The King and His Four Ministers
Under the title of “Strike, but Hear,” a considerably abridged and modified version of this Tale is given in the Rev. Lal Behári Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal (London: Macmillan & Co., 1883), of which this is the substance:
A king appoints his three sons to patrol in turn the streets of his capital during the night. It happens that the youngest prince in going his rounds one night sees a very beautiful woman issuing from the palace, and he asks to know what business she is bent upon at such an hour. She replies: “I am the guardian deity of this palace. The king will be killed this night, and therefore I am going away.” The prince persuades the goddess to return into the palace and await the event. He enters his father’s bed-chamber and discovers a huge cobra near the royal couch, and at once cuts the deadly snake into many pieces, which he puts into a brass vessel that was in the room. Then seeing that some drops of the serpent’s blood had fallen on his step-mother’s bosom, he wraps a piece of cloth round his tongue to protect it from the poison, and licks off the blood. The lady awakes, and recognises him as he is leaving the room. She accuses him to the king of having used an unpardonable freedom with her. In the morning the king sends for his eldest son and asks him: “If a trusted servant should prove faithless, how should he be punished?” The prince replies: “Surely his head should be parted from his body. But before doing so, you should ascertain whether the man is actually guilty.” And then he proceeds to relate the
Story of the Woman Who Knew the Language of Animals
There was in former times a goldsmith who had a grown-up son, whose wife was acquainted with the language of animals, but she kept secret from her husband and all others the fact of her being endowed with such a rare gift. It happened one night that she heard a jackal exclaim: “There is a dead body floating on the river; would that some one might give me that body to eat, and for his pains take the diamond ring from the finger of that dead man.” The woman arose from her bed and went to the bank of the river, and her husband, who had not been asleep, got up and followed her unobserved. She went into the water, drew the corpse on to the land, and, being unable to loose the ring from the dead man’s finger, which had swelled, she bit off the finger, and, leaving the corpse on the bank of the river, returned home, whither she had been preceded by her husband. Almost petrified by fear, the young goldsmith concluded from what he had seen that his wife was not a human being but a rákshasí; and early in the morning he hastened to his father and related the whole affair to him—how the woman had got up during the night and gone to the river, out of which she dragged a dead body on to the land, and was busy devouring it when he ran home in horror at the loathsome sight. The old man was greatly shocked, and advised his son to take his wife on some pretext into the forest, and leave her there to be destroyed by wild beasts. So the husband caused the woman to get herself ready to go on a visit to her parents, and after a hasty breakfast they set out. In going through a dense jangal, where the goldsmith purposed abandoning his wife, she heard a serpent cry: “O passenger, I pray thee to seize and give me that croaking frog, and take for thy reward the gold and precious stones concealed in yonder hole.” The woman at once seized the frog and threw it towards the serpent, and then began digging into the ground with a stick. Her husband quaked with fear, thinking that his ghúl-wife was about to kill him; but she called to him, saying: “My dear husband, gather up all the gold and precious gems.” Approaching the spot with hesitation, he was surprised to perceive an immense treasure laid bare by his wife, who then explained to him how she had learned of it from the snake that lay coiled up near them, whose language she understood. Then said he to his wife: “It is now so late that we cannot reach your father’s house before dark, and we might be slain by wild beasts. Let us therefore return home.” So they retraced their steps, and approaching the house, the goldsmith said to his wife: “Do you, my dear, go in by the back door, while I enter by the front and show my father all this treasure.” The woman accordingly went in by the back door and was met by her father-in-law, who, on seeing her, concluded that she had killed and devoured his son, and striking her on the head with a hammer which he happened to have in his hand she instantly fell down dead. Just then the son came into the room, but it was too late.
“I have told your majesty this story,” adds the eldest prince, “in order that, before putting the man to death, you should make sure that he is guilty.”
The king then calls his second son, and asks him the same question as he had asked his brother, to which he replies by relating the
Story of the King and His Faithful Horse
Once a king while engaged in the chase was separated from his attendants, and seeing what he conceived to be rain-water dropping from the branch of a tree, being very thirsty, he held his drinking-cup under it until it was nearly filled, and as he was about to put it to his lips his horse purposely moved so as to cause the contents to be spilled on the ground, upon which the king in a rage drew his sword and killed the faithful animal. But afterwards discovering that what he had taken for rain-water was poison that dropped from a cobra in the tree, his grief knew no bounds.
Calling his third son, the king asks him what should be done to the man who proved false to his trust, and the prince tells the Story of the Wonderful Fruit which bestowed perennial youth on him who ate of it, with some unimportant variations from the same story in our Romance.
Then the youngest prince explained the occasion of his presence in the royal bed-chamber, and how he had saved the king and his consort from the cobra’s deadly bite. And his majesty, overjoyed and full of gratitude, strained his faithful son to his heart, and ever afterwards cherished and loved him with all a father’s love.
