Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c26.17

c26.17

An interesting tale of a cotton field is related in the Ummagga Jātaka, in a Sinhalese prose Ummagga version of the early fourteenth century; it is a rather charming picture of a little village Jātaka episode. A certain woman, watching in a cotton field, had spun some cotton into fine thread, and made a ball of it. On her way home she bathed in a certain tank, leaving the ball of cotton with her cloth on the bank. Another woman took it up as if only to admire it, but walked off with it altogether. The first woman followed, and as they passed by a certain pandit's hall, quarrelling, he sent for them. They agreed to abide by his decision. He asked one, around what she had rolled the thread, to which she replied that she had rolled it round a cotton seed; the real owner replied to the same question, that she had rolled it round a *timbiri* seed; and when the ball was unrolled, such was found to be the case, and so the thief was discovered. The judgment of a Solomon.