3. Dacoit-King
Abolakara | Children’s stories from Odisha
I saw a pillory¹ at the palace entrance. What is happening?
And so the master started.
Spread the mat and fix the umbrella as I tell my tale, Abolakara!
Once Jayachandra, the prince of this Vidara rode on his horse on the outskirts of his kingdom. There he met a princess by the name of Chhaya. Impressed by her horseriding, he asked her friends about her. They turned him down arrogantly.
Angrily he blurted, “If such a girl were to ever marry, she would be half-married and would live away from her half-husband.”
The girl replied, “If you were to ever get married, mister, you would be half-married and your wife would give birth to your child in somebody else’s house.”
The prince was so hurt at the insult that he decided that he would marry Chhaya to defeat her in wit. The worried king and queen sent a messenger to Vidara to fulfil his wish. The king of Vidara was surprised to find such a good lad for his tomboyish daughter. Everybody knew that the princess did nothing but roam on the streets. They say,
Love a daughter too much and she will roam around forever. Love a son too much and he will sulk until his wish is fulfilled. Love a dog too much and he’ll sit on your head.
Of course the old king agreed. He wouldn’t find a better option.
The wedding day neared. Jayachandra arrived dressed as a bridegroom. He had just one trick up his sleeve — he’d asked the servant to tell everyone that an enemy had attacked the kingdom — halfway through the wedding. When that happened, everything turned chaotic. Jayachandra fled on a horse.
When they sent a messenger to his kingdom, the reply said,
The princess bears bad signs. Perhaps mercury is in the eighth house. This wedding cannot be completed.
Now the prince had won. When Chhaya revealed the story, everyone made fun of her. They rebuked her and insulted her for puffing up in her own pride. Fed up, she left the palace and went on her own. With her she took thirty thousand coins, an old messenger, a couple of elephants, five horses, five tents and her friends. Then she went to Vidara and announced that a group of baunsa-rani performers would present their show over the next month.
Baunsa-Rani is a folk dance of Odisha in which performers walk on a rod of bamboo while performing other acrobatics.
Meanwhile Jayachandra, the new king was on a secret tour of his kingdom. He went to the river for sightseeing. A red flower floated towards him. The king picked up the flower and with it, a strand of hair five cubits long. The curious king set out on a search for the girl whose hair this was. The servant-girls of the baunsa-rani troupe told him that it was their mistress’ hair.
She told that their mistress, the daughter of the troupe-leader had started menstruating. In Odisha, the menarche is celebrated as the girl enters a new phase of her life.
Jayachandra was fascinated by her beauty when he met her- so much, in fact that he stammered in her presence. The servant-girls however had a condition- that he would have to marry her and that she would remain with him for two months.
If you find gold in mud, pick it up. If you find knowledge in the lower jātis, accept it with humility. If you find a beautiful girl, accept her without question.
And so they married. Jayachandra was blissfully unaware of the fact that she was his own wife. After two months, she left with his ring as a symbol of her being his wife. If she would return after years, she would show this for recognition. If she gave birth to a child, the child would show this for recognition.
Months later, she gave birth to a boy. She named him ‘Charuchandra’. He was an intelligent boy, but he was a bit too mischievous. Chhaya waited till he could trust him to find his father all by himself. However, the boy wanted to know his father and Chhaya had to tell him the entire story. He left as soon as he came to know about all of this.
When he finally reached Vidara, the first thing he did was to pelt a stone, shattering a pot full of curds. The angry old woman to whom the pot belonged charged at him with a stick. The clever boy fell down at her feet and said loudly, “Mother! Forgive me!.” Then he offered to get a golden bracelet for the old crook who was glad at the proposal.
While the woman sat at the goldsmith’s store looking for the right bracelet, the boy took a necklace and told the goldsmith that he would run to their home on the other side of the street to ask if his sister wanted the necklace. If she did, then he would buy it. The goldsmith agreed, thinking that the boy would surely return to take his old mother. Except that he did not, and the old woman told that she was in no way related to him. The goldsmith thought this was a part of a larger plan and took the old woman straight to the king. The king announced a reward of a thousand coins for the thief.
But no one could catch Charuchandra.
The flower-selling lady agreed to make him his son for a meagre sum. In her house lived Charuchandra. She would bring him news from the palace each morning. One morning while she was away, Charuchandra sneaked out and scribbled a message on the street wall.
I am the dacoit leader Charu. It was me who looted the goldsmith. Expect more cases soon. For the finale, I’ll beat the king with a stick.
When people saw the message, they sent word to the king. The king multiplied the reward to ten thousand coins. Then he called carpenters to make a large pillory so that the thief could be tortured and hung to death when he was caught.
A crafty barber said he could catch the thief. Charuchandra got the news from the lady. He kept an eye on the barber’s activities. When the barber went to graze cows at midnight as per the plan, Charuchandra crept up to him and shouted at the top of his voice, “Are there extra cows among yours?” The startled barber shut him up, “This is to get hold of the thief. Keep your mouth shut.” The boy replied, “Please count your cows. Some of mine have mixed up with yours.” The barber saw nothing wrong in it. He kept his umbrella and went around counting cattle. Meanwhile Charuchandra carefully fastened an umbrella to a young bullock and slapped it so hard that it went into an uncontrollable fit of anger. The enraged bullock ran around and created chaos — all the creatures began running around. One of the cows hit the barber and he fell unconscious. When he woke up the next morning, there was neither his umbrella nor his cows.
