This story originally comes from Sinhalese folklore as one of the funny idiom stories. The idiom is “like Abara observed sil.” The tale revolves around this foolish villager who messed up his behavior at a Buddhist temple. The story is surely one of the funny folktales or folktale stories with moral lessons. So it can be an ideal one to include in moral stories for kids or just funny stories for kids.
Once upon a time in ancient Ceylon, there was a man called Abara. He was married to a religious woman. They both were Buddhists. The women who is more religious goes to temple in every full moon poya day to observe Ata Sil. Buddhist people who are not monks have five principles called Pan-Sil. Those are, not taking any life, not stealing anything, not misbehaving sexually, not telling any lie, and not consuming drugs. In full moon poya days, they go to temple and observe more leveled up Sil called Ata-Sil. There are eight of those.
So, Abara’s wife went to temple and observed Atasil and returned home. But, Abara didn’t go to temple. He never had gone to temple to observe Sil. His wife wanted him to go to temple and observe sil.
“Why don’t you go to the temple and observe Sil, at least on the full moon poya day?” his wife asked Abara.
“You know… I don’t know how to do it..” Abara replied.
“It’s not that hard..! All you have to do is just go to the temple, sit with everyone else and repeat after the priest whatever he preaches,” the wife explained. In Buddhist ceremonies, when the monk preaches the gathas, the others repeat after the monk. Because only the monk knows the gathas correctly, as he is specially trained for it.
“Okay, that seems not hard. I’ll go..” Abara said.
In 28 days, the next poya day came. Abara’s wife wanted Abara to observe Sil. Therefore, she called him and said, “Are you listening to me? Don’t forget to go to the temple to observe Sil. And I won’t be able to go today. Therefore, you go and observe, sil.”
With the help of the wife, Abara wore a white sarong and put on a white towel on his right shoulder covering his chest area. He went to the temple. When he went there. There were already a crowd sitting under the Bodhi tree. And the priest had started to chant gathas. Abara wanted to make sure that the monk sees his presence there. So he moved here and there behind the crowd to make him appear to the priest.
“Where are you going?” the priest asked Abara.
“Where are you going?” Abara asked the priest.
The surprised priest asked, “Are you crazy?”.
Since he has to repeat the same the priest says, Abara repeat the same. “Are you crazy?” Abara asked back.
As Abara was disrupting the ceremony and also behave like a madman, the priest asked the fellow crowd to take Abara off the temple. “Boys, escort this idiot out of the temple” the priest said.
Listening to that, Abara also said, “Boys, escort this idiot out of the temple”.
When Abara said that to the priest the people who were in the temple beat him and dragged off the temple. Having beaten up, with sore body, Abara went home. His wife was waiting for him sitting in the Verandah area.
“I don’t know how you come back home and do so fine, even though when you observe sil twice a month. Today, only after one day observing sil, all my body hurts.”
So, when someone is doing something without using brains, thinking by themselves, just following someone’s guides, people say, “Abara Sil Gaththa Wage“. That means As Abara observed Sil.