Sri Lankan Folk Stories

Most folk stories and legends are related by mothers or grandmothers as they lull their children to sleep. In Sri Lanka it is often the grandfather who does the relating, and it takes place out of doors before fires at night.

In both chena and rice paddy cultivation, the crops have to be protected at night as well as during the day. From their woven palmfrond watch huts, farmers guarded against the nighttime marauding wild pigs, buffalo, and elephants. Since the fathers of the family had to tend the fields and guard against birds during the day, it fell to the grandfathers and the children to guard them at night. Through two thousand years of weary vigils on countless farms, a rich fabric of lore, legend, demon appeasement, interpretations of the planets, the origins of animals, meaning of the weather, and countless other fantasia about nature developed. The volumes of direct relation and scholarly interpretation of this rich body of folklore runs into the dozens.

Hence the fact that grandfathers were most often the bearers of these stories. One important result of this is that, unlike the moralistic quality of many maternal tales, grandfather-related folk tales often have a mordant wit.

For example: A hungry man once said to his King, "Feed me for six months, and I shall move a mountain." The King agreed, and at the end of the six months summoned the man and asked him to move a mountain. Said the man, "If you will just place it upon my head, I will happily carry it away."

Monkey, being as common to the landscape of Sri Lanka as prairie dogs are to the Plains, also figure largely in humorous lore. Once a troop of monkeys took it into their heads to actually do some work. (Monkeys are notorious thieves.) Approaching the King's gardener, they offered to help and were told that they might do so by

daily pouring water on the plants. However, the monkeys soon found that the supply of water wasn't enough to go around. They took counsel among themselves and were delighted when the wisest of them suggested that the best way to apportion the water was by the size of the plant's roots. Accordingly, they uprooted each plant before watering it to determine how much it should get.

Although Sri Lankan folk tales are not given to overt moralization, the point to this story is, "Kindness backed by ignorance generally produces more harm than good."

As there are no foxes in Sri Lanka, the role of cunning craftiness is given to the jackal — just as the role of the well-intended witless is given to the monkey. (Interestingly, there is no role equivalent to Coyote Old Man.)

One jackal story is this: A jackal had become riddled with fleas. He took a piece of coconut husk into his mouth and waded slowly into a stream. The fleas scrambled up his body as he waded in deeper, until finally only his nose and the coconut husk were above the surface. The fleas scrambled for refuge onto the coconut husk, thinking it to be the jackal's tail. When the husk was black with them, the jackal let the husk go and it sank, killing all the fleas. The jackal waded ashore, flea-free.

The leopard, on the other hand, is at the bottom of the hierarchy, being considered the stupidest of the animals. At one time, the cat was the master and the leopard was the pupil. Wishing to always maintain its superiority over the leopard, the cat taught the leopard how to climb up a tree, but not how to climb back down. That is why leopards always have to jump from trees — and why they will always kill a cat if given the chance. The regal elephant — symbol of royalty — was often the subject of cautionary tales regarding responsibility. An elephant trampled a nest of quail's eggs because he didn't want to be bothered to step over it. The mother bird, distraught with sorrow, cried her sorrow to a crow, a fly, and a frog. The crow helped the quail get revenge by pecking at the elephant's eyes. The fly deposited its eggs in the wounds. Blinded by this, and desperate with thirst, the elephant headed for the croaking frog, thinking there it would find water. But the frog was croaking from the edge of a precipice, off

which the elephant fell, paying with its life for the life it had so remorselessly taken.

The story is a reminder to rulers that tyrants may well come to their ends from sources they scorn.

Many tales simply explain natural phenomenon. The sad sound of the Sri Lankan dove's song is said to have come because a woman placed some berries on the ground to dry in the sun. She told her little boy to carefully guard them. When she returned some time later she looked at the spot and did not see the berries. Thinking the boy had been neglectful, she hit him so hard she killed him. Then she saw that the berries had already dried and were so small she didn't see them the first time. Out of her grief she ended her life and was turned into a dove. The dove's call in Sri Lanka sounds remarkably like Pubbaru pute pu pu, which in Sinhala would mean, "Little son, oh! oh!"

The characteristics of three other birds also have their story. A corawakka bird once went across a river to procure a supply of areca nut (puwak in Sinhala) for food. Having completed the purchase and filled the nuts into bags, he arrived at the riverbank and hired a woodpecker's boat to carry him across. In midstream, the boat capsized. Their calls for help brought a flock of geese to the scene. The geese immediately set about diving for the bags, but the bags were so heavy they could not raise them. They tried so hard they stretched their necks into the way they look today. The woodpecker now flies from tree to tree looking for a suitable piece of wood to build another boat. And the corawakka can be heard at the edge of every marsh, calling "Puwak! Puwak! Puwak!"

And as you might imagine, the cobra comes in for its share of legendry. It is a well known fact in Sri Lanka that the cobra and the viper are mortal enemies. It is also the case that the cobra, if you move back slowly, will deflate its hood and slip away. The viper, on the other hand, is aggressive and will actually go on the attack and chase after you as you flee (they are also remarkably swift, which is not a comforting thought in the thick undergrowth of the jungle).

In any event, a cobra and a viper once met at the height of a drought. Noticing that the cobra had recently slaked his thirst, the viper asked where he had found water. The cobra said, "Beyond that grove you will find a child at play, and nearby a pool of water — but

mind you, do not hurt the child!" The viper followed these directions and found both the child and the water. But the child was next to the water, so the viper bit the child and it died. [The viper is not locally called "The Ten-Stepper" for nothing.] In any event, the cobra, knowing the viper's vile temper, decided to return to the scene just to make sure all was well. He saw the dead child next to the viper drinking the water. The cobra became enraged, attacked the viper, and the two had a terrific fight. During the battle the cobra bit off the end of the viper's tail, which is why they have stumpy tails. To this day the two are mortal enemies and will attack each other on sight.

All this is but a taste of the delicious feast of Sri Lankan folklore. There are literally hundreds of stories like these, some moralistic, but most simply folkish explanations of phenomena such as the sounds of birds, practices of animals, behavior of the weather, and character of people. Most of the publications in which they appear are smallpress-run works from Sri Lankan presses (see Bibliography).