There was a poor half-witted Brahman who had a wife but no children. It
was only with difficulty he could supply the wants of himself and his
wife. And the worst of it was that he was rather lazily inclined. He
was averse to taking long journeys, otherwise he might always have
had enough, in the shape of presents from rich men, to enable him
and his wife to live comfortably. There was at that time a king in a
neighbouring country who was celebrating the funeral obsequies of his
mother with great pomp. Brahmans and beggars were going from different
parts with the expectation of receiving rich presents. Our Brahman was
requested by his wife to seize this opportunity and get a little money;
but his constitutional indolence stood in the way. The woman, however,
gave her husband no rest till she extorted from him the promise that
he would go. The good woman, accordingly, cut down a plantain tree
and burnt it to ashes, with which ashes she cleaned the clothes of
her husband, and made them as white as any fuller could make them. She
did this because her husband was going to the palace of a great king,
who could not be approached by men clothed in dirty rags; besides,
as a Brahman, he was bound to appear neat and clean. The Brahman at
last one morning left his house for the palace of the great king. As
he was somewhat imbecile, he did not inquire of any one which road
he should take; but he went on and on, and proceeded whithersoever
his two eyes directed him. He was of course not on the right road,
indeed he had reached a region where he did not meet with a single
human being for many miles, and where he saw sights which he had
never seen in his life. He saw hillocks of cowries (shells used as
money) on the roadside: he had not proceeded far from them when he
saw hillocks of pice, then successively hillocks of four-anna pieces,
hillocks of eight-anna pieces, and hillocks of rupees. To the infinite
surprise of the poor Brahman, these hillocks of shining silver coins
were succeeded by a large hill of burnished gold-mohurs, which were
all as bright as if they had been just issued from the mint. Close
to this hill of gold-mohurs was a large house which seemed to be
the palace of a powerful and rich king, at the door of which stood
a lady of exquisite beauty. The lady, seeing the Brahman, said,
"Come, my beloved husband; you married me when I was young, and
you never came once after our marriage, though I have been daily
expecting you. Blessed be this day which has made me see the face of
my husband. Come, my sweet, come in, wash your feet and rest after the
fatigues of your journey; eat and drink, and after that we shall make
ourselves merry." The Brahman was astonished beyond measure. He had
no recollection of having been married in early youth to any other
woman than the woman who was now keeping house with him. But being
a Kulin Brahman, he thought it was quite possible that his father
had got him married when he was a little child, though the fact had
made no impression on his mind. But whether he remembered it or not,
the fact was certain, for the woman declared that she was his wedded
wife,--and such a wife! as beautiful as the goddesses of Indra's
heaven, and no doubt as wealthy as she was beautiful. While these
thoughts were passing through the Brahman's mind, the lady said again,
"Are you doubting in your mind whether I am your wife? Is it possible
that all recollection of that happy event has been effaced from your
mind--all the pomp and circumstance of our nuptials? Come in, beloved;
this is your own house, for whatever is mine is thine." The Brahman
succumbed to the loving entreaties of the fair lady, and went into the
house. The house was not an ordinary one--it was a magnificent palace,
all the apartments being large and lofty and richly furnished. But one
thing surprised the Brahman very much, and that was that there was
no other person in the house besides the lady herself. He could not
account for so singular a phenomenon; neither could he explain how
it was that he did not meet with any human being in his morning and
evening walks. The fact was that the lady was not a human being. She
was a Rakshasi. [10] She had eaten up the king, the queen, and all
the members of the royal family, and gradually all his subjects. This
was the reason why human beings were not seen in those parts.
