🧚 Rupsinh and the Queen of the Anardes. · page 2

After some time the young king came to a big garden in the midst of which was a palace seven stories high.141 He entered the palace and ran upstairs until he reached the seventh storey.142 On the top stair was seated an aged anchorite who said to him, “Welcome Rupsinh.”143 The king was astonished that the anchorite should know his name and he asked the anchorite how he knew it.144 “My inner knowledge, my son, tells me your name.145 I also know that your brother’s widow anxiously awaits your return.146 I know, too, that you are fated to win the queen of the Anardes.”147 The king begged the anchorite to bless him.148 The anchorite did so and added, “To-morrow I shall go to bathe in a pool in the palace gardens.149 When I do so, watch carefully the pomegranate trees in the orchard.150 You will see the pomegranates on them suddenly open and from each one will come out an Anarde.151 They will play and dance together in the garden and she to whom the others will pay deference is their queen.152 After a time they will go back to their hiding places.153 Note carefully the fruit which the queen enters.154 Then go down into the garden, pick it and take it back with you.155 But do not look behind you, as many others before you have done, or you will be turned into stone.”156 Next morning the ascetic went to bathe and Rupsinh did as the ascetic had told him.157 He watched the pomegranate trees and soon from each fruit there dropped to the earth a tiny fairy.158 One of them, slightly bigger than the others, was clearly their queen.159 They played and danced for a time.160 Then they ran back to their hiding places.161 The pomegranates closed and hid their fairy lodgers from view.162 The king, however, had seen which pomegranate held the queen.163 He went into the garden, plucked the fruit and turned back to the palace.164 Voices all round him cried out, “Strike him!165 Kill him!”166 But remembering the anchorite’s words, he never once looked round until he had reached the palace door.167 Then he turned and saw the anchorite trying to soothe the other Anardes, for it was their voices which the king had heard.168 “It was fated that one of you should wed a mortal.169 What was fated has happened.170 So cease from troubling the king and his bride and give them your blessing instead.”171 When he had calmed the fairies, he went to the king and said, “My son, start at once homewards and tarry nowhere on the road.172 Shew the pomegranate to no one until you reach your city.”173

The king mounted his horse without delay and started on his homeward journey.174 In no long time he saw an ascetic, who for 700 years had been doing penances, in order to win the queen of the Anardes.175 The king saluted the anchorite, who asked him whether he had won his goal.176 The king foolishly shewed the anchorite the pomegranate and let him take it in his hand.177 The sage put it under his foot and when Rupsinh asked for it back, sternly bade the prince begone.178 The king grew angry and threatened to take it back by force.179 The anchorite turned towards a big tree close by and consumed it with a single fiery breath.180 He then said to the youth with a mocking laugh: “When I can blast a tree with a single breath, do you think that I fear you for all your valour?181 For 700 years I have sought to win the queen of the Anardes.182 I shall not give her up.”183 But seeing how downcast Rupsinh looked, he gave him a wand and said “This is a magic wand.184 Take it.185 It will beat anyone whom you hate or fear and in battle it will always give you victory.”186 The king took the wand, although he thought it a poor exchange for the queen of the Anardes, and going sadly to his horse got ready to mount it.187 As he put his foot in the stirrup, the wand spoke to him with a human voice, “O King, you do not know my name.188 It is Lalia Lath.189 For 700 years I have faithfully served the anchorite and now he has given me away in exchange for a woman.190 If you bid me I will give my old master a sound beating.”191 Rupsinh, who felt very cross with the anchorite for stealing the queen of the Anardes, was delighted and said “Yes, give him a beating, the sounder the better.”192 The wand then flew from the king’s hand and began mercilessly to belabour the old sage, until in his pain and fear he threw away the pomegranate and begged for mercy.193

