The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one individual, as in the tale of "Foolish Sachúli;" but generally they are told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sachúli is also found, in varied form, in Beschi's Gooroo Paramartan: One day Sachúli climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting off the branch between the tree and himself. A man passing by called to him, saying, "What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut that branch off." "What do you say?" asked the booby, coming down. "When shall I die?" "How can I tell?" said the man. "Let me go." "I will not let you go until you tell me when I shall die." At last the man, in order to get rid of him, said, "When you find a scarlet thread on your jacket, then you will die." After this Sachúli went to the bazaar, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. "Now I shall die!" exclaimed the fool. "How do you know that?" the tailors inquired, when he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they all laughed. Nevertheless, Sachúli went and dug a grave in the jungle and lay down in it.
Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of ghi, or clarified butter, which he engages Sachúli to carry for him, and the noodle, of course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.
The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Dín, and there exist German, Saxon, and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon, and the following is a version from a Hindú work entitled Bharataka Dwátrinsati, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:
In Elákapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk, who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves; when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.[11]
A diverting story in the Facetiæ of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini and in our old collection Tales and Quicke Answeres, has a near affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of his property. In the early English jest-book,[12] it is, in effect, as follows:
There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way. Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be in his bed—he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague," when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.[13] Then, standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast, and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set down the "body" and ran away—leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole affair to the marvelling multitude.[14]
We read of another silly son, in the Kathá Manjari, whose father said to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go, therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad accordingly went to the tank, and having caused all the water—which was required for the irrigation of his father's fields—to run to waste, he picked up from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to his father, not a little proud of his exploit.—In the Kathá Sarit Ságara it is related that a Bráhman told his foolish son one evening that he must send him to the village early on the morrow, and thither the lad went, without asking what he was to do. Returning home at night very tired, he said to his father, "I have been to the village." "Yes," said the Bráhman, "you went thither without an object, and have done no good by it."—And in the Buddhist Játakas we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely. Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear—drive it off." "Wait a bit, father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow." Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking to kill the mosquito with the axe, he only killed his father.