Bengal Fairy Tales/Hati Sing, or the Vanquisher of an Elephant

by Francis Bradley Bradley-Birt

 

IX

HATI SING, OR THE VANQUISHER OF AN ELEPHANT

THERE once lived a very poor family, consisting only of a mother and her son. The latter was worthless, and unable to earn a pice for the maintenance of his mother or himself. The poor woman had to submit to the greatest drudgery, in spite of which they could hardly get sufficient food to keep them alive. One day, in the bitterness of her heart, she cast reproaches at her son, Dulal, for the useless way in which he passed his life. The young man felt the reproaches deeply, and knowing full well that it was beyond his power to improve, he formed the resolution of committing suicide.

Poisoning seemed to him the best method of carrying out his resolution. But whence could he get the poison? To buy any was out of the question, for that would require money, of which he had none. His inventive mind, however, soon devised a way. He went to a place which he knew to be frequented by cobras, and finding one of them, hit it on the tail with a stick and placed a plantain leaf before it. The infuriated reptile, with its hood erect, bit the leaf, and deposited its poison on it. Dulal was delighted with his success, and begging a little múrhi^[1] from a neighbouring shop, to mix with the poison in order to take off its hot and pungent taste, he went to the bank of the river Ganges to end his life there. A bath in the river is supposed by Hindus to be the surest passport into heaven, and Dulal, an orthodox Hindu, entertaining this belief, walked into the water, leaving the múrhi mixed with poison on the steps of the ghat. He intended to eat the múrhi and pass out of life after the purifying bath. But Bidhátápúrush^[2] ordained otherwise, for as soon as he dipped his head into the water the king's elephant, which had been brought there for a drink, saw the múrhi lying before him, and ate it up. The cobra poison entered its system, and acted so quickly that in a moment the elephant began to give up its life. Dulal, getting out of the river and coming to the spot where he left the múrhi, at once realized that the elephant had deprived him of the means of committing suicide, and in his rage he gave the offender a slap. Now although the slap would have been of no consequence whatever if it had been given to a healthy elephant, when it fell on an animal already tottering on its legs on account of the poison, it had the effect of knocking the enormous beast over. The slap and the fall happening at the same moment, the people on the river side supposed the former to have caused the latter, and gazed at Dulal with wonder and fear. They regarded him as a Hercules and the report of the feat soon spread far and wide, until it reached the king, and produced a mixed feeling of grief and joy; grief for the elephant's death, and joy at the prospect of securing the services of a man able, by a slap, to kill such an animal, and thus by his strength defy the enemies of the Crown.

Dulal was at once brought before the king in a chatúrdola, and the king was surprised to see in the killer of the elephant a skeleton, with blue rings round his eyes, the signs of intemperance and weakness. But he remembered that external appearances are often deceptive and he employed Dulal as his Jamadar, or Head Durwan, on a monthly salary of two hundred rupees. By way of distinction, the name of Hati Sing was given him, and he passed his days lazily but happily with his mother, whom he had in the first dawn of his palmy days taken to live with him. He became the favourite of the king, who soon found him a wife in one of the most beautiful girls in the kingdom.

Hati Sing's fame rang far and wide throughout the country. One day a band of Kábúlis sought the king's presence, and urged him to fix a wrestling match between them and Hati Sing. On the day appointed for the competition, the Kábúlis appeared before the king, but Hati Sing, knowing that for him to stand before them as an opponent was as foolish as for a blade of grass to rear its head against a hurricane, put off the catastrophe by saying that it was beneath him, as a Hindu, to touch or to be touched by them. But the Kábúlis would not let him escape thus. They urged him to try his strength with them in some other way, and the king told them that he would think over the matter, and let them know his decision on the morrow.

But they were not to see the next day's light. Hati Sing, by means of money and influence, bribed the keeper of the inn in which they slept during the night to hide a venomous snake under their beds. The poor men retired to sleep and their sleep ended in death, caused by the fangs of the destructive reptile. So no more had Hati Sing to fear them. Left undisputed master of the field, he went on practising his deception and amassing wealth, till at length, after the lapse of some years, death carried him off under circumstances that disabused the king and his subjects of the confidence they had so long placed in him. A fruit-seller came to the palace-gate with the choicest mangoes for sale. Hati Sing's mouth watered at the sight of them and he demanded some mangoes as a bribe for the man's admission into the royal presence. But the man would not part with any of his mangoes without receiving their price, and so an altercation took place between him and Hati Sing, in the course of which the latter said, "You fool, you do not know who it is who asks you for a few mangoes. It is the redoubtable Jamadar, Hati Sing." To this the fruit-seller, who had heard neither the name nor the fame of the person bearing it, replied, "I have seen many a Hati Sing in my time, but if you touch one of my mangoes I will soon see that you are a dead man." This was an insult which our hero, to maintain his prestige among the others at the gate, could not pass over, and with a kick he upset the basket of mangoes. But no sooner was this done, than a severe blow from the muscular right arm of the fruit-seller laid him prostrate on the ground. In a few minutes the whole palace, including the king himself, came to the place of occurrence, and what was their wonder to find their champion Hati Sing on the point of death from a single blow given by an ordinary man. Comments were made by every tongue, while Hati Sing, knowing that his end was near, and that there was no need for further deception, faithfully narrated his own history, and then gave up the ghost. It was a sad and shameful death, but deceit seldom fails to meet its own deserts in the end.

 

1. Fried rice.
2. The Supreme Being.