all his gods most fervently, and having waited until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser’s horse and with his bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be discovered.  Being thus balked the miser came down the pipal tree slowly cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at leisure.  His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a joyous countenance, and cried, “I thought as much:  you have sent away your horse to Kailasa, to be used by your old father.”  Vexed at his wife’s words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his own folly.

Through the Tamils it is probable this story reached Ceylon, where it exists in a slightly different form:  A young girl, named Kaluhami, had lately died, when a beggar came to the parents’ house, and on being asked by the mother where he had come from, he said that he had just come from the other world to this world, meaning that he had only just recovered from severe illness.  “Then,” said the woman, “since you have come from the other world, you must have seen my daughter Kaluhami there, who died but a few days ago.  Pray tell me how she is.”  The beggar, seeing how simple she was, replied, “She is my wife, and lives with me at present, and she has sent me to you for her dowry.”  The woman at once gave him all the money and jewels that were in the house, and sent him away delighted with his unexpected good luck.  Soon after, the woman’s husband returned, and learning how silly she had been, mounted his horse and rode after the beggar.  The rest of the story corresponds to the Tamil version, as above, with the exception that when the husband saw the beggar slide down the tree, get on his horse, and ride off, he cried out to him, “Hey, son-in-law, you may tell Kaluhami that the money and jewels are from her mother, and that the horse is from me;” which is altogether inconsistent, since he is represented as the reverse of a simpleton in pursuing the beggar, on hearing what his wife had done.  It is curious, also, to observe that in the Tamil version the man goes to the house with the deliberate purpose of deceiving the simple woman, while in the Sinhalese the beggar is evidently tempted by her mistaking the meaning of his words.  But both present very close points of resemblance to the Norwegian story of the pretended pilgrim from paradise.  There are indeed few instances of a story having travelled so far and lost so little of its original details, allowing for the inevitable local colouring.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. ii., pp. 373-381.  In a note to these adventures Campbell gives a story of some women who, as judges, doomed a horse to be hanged:  the thief who stole the horse got off, because it was his first offence; the horse went back to the house of the thief, because he was the better master, and was condemned for stealing himself!