while under the King’s bed heard him tell the Queen that he had saved the girl from the cow-herd. Next day the Nāga appeared before the King, offered to fulfil any wish of the King’s, and at his request gave him the power of understanding the speech of all animals, informing him that he must be careful to let no one know of it (or, as the translator added in a note, the penalty would be death).
When the King afterwards laughed on hearing the talk of some butterflies about their food, the Queen vainly asked the reason. After this occurred three times the Queen threatened to kill herself. The Nāga, to save the King, by its magic power caused hundreds of sheep to cross a river in his presence. When the ram refused to return for a ewe she threatened to commit suicide, and reminded him that the King was about to lose his life because of his wife. The ram replied that the King was a fool to perish for the sake of his wife, and that the ewe might die, he had others. The King reflected that he had less wisdom than the ram, and when his wife again threatened to kill herself told her that she was free to do so; he had many wives and did not need her.
In Folklore of the Santal Parganas (collected by Rev. Dr. Bodding), p. 394, a cow-herd who had relieved a Bonga (deity) of a heavy stone which had been placed on him, received from him the power to understand the language of ants. To give him this knowledge the Bonga merely blew into his ear. One day, when the man laughed heartily on hearing two ants abuse each other over a grain of rice, his wife insisted on being told the cause. On his telling her he lost the power conferred on him.