The Turtle Prince or The Tortoise Prince ()Blackburn, Stuart. "Coming Out of His Shell: Animal-Husband Tales in India". In: Syllables of Sky: Studies in South Indian Civilization. Oxford University Press, 1995. p. 45. . refers to a group of South Indian and Sri Lankan folktales in which a prince in turtle form is brought to a human king, marries a human princess, and goes on adventures as part of a wedding quest. Along the way, the turtle prince gains the ability to alternate between turtle and human form, until his wife destroys the turtle shell, keeping him human permanently. The character appears in the compilation Madanakamaraja Katha, a book that collects Tamil folktales.
Scholars like Stith Thompson, Warren Roberts and Stuart Blackburn have related the story and variants to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, tales wherein a human maiden marries an enchanted husband in animal form.
Summary Madanakamaraja Katha The character features in stories compiled in the work Madanakamaraja Katha.
First story Author Natesa Sastri published a translation of Madanakamaraja Katha as The Dravidian Nights Entertainment, which contains two stories about the turtle (tortoise) prince. The first one is the tale from the fourth day, which Sastri translated as Faith Is Always Rewarded, while Dravidologist Kamil Zvelebil translated it as The Tortoise-Prince.
In this tale, King Venkataja, from the city of Mallikârjunapurî, is married to a wife who has not borne him a son. He divorces her, places the former queen in a separate pavilion next to the palace, and marries a second time. The new queen also does not bear him children. The King searches for answers to this problem, and Mahêsvara and the Sûlapânin Isa help him by giving the king a magical mango that he should give to his queen. The king gives the mango to the second queen; she drinks the juice and discards the rest. The first queen's maid hears about the magic mango, finds the discarded seed, and gives it to the first queen. The first queen gives part of the seed to her maid, and they both eat of the magic mango. Consequently, the second queen gives birth to twin boys, the maid to a son, and the first queen to a tortoise. The narrative says that the tortoise son was no ordinary turtle, but a beautiful prince born in Paramêsvara's favour. One night, while spying to find out why food is mysteriously disappearing, the queen sees a human child come out of the tortoise shell; he has been sneaking out of his shell at night and eating rice. When he has gone, she smashes the shell and goes to sleep. When the boy tries to find his shell and sees it destroyed, he wakes his mother. He explains that he needed the shell, and asks her to have a box made to replace the shell. She apologizes for breaking the shell, and consents to his request for a box.
Sometime later, the king instructs his twin sons to travel north, to the mountain ("the frosty mountain"), and bring back the maiden of the mountain to be their father's third wife. Meanwhile, their half-brother, the tortoise prince, using his gift of (a sort of cosmic awareness or omniscience), learns of the quest and knows their endeavor will fail if he does not go with them. He puts some charcoal on his skin to disguise himself and joins the twin princes on their journey. The twin princes do not recognise him as their brother, but think him to be a mountaineer, and they are glad to let him travel with them because he amuses them with stories.
They reach a red-coloured stream and the twin princes drink the water, but the tortoise prince knows that the stream is leftover water from the princess's bath. So he takes his two half-brothers, one in each arm, and leaps from one side of the stream to the other. The princess witnesses this, and having declared that she will marry the man who can cross the stream without stepping in it, she tells her father of the incident and prepares to marry the extraordinary man. The tortoise prince agrees, with the condition that he still wears the black soot at the ceremony. They marry, and the tortoise prince reveals his royal origins to his wife and advises her to go to Himayagiri if he does not return within 28 days.
The tortoise prince (still in his disguise) and the twin princes continue their journey. They come to another city, where a princess has devised a test for suitors: a man at the city entrance gives a pie to travelers and says they must find firewood, leaf, and oil, and return the pie. The tortoise prince deduces the answer and gives the man a sesamum plant (stem for firewood, its leaves as leaves, and its seed for oil). The princess tells her father, and he arranges the wedding the same day. After the wedding, the prince tells his story and tells her to go to Himayagiri if he does not return after an appointed time.
In a third city, a (learned lady) sets a task for her suitors: she will present a book of her writings on philosophy to the suitor, and he must write a satisfactory comment on it. The black prince succeeds and, with her father's consent, marries the learned lady. After the wedding, he tells her his story, the purpose of his journey, and that she should go to Himayagiri if he does not return within six days. In turn, his third wife tells him how to find the Himayagiri maiden: he should circle around the mountain and touch a certain creeper plant, which will carry him to the princess. Then he should prostrate before her and call her his mother, and inform her that his father wants her for his bride. The tortoise prince arrives at Himayagiri and sees that his two brothers have stopped at its base, uncertain of how to proceed. The prince does everything his third wife has advised, the princess consents to go with him, and they come down the creeper. The prince then realises that he forgot his golden scimitar up on the mountain and goes back to get it. At that moment, his two brothers, jealous of his successes throughout their journey, cut the rope, and he falls to his death.
