The Story of the Rakshasas (Folk-Tales of Bengal) – Part I

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 anyone 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 (female demon). 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 tomorrow, and I will give you clothes and jewels for her.”

The 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 that 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 open her tremendous jaws, which seemed to her imagination to extend from earth to heaven and 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 the next day she would be killed and eaten up, and that her husband and son would share the same fate.

Early the 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 constantly watch 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 later, 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 a 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 described 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 around. This town, too, would have been depopulated, but 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 candlelight, 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 by the following words:

“How, mow, khow!
A human being I smell;
Who watches inside?”

To this question, Sahasra Dal made the following reply:—

On hearing this answer the Rakshasi turned away with a groan, knowing that Sahasra Dal had Rakshasa blood in his veins. An hour after, the Rakshasi returned, thundered at the door, and called out—

Sahasra Dal again replied —