Another version is orally current in Kashmír, and, under the title of “The Four Princes,” a translation of it is given by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles in his excellent collection, Folk-Tales of Kashmír, from which are extracted the following details:
Four clever and handsome young princes are hated by their step-mother, who persuades her husband the king to cease his personal and secret inspection of the city and adjacent towns and villages—which had long been his custom, going about at night in disguise—and appoint his four grown-up, idle sons to the duties. But still the queen is jealous of them, and poisons the king’s mind against them, so that he speaks harshly to his worthy sons, without any apparent cause. One night the four princes met together and discussed the altered conduct of the king towards them, and the three younger proposed that they should privily quit the country, but this was strenuously opposed by the eldest brother, who suggested that they should rather take turn and patrol the city, one of them each night, to which they agreed. It happened that the eldest prince, in the course of his perambulation one night, came past the hut of a Bráhman, whom he saw gazing out of the open window towards the heavens, and presently heard him say to his wife that he had just observed the king’s star obscured by another star, which indicated that his majesty would die in seven days. His wife asked him how he should die then, and he replied that a black snake would descend from the sky on the seventh day, enter the royal bed-chamber by the door that opened into the courtyard, and bite the king’s toe, thus causing his death. Then the Bráhman made a sacrifice, and, after prayers and incantations, he told his wife farther, that the king’s life would be saved if one of his relations dug pits in the courtyard on the east side of the palace, filled some with water and the others with milk, and scattered flowers on the ground between the ponds and the door of the king’s room. He must be ready, sword in hand, outside the door at the appointed time, when the snake will come and swim across the ponds and pass over the flowers, after which it will become comparatively harmless. Then he must strike and slay the snake with his sword, and taking some of its warm blood smear it over the king’s toes—thus will he be preserved from evil. The prince, having treasured these directions in his memory, on the seventh day follows them exactly, and having taken some of the snake’s blood, gently opens the door of the king’s chamber and enters, having first tied a bandage over his eyes, that he should not see the queen. But being thus blindfolded he smears the blood on the queen’s toes instead of those of the king, which causes her to awake, and to shriek on seeing a man glide out of the room, which awakes the king, who recognises his eldest son as the intruder. The queen, on discovering the blood on her feet concludes that it was a rákshasa, and becomes frantic with fright, but her husband sets her mind at rest by telling her that he is now assured of the wickedness of his sons, who had employed a demon to destroy them both, and he would have them all executed on the morrow, at which the queen was highly delighted. Then the king causes the four princes to be stripped of their royal robes and thrown into a dungeon. In the morning they are brought into the presence of the king, who gives order for their immediate execution, and they are being led away when one of them made signs and prostrated himself before the throne, as if he wished to say something. “Let him speak,” said the king. “Perhaps he wants to relieve his heart of some foul secret—let him speak.” The prince then began to relate the Story of the Merchant and His Faithful Dog which differs materially from our story of the Hunter and his Dog (p. 206), but agrees with some versions current in various parts of India: A young merchant meets four men who are quarrelling over the possession of a poor dog, which they are dragging about most unmercifully. They tell him it is not an ordinary dog, for their late father charged them not to sell it for less than 20,000 rupís. He gives them the money and takes the dog with him. By-and-by he loses all his wealth through a series of unfortunate transactions, and borrows 15,000 rupís of another merchant on the security of his dog. One night a gang of robbers break into the merchant’s house and carry off all his valuables. They are followed unobserved by the dog, who watches them dig a pit and bury the treasure in it, intending to return and share their booty when they might do so with safety. Next day the dog, by means of signs, leads the merchant to the spot where his wealth was hidden, and when it is discovered, full of gratitude to the faithful animal, he writes out an acquittance of the young merchant’s loan, and having related the great service the dog had done him expressed a wish to purchase the dog, for which he enclosed a draft for 30,000 rupís, and putting the letter in the dog’s mouth, sends him back to his master. As the dog is trotting along he meets his master, who, concluding that he had run away, and that the merchant would quickly follow, determined to kill the animal, and if the merchant should come, he would say: “Give me back my dog, and I will return the money.” But when he had killed his dog and was about to take the carcase up, in order to conceal it, the letter dropped from his mouth, and the young merchant, stricken with remorse, fell down insensible.
Another of the princes then steps forward and relates the Story of the Woman Who Knew the Language of Animals which does not differ very much from the same tale in the Bengalí collection, cited on p. 505, above, excepting that in place of a goldsmith the husband is a shikárí, or hunter; it is a bracelet set with five precious stones, not a diamond ring that the woman takes off the corpse in the river, and a crow, not a serpent, that tells of the treasure underground; and it is her father-in-law, not her husband, who accompanies her, and it is her husband who kills her when she comes home, thinking that she had devoured his father.
The youngest prince next makes his obeisance to his majesty and obtains leave to relate the Story of the King and His Falcon which is similar to that of the King and his Faithful Horse in the Bengalí version: The king is about to drink of some water he had drawn from a spring, when his falcon dashed the cup out of his hand, whereupon the thirsty and enraged king drew his sword and killed his favourite bird. Afterwards a huge and deadly snake was found coiled up at the head of the spring, and too late the king saw that the falcon had saved his life.
His majesty having heard these stories, now began to suspect that his wife had deceived him regarding his four sons, and when the eldest prince had explained the whole affair, and shown the king the pits of water and milk and the body of the serpent, he was fully reconciled to them, and abdicating the throne in favour of his eldest son, and appointing the others to be governors of provinces, he retired to the wilderness and became a hermit.