A Tale of a King

Summary

In the kingdom of Candrapaṭna, King Cākru-Cōkru has two wives (Vajra and Ratna), two courtesans, two horses, two elephants, two dogs, and two ponds near his palace, yet he has no son, his animals have no young, and the ponds are dry. Lamenting his situation, he travels afar and meets a deity in human form who gives him three magic stones: one to throw into the dried pond to fill it with water, then to wash his hands and feet; another to create a mango tree in a paddy field; and the last to knock down a mango. The king follows the instructions and gives the mango to his queens. Queen Vajra eats the whole fruit and discards the stone, while Queen Ratna, who was bathing, later has her maids find the stone and eat it.

Only Ratna becomes pregnant. The king leaves for war but instructs Ratna to beat a large bronze drum with pebbles if she needs him; she does so when she feels ill, and he returns. After nine months, Ratna gives birth to twins—a boy with a golden crown and a girl with a golden hair ornament—while the king is away.

Queen Vajra falsely offers to help, then takes the children and buries them under a cowdung heap in the cattle shed, replacing them with a lizard and a skink to deceive the king. The king receives a letter with the false news. Later, Vajra notices her tawny cow yielding only half its usual milk and discovers the cow nursing the twins. She takes them and tosses them into a well in a pot, but a family of eagles feeds them there, so she casts them in water in a pot.

Analysis

The tale belongs to ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children," where three sisters discuss marrying the king, the youngest promises wondrous children, the king marries her, jealous aunts cast the children into water, and the children later reunite the family, leading to the aunts' punishment. Stith Thompson and Jonas Balys's index of Indian tales records 44 variants of this type across Indian sources. Noriko Mayeda and W. Norman Brown divided Indian variants into five groups: quest for wonderful items, reincarnation into flowers, use of wooden horses, children sing a song, and miscellaneous. The tale contains motif T511, "Conception from eating"; T511.1, "Conception from eating fruit"; and specifically T511.1.3, "Conception from eating mango." A motif appearing in Indian variants is that, at the tale's conclusion, jets of breastmilk flow from the disgraced queen, confirming her blood relation to the children.

Variants

In a Tulu Nadu tale translated as ಅಣ್ಣ-ತಂ ("Brother and Sister"), a king with two wives has no son. A god in human form tosses three stones to sprout a mango tree; the king gives the fruit to his co-wives. The second wife eats the whole fruit and discards the pit, which the first wife eats and becomes pregnant. The first wife bears twins (a boy and a girl) while the king is away; the second wife hides them in a cowdung pit and replaces them with frogs and toads.

The king banishes the first wife and hires a water carrier, who finds the twins and nurses them on cow's milk. The second wife later throws the children away, but a religious man raises them and gives them a magic carpet, a magic pot, and a magic stick that creates a golden palace. The twins fly to the king's village and build a golden palace. The second wife learns of their survival and sends her grandmother to trick the female twin into sending her brother on quests: first for Jatayu beyond seven seas, then for a maiden named Patala Singhi.

The brother succeeds in both quests, though he becomes petrified on the second quest; his sister rescues him with Patala Singhi's help. The king holds a feast, and the twins bring Jatayu and Patala Singhi as guests. The second wife tries to poison them, but the guests refuse to eat, giving the food to dogs, which die. They ask the king to bring the disgraced first queen, who had been demoted to water the garden.