  In a certain country there was a dead Elephant, it is said. A Jackal having gone to eat the Elephant’s carcase, and having eaten and eaten a hole into the Elephant from behind, passed inside it. While he was eating and eating the carcase of the Elephant as he remained inside it, the skin [dried and] became twisted up, and the path by which the Jackal entered became closed. A man who was a tom-tom beater was going near it, taking a tom-tom for a devil-dance. Then among the bones the sound of tom-tom beating was heard. So the Jackal asked, “Who is going here?” The tom-tom beater said, “I am going to this devil-dance.” The Jackal said, “What art thou going this way for, without permission?” The tom-tom beater replied, “O Lord, I am going without knowing about this [permission’s being necessary].” The Jackal asked, “What wilt thou obtain for the dancing?” The tom-tom beater said, “I receive presents and the like.” Then the Jackal said, “I will give thee a present better than money. It is owing to thy good luck that thou hast come this way. I am a Devatawa (deity) who is guarding his own treasure here. If I am to give thee the treasure, split one eye (end) of the tom-tom which is in thy hand, and having filled it with water and brought it here, pour it on this Elephant.” After that, the tom-tom beater having plucked out the When this man looked inside, no deity was there, but there were many maggots. So the man, taking his broken tom-tom, went home. In a few days afterwards, a rain having fallen, the Elephant’s carcase floated, and went down into the water-course. From the water-course it passed down to the stream. A flock of crows covered the carcase. As they were going eating and eating the dead body, it descended into the river, and from the river it passed down to the great sea. There the skin having rotted began to fall to the bottom. After the crows had looked [around], there was not even a tree [to be seen], and before they were able to fly to a place where there were trees their wings were broken, and they died. Washerman. North-western Province. A variant related in another village is nearly the same. Some tom-tom beaters passing the Elephant’s carcase were accosted by the Jackal, to whom they replied that they were going to “a poya tom-tom beating,” that is, one given on the Buddhist sabbath, at the quarter of the moon. When he inquired what profit they would get from it, they stated that they would receive cakes and milk-rice. “You don’t want cakes and milk-rice,” he said, “I will give you gold. Bring water to this Elephant’s carcase.” They did so, breaking open the “eyes” of their tom-toms for the purpose, and the Jackal escaped. The story concludes: “For the tom-tom beaters there was neither gold, nor cakes and milk-rice. Having broken their tom-toms, lamenting and lamenting they went to their village.” In the Jataka story No. 148 (vol. i, p. 315), a Jackal became imprisoned in the same way, but escaped when a tempest soaked the skin. The tale is also given in No. 490 (vol. iv, p. 206). In the Katha Sarit Sagara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 77, a man crept inside the skin of an Elephant from which jackals had eaten the flesh. A rain-storm caused it to contract (?) and closed the aperture. The flood carried it into the Ganges and thence to the sea. There a Garu?a [Rukh] picked it up, and took it to Ceylon, where the man escaped when it tore open the hide. I insert the following as an account of the supposed state of things in Ceylon under the rule of Vibhisana, the Rakshasa King of Ceylon, after the death of Ravana: “Two Rakshasas contemplated him from a distance with feelings of fear.” They reported his arrival to Vibhisana, who sent for him and entertained him in a friendly and hospitable manner. When asked how he came to Ceylon, the Brahma?a cunningly replied that he had been sent by Vishnu, who had informed him that Vibhisana would present him with wealth. He stayed some time in the island, and was allowed a young Garu?a on which to ride about the country, and at last he was carried back to Mathura by it. In Old Deccan Days (Frere), p. 179, a Jackal got inside a dead bullock, and informed the scavengers who came to bury it that he was the god of their village. They poured water on the hide, and he escaped. In Indian Folk Tales (Gordon), p. 61, a live Elephant swallowed a Jackal. The Jackal fed on the heart and killed the Elephant, but was imprisoned inside when the skin dried up. When the God Mahadeo (Siva), who was passing, heard cries and inquired who was there, the Jackal, after ascertaining who it was, said that he was Sahadeo, father of Mahadeo, and induced the latter to prove his identity by causing a heavy rainfall, owing to which the skin was softened and he escaped. It is said in the Southern Province that all tom-tom beaters are fools. I had seen a Green Bee-eater flying near us, and I observed a small hole such as this bird makes as its nest-hole, in the sandy ground. I drew his attention to it, and he at once asserted that it was a rat-hole; of that he had no doubt whatever. “Well then, let us see if there are any eggs in it,” I said, knowing that it was then the breeding season of the Bee-eaters. He looked on, smiling ironically, while I got one of my men to open the tunnel carefully. When he came to the end, there on the sand, in a little saucer-shaped cavity, were four shining, spherical white eggs of the bird. The man was astonished, but was quite satisfied that they were rat’s eggs. “I saw them with my two eyes,” he said to my men, who all laughed at him. The following stories were written for me as the foolish doings traditionally attributed to the tom-tom beaters of a village in the North-western Province. Apparently the village is at the side of a rice field. |
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