Thereupon this very person, taking those sticks and creepers, and turning to the same quarter, went in chase of him.[4]
At that time the Eastern Liar had gone to sleep. Having heard the sound of the coming of the Western Liar, he arose. That person having become frightened at the sound of his (the Western Liar’s) coming, to take the packet of cooked rice seized the branch on which is the packet of cooked rice. Thereupon the tree, being completely uprooted, came into his hand. Taking also the tree itself, the same person having got in front ran away. This very person (the Western Liar), for [the purpose of] looking who it is, began to drive this very person backwards.
Having heard this very sound, and having said, “Something is coming to happen in the country,” an elephant-keeper who looked after a hundred tusk elephants, having sent off the elephants to their food and having become afraid, was looking about. Through that very despondency [which he felt] that some danger was coming to arrive at this very village, he said, “I must go to some other quarter”; and folding up the cloth in which he was dragging (= carrying) them, and in which were the whole hundred tusk elephants, he bolted.
Then having gone to an outer open place, and having unfastened the cloth, when he looked [inside it], only the two white lice called Gourd and Ash-pumpkin were [there], having eaten the whole hundred tusk elephants.
North-western Province.
Nonsense stories such as this are rather unusual in the East. There is one in No. 29, vol. i, and an Indian one is quoted after it. No. 130 in this vol. is another Sinhalese variant, and No. 263 in vol. iii, is also a tale of this type.
[1] Compare the beginning of the last variant at the end of the previous story. [↑]