The Real Mother is an Indian folktale collected by Alice Elizabeth Dracott from Simla, wherein a childless king gives mangoes to his co-wives in order to cure their barrenness, and only the youngest queen bears him children, to the others' jealousy. The co-queens decide to kill the children, which are buried and from their graves flowers and fruit trees sprout.
The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". These tales refer to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother. Many variants of the tale type are registered in India, although they comprise specific cycles in this country. In one of the cycles, the king's children are buried and transform into flowers or trees whose flowers only their mother can pluck.
Summary In this tale, a Rajah has no son, despite having seven wives, six who dwell in the palace and the seventh who dwells in a poor mud hut. The Rajah meets a fakir, who orders him to shake up a tree, gather however many mangoes fall, and give them to his ranees. The rajah follows the instructions and give the fruits to the six ranees, but forgets his seventh wife. The poor ranee asks a servant to bring her the mango husks, eats them and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to six sons and one daughter, but the other ranees blindfold her eyes, take the children and cast them in a potter's field to die.
The potter finds the children and raises them. The six ranees learn of this and send an old midwife to give the children chapatis laced with poison. The children eat the chapatis and die, but the Fakir resurrects them with his own blood. The six ranees send the midwife again to poison the children. They die again, and the Fakir orders the potter to dig eight graves, for the children and him.
After they are buried, a mango tree sprouts on each brother's grave, a rose tree on the girl's and a chumpa tree on the Fakir. One day, the Rajah's servants try to pluck the roses from the tree, but a voice from the fakir's grave warns that it is only for their mother. The Rajah goes to the graves and tries to pluck the flowers, and the same voice warns him. He brings the six ranees to try to pluck them, but to no avail. Lastly, the poor ranee is brought to the trees, and the rose branches spread to cover her with flowers. The Fakir rises from his grave with the seven children and tells their story.Dracott, Alice Elizabeth. Simla Village Tales, or Folk Tales from the Himalayas. England, London: John Murray. 1906. pp. 6-12.
Analysis Tale type According to Stith Thompson' and Jonas Balys's index of Indian tales, the tale type ATU 707 shows 44 variants across Indian sources.Crowley, Daniel J. "Haring's Herring: Theoretical Implications of the "Malagasy Tale Index"." In: Journal of Folklore Research 23, no. 1 (1986): 46, 48. Accessed November 19, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814480. Researcher Noriko Mayeda and Indologist W. Norman Brown divided Indian variants of type 707 in five groups: (1) quest for wonderful items; (2) reincarnation into flowers; (3) use of wooden horses; (4) children sing a song; (5) miscellaneous.Mayeda, Noriko; Brown, W. Norman. Tawi Tales; Folk Tales From Jammu. American Oriental Society New Haven, Connecticut, 1974. pp. 543-544.
Motifs Folklorist Christine Goldberg, in the entry of the tale type in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, noted that in Indian variants of tale type 707, the children may entice their father to the truth by trying to feed a wooden horse. In others, the children die and are reborn as plants, and only their mother may pluck fruits or flowers from the trees. French ethnologist Eveline Porée-Maspero noted that Indic variants of type 707 show a theme "well-known" in Indochina: the children are killed and buried, but transform into trees whose flowers only their father or their mother can pluck. Also, in the conclusion of the tale, there is the motif of jets of breastmilk flowing from the children's biological mother.
According to Stith Thompson and study of motifs of Indian literature and oral folklore, the tale contains the motif T511, "Conception from eating"; T511.1, "Conception from eating fruit", and specific motif T511.1.3, "Conception from eating mango".Thompson, S., Balys, J. (1958). The oral tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 422.
Variants
Folklorist Ashraf Siddiqui argued that variants of the tale type were "borrowed" from the Hindus into the oral corpus of the Santals, the Hos and the Birhors.
India Ho people Bengali folklorist Saratchandra Mitra published a tale from the Ho people, "of the wicked queens type": a raja is married to seven ranis, but has not yet fathered a son. A bramahna tells him to take a stick and beat a tree for seven mangoes and to give the fruits to his seven wives. They eat the fruit, but the seventh eats a partly eaten fruit and gives birth to a "beautiful boy with the face of a mongoose". The other queens replace the boy for a stone and a broom, and later in the story his six half-brothers kill and bury him. A bamboo and a shrub with a beautiful flower sprout. The raja plucks the flower and cuts down the bamboo, and his son reappears.Mitra, Sarat Chandra. "On a Ho folktale of the "wicked queen's" type". In: Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 12 (1926): 162-164.