The king picked up the fruit and with it the wand and he resumed his journey.194 Several days later he reached his capital.195 There he took out of the pomegranate the queen of the Anardes, who had by this time become reconciled to marrying Rupsinh.196 After greeting his sister-in-law, the widowed queen, he began to make everything ready for his marriage to the fairy queen; and in due time their wedding was celebrated with the greatest pomp and splendour.197 Unhappily in the crowd that watched the wedding was a pretty sweeper girl, called Rukhi and deeply skilled in black magic.198 She fell in love with the young king’s handsome face and was filled with jealous rage at the happy look on the face of the queen of the Anardes.199 She devised a cruel plot, to kill her.200 She sought and obtained service in the palace, where the fairy queen shewed her the greatest kindness.201 One day the king, weary with the chase, fell asleep.202 The fairy queen had to go to a neighbouring well, to fetch water for her bath.203 She did not like to leave the king alone, so she asked Rukhi to watch by him until she came back.204 Rukhi promised to do so, but a minute or so later she followed her mistress to the well and pushed her in.205 Then she returned to the palace and by her magic made the king believe that she was the queen of the Anardes.206 But she could not so deceive the widowed queen.207 One day the latter in open durbar challenged Rukhi to go back inside the pomegranate.208 But Rukhi was too clever to be caught.209 She answered with ready wit: “I can no longer do that, sister, now that I am wedded to a mortal.”210 She then complained to the king that the widowed queen always tried to vex her.211 So Rupsinh quarrelled with his sister-in-law and drove her out of the palace.212

Now out of the well into which the fairy queen had fallen, there grew a most beautiful lotus.213 The gardener picked it and gave it to the king, who in turn gave it to Rukhi.214 The latter by her magic knew that the lotus had sprung from the body of the Anarde queen.215 She pulled off all its petals and threw it out of the window.216 The flower fell into a bed of soft earth and in a month or two there had sprung up a splendid mango tree that bore delicious fruit.217 Rukhi had the tree cut down but before it was felled, a bania had picked one of the mangoes and given it to his wife to eat.218 A year later she bore him a beautiful little baby girl.219 As the little girl grew up, she became the living image of the queen of the Anardes.220

Rukhi guessed that she must have sprung from the mango, which had sprung from the lotus that had grown in the well, where the poor queen had been drowned.221 Rukhi began to complain of a bad pain and told the king that she had been bewitched by the bania girl and would not get well while the girl lived.222 The king had the bania girl hanged outside the eastern gate of his city.223 Another marvel then happened.224 The girl’s head changed into an image of the God Shiva and her body into an image of the Goddess Parvati.225 Her right eye turned into a cock sparrow and her left eye into a hen sparrow.226 Her two legs turned into two plantain trees.227 When Rukhi heard of this, she got terribly afraid that the king would pass that way and see what had occurred.228 She told him never to pass by the eastern gate or the spirit of the witch girl would possess him.229 The king did not pass that way for a long time; but one day his horse ran away with him and took him to the eastern gate.230 He saw there a noble temple to the God Shiva.231 He went inside to pray.232

As he prayed, he heard the hen sparrow say to her mate: “The king of this city is a fool” and thereupon she told the cock sparrow the whole tale of the queen of the Anardes.233 “This very night,” continued the hen sparrow “the queen will come out of one of the plantain trees, into which the bania girl’s legs have changed.234 She will worship the God Shiva, re-enter the plantain stem and never again be seen on earth.”235 The king heard the story and resolved to stay there all night.236 He did so and at midnight he saw one of the plantain stems open.237 Out of it came the queen of the Anardes.238 She began to pray to the God Shiva.239 Before she had ended her prayer, the king caught her by the hand.240 “Who are you?” cried the queen “and why do you take my hand?”241 “I am your husband Rupsinh,” replied the king penitently.242 “I have been blind and cruel.243 But pray forgive me and I shall live with you always.”244

The queen was unwilling to stay, but Rupsinh held her firmly all night by the hand.245 Next morning the king’s ministers and the widowed queen missing him, went in search of him.246 When they found him at the temple, the king told his sister-in-law all that had happened and begged her forgiveness also.247 The widowed queen, to test the story, shewed the pomegranate to the fairy queen and bade her hide herself inside it.248 She did so.249 The widowed queen called to her and she came out.250 The widowed queen had no longer any doubts.251 She buried the pomegranate in the earth and went back with the king into his city.252 There the king called together the townspeople and before them all repudiated the sweeper woman Rukhi.253 He then had her hanged on the very spot where the bania girl had been executed.254 After thus ridding himself of Rukhi, he sent for the Princess Phulpancha and married her as well as the queen of the Anardes.255 In their company and that of the widowed queen, the king lived happily for ever so many years afterwards.256

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