The twin princes bring the Himayagiri maiden to their father. However, she feels bad about what happened to the tortoise prince, and resolves to make a penance in hopes that he can come back to life. She asks the king to postpone the wedding for six months because she must make a penance (without telling him why), and the king consents and makes the necessary arrangements for her rituals. Meanwhile, the tortoise prince's three wives go to the place where he died and weep over his shattered body. The third wife, the learned lady, knows a way to revive him, so they gather his remains, perform prayer and other rituals, and resurrect him. The quartet visits the home kingdoms of each wife and receive presents and dowries. Then, the prince procures a house a short distance from his town for his wives to wait in, while he goes home to tell his mother of his adventures. The tortoise prince's mother is delighted at seeing her son again, and after hearing his story, goes to meet his wives. She is well-pleased with them, and brings them home to her own palace.
After six months, the Himayagiri maiden wishes to know if the tortoise prince is alive, and devises a way to find out. She asks the king for one last item before her wedding: a golden lotus flower from beyond the seven oceans, saying to her prospective husband that if his twin sons brought her back, surely they can fetch the flower. However, she knows that only the tortoise prince can get the flower.
The twin princes go to the ocean shore and remember, with sorrow and regret, their treachery towards their extraordinary companion. The black prince appears behind them and offers to get the flower, having been informed of their mission by his omniscience, and instructed in how to complete the task by his third wife. He takes seven pebbles and uses each of them to drain the seven oceans; He then reaches the sacred waters called , chants a summoning command, gives a Rakshasa a note from his third wife, jumps on a crocodile and gets the golden lotus.
The tortoise prince and his half-brothers deliver the flower to the Himayagiri maiden. She finally consents to the wedding and asks the king to send invitations to all the lords of the world and to have the king's first wife, her son, and the son's three wives give her in marriage. The king visits his first wife and is surprised to see the son - his son - and the three princesses, but does not want to appear ignorant, so he conceals his surprise and invites them all to the wedding. On the wedding day, when kings from all parts of the world are assembled, the Himayagiri maiden tells them what she knows of the story of the tortoise prince, of his mother, his father, and his journey. The tortoise prince then tells the part of the story that the princess does not know, of how he obtained the golden lotus. The king embraces the tortoise prince as his son and marries the Himayagiri maiden. The prince forgives his half-brothers' misdeeds, and they all live peacefully.
Second story Another tale of the turtle prince from the same compilation is the seventh story, which Sastri translated as True Merit Shall Be Rewarded and Zvelebil as How a prince who was a tortoise married the minister's daughter. In this tale, in the northern city of Amarâvati, king Alakiyasingarâja and his minister Subhamantrî are good friends, and promise to marry their children to each other. In time, the queen gives birth to a tortoise and the minister's wife to a daughter. The king laments for his tortoise son, but the animal prince insists he goes through with the marriage promise. The minister is reluctant to a marriage, but his eldest daughter says she will marry one that brings her the parijata flower, whatever his physical form.
The tortoise prince's father throws him in water and he begins journey, swimming across seven oceans until he reaches Udayagiri, the mountain where the Sun rises every morning, where he salutes the Sun-god, Sûrya-bhagavan, and his charioteer, Aruna, as they begin their daily journey. The Sun questions the presence of the tortoise there, and the prince explains he wishes to know why he was born an animal in this life, chanting 1,008 praises to the deity. The Sun-god replies the tortoise shape is a penance for a misdeed in a previous life, and, at the tortoise's request, blesses him with the ability to assume a human state at will. In human shape, the now human tortoise prince is direct to a sage, then to two other sages. From the third sage, the prince is advised to steal the clothes of the divine maidens (Apsaras) that come to bathe that come to bathe in a pond in the temple, then force her to fetch the parijata flower for him. It happens thus, and the prince convinces the Apsara to help him. She regains her dress and flies back to the divine realm, where she commissions a guitar from the divine carpenter, takes a basket full of parijata flowers and dishes, and returns to the prince.
The Apsara and the prince have a meal, and she explains the guitar can summon him and the wonderful dishes. The prince leaves and passes by the sages' houses on the way back. The third sage wishes to have the magic guitar and trades it for a self-attacking club that can decimate armies. As the prince leaves, the club begins to talk and says it wants to beat its previous owner, which the prince lets it do. The third sage is beaten to death. The same event happens to the other two sages: the second sage trades a magic purse for the guitar and the first a pair of teleporting sandals; the prince kills them with the club and retrieves the magic guitar. At last, the prince summons the Apsara and dines with her, explains he will deliver the flower to the minister's daughter and marry her, but he will give the other magical objects to the divine maiden for safekeeping. He assumes his tortoise shape and swims back to his father's kingdom to present the minister's daughter with the flowers.