This time the minister took on the challenge. Charuchandra came to know of all this and all he could find out was that the minister’s daughter was called ‘Madhavi’. But that was enough. The next night, the minister wore ordinary clothes and hid behind a bush in midnight. Charuchandra waited for an hour and then went running to him. Then he whispered into his ear, “Grandpa! Grandma is afraid of the dacoit. She’s alone in the home. She told me to call you immediately.” When asked for his identity, he told that he was Madhavi’s son. Not having seen his grandson since four years, the minister happily assumed that this muscular boy was his grown-up lad.
The minister told him that he’d indeed return after another hour. Charuchandra took the servant to show him the way to the minister’s home. The minister’s wife was told that this was her grandson. She too agreed. Charuchandra had a hearty meal. Then he told her that the old minister, his ‘grandpa’ had told him to get the keys of the big trunk. The old woman gave him the keys. Charuchandra opened the trunk, took the gold and fled.
The minister fainted when he discovered the theft.
The third time a sage came forward. He sat as if meditating under a palm tree at midnight. Charuchandra went and fell at his feet. He introduced himself as the disciple who had left for pilgrimage six years ago. The sage was irritated. He told him to leave since he had to catch the thief right then. The sly boy left and on the way shouted, “We’ll meet in heaven, then, guru!”
The sage was shocked out of his wits. He thought to himself, “To hell with the thief. I’ll learn how to go to heaven with this boy.” But the boy was already gone. So he ran and ran until he came across the boy. It was a strange sight. Standing behind a bull, the boy chanted, “Wake up, mister bullock! Let us leave for heaven.” The sage decided he must not lose another moment. So he fell down at the disciple’s feet, begging him to go to heaven.
Charuchandra the dacoit agreed. He told him what he had to do — “Guru, hold this branch of the stinging nettle. This bull is the divine vehicle between the heaven and earth. He has not woken up from his slumber. When he wakes up, untie him from the tree and beat him ten times with this stick while holding his tail in your right hand — he shall take you straight to heaven.”
Charuchandra left. The bull woke up. The sage beat him ten times with the nettle. When the leaves stung him, the bull kicked the sage with such force that he died at the spot.
At last it was the king’s turn. The king decided that soldiers surround the town and remain hidden unless he blows a whistle, at which they’ll all block the routes and catch the helpless thief. What a stroke of genius! Charuchandra, already aware of the plan, dressed in rags and with a heap of clothes on his back. Two hours before dawn, he started washing clothes. The king spotted him and had his soldiers bring the washerman to him.
When questioned, Charuchandra replied, “There is a man who pays me five times the usual cost for washing his clothes. However, he wants his clothes dried only during the night, never during daytime. I have come only to wash his clothes.”
The king realised this was the ‘dacoit’. He told the washerman to nab the thief when he arrived. Charuchandra innocently replied, “Sire, he’ll throw away a frail person like me. Perhaps your majesty could take my place…” “And the two of us could catch him?” “No, sire, he will not come if he spots the two of us. There has to be just one person. You’ll have to take my place. Let us exchange clothes.”
That was it. Charuchandra the dacoit looked like Jayachandra the king. After all he was his own son. He took out his whistle and blew it. The soldiers were told that the washerman is the thief. There’s a saying that goes,
Ask the doctor to save somebody’s life and he’ll want money. Ask a person to beat somebody and they’ll do it for free.
And so did the soldiers. The next day, the queen found the man beside her was not her husband. The crowd outside the jail found one of the prisoners rather like the king.
The minister woke the man up from his sleep and asked him who he was. When Jayachandra demanded proof of Charuchandra being his son, the boy showed his ring. Now he trusted the boy.
Jayachandra’s last order was for the huge pillory to be placed at the chief entrance as a symbol of the kingdom’s past. From today, Charuchandra is the king.
Got it, Abolakara?
- ¹The harikātha (pronounced hari-kaa-tha with a hard ‘t’) is a punishment device made of a wooden frame with holes for the limbs. The criminal’s limbs are inserted into them and the frame is tightened with screws to prevent escape. The English equivalent of the word is ‘pillory’.
- Speaking of torture methods in ancient India, one cannot forget Ashoka’s Hell — constructed by the famous king Ashoka before he turned to Buddhism. It was a torture chamber full of sadistic instruments disguised as a beautiful palace to attract people. Ashokavadana, the text that mentions this incident says, ‘People thought that Ashoka had visited hell itself to perfect its design.’
- The legend of Ashoka’s hell would be incomplete without Girika, the vicious executioner who persuaded the king to construct a hell worse than the actual hell. He pried open people’s mouths and poured boiling copper down their throats and boiled them in cauldrons full of human blood, bone marrow and excrement. Moreover, he swore to kill anyone who entered the premises including innocent people and at the end (through a loophole in his logic) himself.
- The Buddhist monk Samudra remained unaffected by these terrible tortures and Ashoka accepted the Buddha after seeing the miracle.
- Where does the kingdom of Vidara lie? The name is suspiciously similar to the actual place called Vidarbha, known to be an ancient kingdom.
- In Odisha, the menarche is celebrated as the girl enters a new phase of her life. We find mention of this ritual celebration even in ancient literature, especially writings of Kabi Samrata Upendra Bhanja of the 16th century. The festival of Raja is a celebration of menstruation.
- The thief’s perspective is one of the many viewpoints. How a clever thief outsmarts multiple intelligent minds is the basis of many folk stories in India.
- The character of the flower-selling lady reappears.
- In Jain lore, we find the story of Sahasramalla. Sahasramalla the thief tricks everyone with his mother until he steals the king and can find no one bigger to steal.
This project was created to make traditional children’s literature in Odia available to everyone.
The stories have been translated into English by Prateek Pattanaik. It is supported by Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik.