The Rakshasi and the Brahman lived together for about a week, when
the former said to the latter, "I am very anxious to see my sister,
your other wife. You must go and fetch her, and we shall all live
together happily in this large and beautiful house. You must go early
to-morrow, and I will give you clothes and jewels for her." Next
morning the Brahman, furnished with fine clothes and costly ornaments,
set out for his home. The poor woman was in great distress; all the
Brahmans and Pandits that had been to the funeral ceremony of the
king's mother had returned home loaded with largesses; but her husband
had not returned,--and no one could give any news of him, for no one
had seen him there. The woman therefore concluded that he must have
been murdered on the road by highwaymen. She was in this terrible
suspense, when one day she heard a rumour in the village that her
husband was seen coming home with fine clothes and costly jewels for
his wife. And sure enough the Brahman soon appeared with his valuable
load. On seeing his wife the Brahman thus accosted her:--"Come with
me, my dearest wife; I have found my first wife. She lives in a
stately palace, near which are hillocks of rupees and a large hill
of gold-mohurs. Why should you pine away in wretchedness and misery
in this horrible place? Come with me to the house of my first wife,
and we shall all live together happily." When the woman heard her
husband speak of his first wife, of hillocks of rupees and of a hill
of gold-mohurs, she thought in her mind that her half-witted good man
had become quite mad; but when she saw the exquisitely beautiful silks
and satins and the ornaments set with diamonds and precious stones,
which only queens and princesses were in the habit of putting on,
she concluded in her mind that her poor husband had fallen into the
meshes of a Rakshasi. The Brahman, however, insisted on his wife's
going with him, and declared that if she did not come she was at
liberty to pine away in poverty, but that for himself he meant to
return forthwith to his first and rich wife. The good woman, after a
great deal of altercation with her husband, resolved to go with him
and judge for herself how matters stood. They set out accordingly
the next morning, and went by the same road on which the Brahman had
travelled. The woman was not a little surprised to see hillocks of
cowries, of pice, of eight-anna pieces, of rupees, and last of all a
lofty hill of gold-mohurs. She saw also an exceedingly beautiful lady
coming out of the palace hard by, and hastening towards her. The lady
fell on the neck of the Brahman woman, wept tears of joy, and said,
"Welcome, beloved sister! this is the happiest day of my life! I have
seen the face of my dearest sister!" The party then entered the palace.
What with the stately mansion in which he was lodged, with the most
delectable provisions which seemed to rise as if by enchantment, what
with the caresses and endearments of his two wives, the one human and
the other demoniac, who vied with each other in making him happy and
comfortable, the Brahman had a jolly time of it. He was steeped as
it were in an ocean of enjoyment. Some fifteen or sixteen years were
spent by the Brahman in this state of Elysian pleasure, during which
period his two wives presented him with two sons. The Rakshasi's son,
who was the elder, and who looked more like a god than a human being,
was named Sahasra Dal, literally the Thousand-Branched; and the son
of the Brahman woman, who was a year younger, was named Champa Dal,
that is, branch of a champaka tree. The two boys loved each other
dearly. They were both sent to a school which was several miles
distant, to which they used every day to go riding on two little
ponies of extraordinary fleetness.
The Brahman woman had all along suspected from a thousand little
circumstances that her sister-in-law was not a human being but a
Rakshasi; but her suspicion had not yet ripened into certainty, for
the Rakshasi exercised great self-restraint on herself, and never
did anything which human beings did not do. But the demoniac nature,
like murder, will out. The Brahman having nothing to do, in order
to pass his time had recourse to hunting. The first day he returned
from the hunt, he had bagged an antelope. The antelope was laid in the
courtyard of the palace. At the sight of the antelope the mouth of the
raw-eating Rakshasi began to water. Before the animal was dressed for
the kitchen, she took it away into a room, and began devouring it. The
Brahman woman, who was watching the whole scene from a secret place,
saw her Rakshasi sister tear off a leg of the antelope, and opening her
tremendous jaws, which seemed to her imagination to extend from earth
to heaven, swallow it up. In this manner the body and other limbs of
the antelope were devoured, till only a little bit of the meat was
kept for the kitchen. The second day another antelope was bagged,
and the third day another; and the Rakshasi, unable to restrain her
appetite for raw flesh, devoured these two as she had devoured the
first. On the third day the Brahman woman expressed to the Rakshasi her
surprise at the disappearance of nearly the whole of the antelope with
the exception of a little bit. The Rakshasi looked fierce and said,
"Do I eat raw flesh?" To which the Brahman woman replied, "Perhaps you
do, for aught I know to the contrary." The Rakshasi, knowing herself
to be discovered, looked fiercer than before, and vowed revenge. The
Brahman woman concluded in her mind that the doom of herself, of
her husband, and of her son was sealed. She spent a miserable night,
believing that next day she would be killed and eaten up, and that her
husband and son would share the same fate. Early next morning, before
her son Champa Dal went to school, she gave him in a small golden
vessel a little quantity of her own breast milk, and told him to be
constantly watching its colour. "Should you," she said, "see the milk
get a little red, then conclude that your father has been killed; and
should you see it grow still redder, then conclude that I am killed:
when you see this, gallop away for your life as fast as your horse
can carry you, for if you do not, you also will be devoured."
