Bengal Fairy Tales/Dalimkumar
VI
DALIMKUMAR
ONCE there was a king who was blessed with a queen of surpassing beauty and virtue, and a son named Dalimkumar who was gifted with all princely qualities. The life of the queen was enclosed in a set of dice, and the fact was known by a Rakkhashi who lived in a palmyra tree close by. She was always on the alert to secure the dice and kill the queen.
At length an opportunity came. The king had gone out one day on a hunting expedition, leaving the prince at a game of dice with his friends. The Rakkhashi came where the game was going on, in the disguise of a mendicant, and asked the prince to give her the dice. Her request was granted, and by an incantation which she uttered, the dice were carried to a kingdom beyond the realm of Yama,[1] where reigned her sister Pashabutty (one skilled at dice). The queen fell senseless in her room; and the Rakkhashi, entering it, killed her and assumed her form. Nobody became aware of the trick that had been played, and the Rakkhashi therefore was enabled successfully to impersonate her, after having put her corpse in an unfrequented room.
In course of time the Rakkhashi gave birth to seven sons who bore no mark of their origin in their appearance, but were very handsome youths. Gradually they grew up into young men, and one day asked permission of their father to go out and see the world. He gave them the required permission on condition that they should take their eldest brother, Dalimkumar, with them as their guardian and guide. On the auspicious day the eight brothers started on their journey on eight winged horses. The Rakkhashi, finding that Dalimkumar was no longer in her power, opened a casket out of which a snake, thin as a thread and named Shutashankha, made its appearance. She asked it where the life of her stepson was hid, and was shown a few pomegranate stones that contained it. She took the stones and shut them up in a cellar below the great staircase of the palace. She then gave the following instructions to the snake:—
"O Shutashankha, ride on the air with this letter to my sister Pashabutty. I want her to have ready seven girls of transcendent beauty for my seven sons. On your way kill Dalimkumar, and thus remove him from my path."
Having dismissed the snake on its errand, she uttered a Mantra (incantation), by the power of which the winged horses carrying her sons should reach Pashabutty's kingdom.
Shutashankha soon overtook the princes that same evening, and succeeded in stinging Dalimkumar in the eyes so that he instantly fell down from his horse stone-blind. His brothers, who were a few yards in advance, were ignorant of his fate, and so continued to ride on. The snake, however, was well punished by fate. Having reached a certain king's orchard, it managed to get into a fruit and hide itself, coiling within it to pass the night in safety. Early the next morning, before the snake awoke, the gardener gathered the fruit to be eaten by the king's daughter. She ate the fruit, and along with it the snake, with the Rakkhashi's letter inside it.
Dalimkumar's brothers that same morning, not finding him and quite ignorant of his mishap, thought that he had outstripped them; and so they rode on expecting to overtake him. Having travelled a considerable distance, and not finding him, they wanted to make a careful search for him. But they could not lessen the speed of their horses, which having been charmed by the Rakkhashi, ran on till they reached Pashabutty's house. The seven princes were well received; and the best apartments were assigned to them.
It had been a long-standing custom with Pashabutty to challenge every rich stranger who came to her to a game at dice, on condition that if he won, she and her seven sisters should surrender their charms to him; but if he lost the game he must forfeit his life. The challenge was given to the new guests, of whose birth and near connection with her Pashabutty was quite ignorant; for the letter sent by her sister had miscarried. They accepted the challenge, lost the game, and with it their lives. Pashabutty and her seven sisters feasted upon them.
The forest in which Dalimkumar had fallen from his horse was situated on the borders of a kingdom ruled by a young queen of extraordinary beauty, who seemed doomed by fate to widowhood. Unfettered by any law prohibiting the remarriage of widows in her kingdom, she had married several young men worthy of her, one after another, each one of whom had mysteriously died during the night following the day of marriage. The last of these had died on the very night that Dalim had been struck blind; and so while the next morning he was lying helpless, the royal elephant in quest of a new husband for its queen took him up on its back and entered the palace with him, in the midst of great rejoicings. The prince was at once introduced to the queen, who with joy accepted him as her lord. After spending a part of the night in delightful conversation, the royal couple retired to rest. The night advanced, and the whole city was wrapped in silence. But Dalimkumar, who had been informed of the fate of his predecessors, sat up with lights near him. Suddenly he heard unusual sounds in the room. The walls began to shake and crack in every direction. The prince was struck with terror, but he was not unmanned. Though blind, he found his sword, and grasping it in his hand, he stood firm to meet the impending danger. In the meantime, something like a thread cut through the nostrils of the queen which gradually assumed the form of a big snake, and went about the room hissing. Attracted by the sound, the king approached where it was with its hood erect, and carefully aimed such a blow that he at once severed its head from its body. This was the snake Shutashankha, Dalimkumar's inveterate enemy, and the queen, when a girl in her father's house, had given it admission into her body through the fruit which she had one day eaten there, and in which it had remained asleep.
The snake being killed, Dalimkumar's sight was restored; and when he showed himself alive the next morning the whole city was filled with shouts of joy. When the dead snake was being burnt, out came the Rakkhashi's letter, and on reading it, Dalim came to know who the wretched woman impersonating his mother was, and what had been the nature of the plot against him. He learnt, too, the whereabouts of his half-brothers; and, after the honeymoon, he started for Pashabutty's kingdom. On reaching it he was challenged to a game at dice, under the usual conditions. He accepted the challenge, and while playing, detected that a small mouse crept out of the lap of his rival, got under the dice, and turned them in favour of its mistress. On some plausible pretext, he got up from the gaming table, promising to take up the game the next day. He kept his promise, and having secured a kitten, hid it under his dress. The mouse did not venture to creep out, and he won the game. Finding Pashabutty and her sisters at his mercy according to the conditions under which the game had been played, he cast a scornful look upon them, and held before them the letter which their sister, from his father's palace, had written to them, but which had by a lucky coincidence fallen into his hands. He recognized the dice to be the same as those he had once parted with. The sisters were greatly dismayed, and shrank into the forms of creeping worms. The charm hanging over their house was dispelled, and the seven princes and their horses started into view, as if disgorged by the earth. Dalim's horse, too, which had been turned into stone at the time he was struck blind, suddenly appeared in its natural condition; and the eight brothers set out on their way to their father's kingdom. The real queen, who had so long lain dead, had returned to consciousness on the recovery of the dice in which her life was held. She came out of the room in which she had been shut up, and the princes on their arrival bowed down at her feet and received her blessing. The old king's joy was boundless; and having heard of Dalim's adventures, he sent for his daughter-in-law from her distant kingdom, asking her to remove her court to his, so that two kingdoms might merge into one. She agreed, and nothing was wanting to complete to the fullest measure the happiness of the royal family.
The Rakkhashi was never more heard of. Her favourite haunt, the palmyra, was shortly afterwards found to have suddenly withered and died.
- ↑ The Hindu god of death.