The Rakshasi on getting up from bed--and she had prevented the Brahman
overnight from having any communication with his wife--proposed that
she and the Brahman should go to bathe in the river, which was at
some distance. She would take no denial; the Brahman had therefore
to follow her as meekly as a lamb. The Brahman woman at once saw from
the proposal that ruin was impending; but it was beyond her power to
avert the catastrophe. The Rakshasi, on the river-side, assuming her
own proper gigantic dimensions, took hold of the ill-fated Brahman,
tore him limb by limb, and devoured him up. She then ran to her house,
and seized the Brahman woman, and put her into her capacious stomach,
clothes, hair and all. Young Champa Dal, who, agreeably to his mother's
instructions, was diligently watching the milk in the small golden
vessel, was horror-struck to find the milk redden a little. He set
up a cry and said that his father was killed; a few minutes after,
finding the milk become completely red, he cried yet louder, and
rushing to his pony, mounted it. His half-brother, Sahasra Dal,
surprised at Champa Dal's conduct, said, "Where are you going,
Champa? Why are you crying? Let me accompany you." "Oh! do not come
to me. Your mother has devoured my father and mother; don't you come
and devour me." "I will not devour you; I'll save you." Scarcely
had he uttered these words and galloped away after Champa Dal, when
he saw his mother in her own Rakshasi form appearing at a distance,
and demanding that Champa Dal should come to her. He said, "I will
come to you, not Champa." So saying, he went to his mother, and with
his sword, which he always wore as a young prince, cut off her head.
Champa Dal had, in the meantime, galloped off a good distance, as
he was running for his life; but Sahasra Dal, by pricking his horse
repeatedly, soon overtook him, and told him that his mother was no
more. This was small consolation to Champa Dal, as the Rakshasi,
before being killed, had devoured both his father and mother; still
he could not but feel that Sahasra Dal's friendship was sincere. They
both rode fast, and as their horses were of the breed of pakshirajes
(literally, kings of birds), they travelled over hundreds of miles. An
hour or two before sundown they descried a village, to which they made
up, and became guests in the house of one of its most respectable
inhabitants. The two friends found the members of that respectable
family in deep gloom. Evidently there was something agitating them
very much. Some of them held private consultations, and others were
weeping. The eldest lady of the house, the mother of its head, said
aloud, "Let me go, as I am the eldest. I have lived long enough;
at the utmost my life would be cut short only by a year or two." The
youngest member of the house, who was a little girl, said, "Let me
go, as I am young and useless to the family; if I die I shall not be
missed." The head of the house, the son of the old lady, said, "I am
the head and representative of the family; it is but reasonable that
I should give up my life." His younger brother said, "You are the main
prop and pillar of the family; if you go the whole family is ruined. It
is not reasonable that you should go; let me go, as I shall not be
much missed." The two strangers listened to all this conversation
with no little curiosity. They wondered what it all meant. Sahasra
Dal at last, at the risk of being thought meddlesome, ventured to
ask the head of the house the subject of their consultations, and
the reason of the deep misery but too visible in their countenances
and words. The head of the house gave the following answer: "Know
then, worthy guests, that this part of the country is infested by a
terrible Rakshasi, who has depopulated all the regions round. This
town, too, would have been depopulated, but that our king became a
suppliant before the Rakshasi, and begged her to show mercy to us his
subjects. The Rakshasi replied, 'I will consent to show mercy to you
and to your subjects only on this condition, that you every night put
a human being, either male or female, in a certain temple for me to
feast upon. If I get a human being every night I will rest satisfied,
and not commit any further depredations on your subjects.' Our king
had no other alternative than to agree to this condition, for what
human beings can ever hope to contend against a Rakshasi? From that
day the king made it a rule that every family in the town should in
its turn send one of its members to the temple as a victim to appease
the wrath and to satisfy the hunger of the terrible Rakshasi. All the
families in this neighbourhood have had their turn, and this night
it is the turn for one of us to devote himself to destruction. We are
therefore discussing who should go. You must now perceive the cause of
our distress." The two friends consulted together for a few minutes,
and at the conclusion of their consultations, Sahasra Dal, who was the
spokesman of the party, said, "Most worthy host, do not any longer be
sad: as you have been very kind to us, we have resolved to requite
your hospitality by ourselves going to the temple and becoming the
food of the Rakshasi. We go as your representatives." The whole
family protested against the proposal. They declared that guests
were like gods, and that it was the duty of the host to endure all
sorts of privation for the comfort of the guest, and not the duty of
the guest to suffer for the host. But the two strangers insisted on
standing proxy to the family, who, after a great deal of yea and nay,
at last consented to the arrangement.
Immediately after candle-light, Sahasra Dal and Champa Dal, with
their two horses, installed themselves in the temple, and shut the
door. Sahasra told his brother to go to sleep, as he himself was
determined to sit up the whole night and watch against the coming of
the terrible Rakshasi. Champa was soon in a fine sleep, while Sahasra
lay awake. Nothing happened during the early hours of the night, but
no sooner had the gong of the king's palace announced the dead hour
of midnight than Sahasra heard the sound as of a rushing tempest,
and immediately concluded, from his knowledge of Rakshasas, that
the Rakshasi was nigh. A thundering knock was heard at the door,
accompanied with the following words:--
"How, mow, khow!
A human being I smell;
Who watches inside?"