In another tale from the Ho people, published by Sukumar Haidar with the title The Trials of a Rani, a childless Raja with three wives is visited by a Brahman, who advises him to take a mango from a mango tree and give it to his three wives. Two of them eat the fruit, while the third rani eats the skin and the stone. The latter is the only one to bear a son to the king. The other two ranis, jealous of the luck of the other co-wife, replace the boy for a piece of wood, while dropping the boy in a clay pit next to a lake from where potters take clay from. The Raja sees the piece of wood and banishes his third queen. Meanwhile, the third queen's son crawls out of the pit and falls into the lake, becoming a lotus flower (Kamal-bā). The gardener's wife sees the lotus flowers and tries to grab it, but it floats away in the lake. Some time later, the ranis try to get the lotus, but the flower questions them about their misdeed. The Raja himself tries next, but the lotus flower floats away. Lastly, the banished queen goes to retrieve the flower. Jets of milk escape from her breasts and shoot at the flower, which moves closer and closer to the shore of the lake. The lotus flower turns back into a human boy and the Raja discovers the ruse.Haidar, Sukumar. "Ho Folk-Lore". In: Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society Vol. 2, Part III (1916). pp. 293-295.
Birhor people Indian ethnographer Sarat Chandra Roy collected and a published a tale from the Birhor people. In this tale, titled How the dead and buried children of the Raja were restored to life, a childless rajah is married to seven ranis, but has no son. A Brahman advises him to strike a mango tree with his sword, take as many mangoes as he can and give them to his seven wives. He does, but only manages to get one. Six of the ranis eat the fruit and leave the rind to the seventh. The ones that ate the fruit bear no son, while the seventh becomes pregnant. The king gives her two drums to announce the child's birth: golden for a boy, silver for a girl. She gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, who are replaced for a broom and a piece of burnt firewood. The twins are thrown in a pit and found by pot-makers, who raise them as their children. Years later, the six ranis notice that the children are alive and give them poisoned bread. The twins eat, die and are buried by the potmakers in the jungle. From the boy's grave, a plantain tree sprouts, and from the girl's a pinjār tree. One day, a king's woodsman tries to pluck a flower from the pinjar tree, but both it and the plantain extend their trunks. The woodsman reports to the king, who goes to the trees and tries to pluck the flower. The same event happens. The king summons his six queens, who also fail to pluck the flower. The rajah summons the seventh queen, who tries to take the flower and both trees return to human form. The rajah learns of the co-wives' deceit and buries them alive in a hole.Sarat Chandra Roy. The Birhors. Ranchi: 1925. pp. 468-475.
Bastar State Ethnologist Verrier Elwin collected a tale titled The Jealous Queens, from a Dora-Kurk source in Kaknar, Bastar State. In this tale, a Rani has three children, a son and two daughters. The boy proclaims he wants to marry his sisters. To avoid such a wedding, their mother arranges the boy's marriage to another woman. Even so, he insists he will marry his sisters. Both girls escape to the woods. They beg to a sarai tree to lower its branches for them to climb, then to lead them to a nearby lake to drink water. However, the lake has dried up, so the younger of the two sisters throws her ring into the lake to fill it with water. She then asks her elder sister to retrieve the ring for her. The elder sister dives into the lake and bring the ring to her, but drowns in the process. The girl is now all alone. Some time later, a Raja goes to the lake to shoot some birds and finds the girl atop a mango tree. The Raja takes her as his seventh Rani, since his other six wives haven't born him a son. The seventh queen becomes pregnant and the Rajah gives her a flute of sorrow and a flute of joy to announce the birth of the royal heir. The six cowives blindfold the girl, take the boy as soon as he is born and throw him with cord and placenta in the lake, and announce she gave birth to a broom. Deep in the lake, the boy is rescued by his mother's elder sisters, and his placenta becomes a flower on the surface of the lake. A Brahmin sees the flower and tries to get it, but it retreats to the middle of the lake. The Brahmin tells the Raja. The Raja Saheb, Kuar Saheb and Diwan Saheb go to the lake to get the flower. The boy asks his aunt underwater, who tells him to only give the flower to his mother. The six ranies come and try to get it. Lastly, the seventh rani, who was expelled from the palace, is bathed and brought to the lake. She asks the boy to give her the chapa flower, the dondera flower. The boy comes with the flowers and sits on the rani's lap. The Raja begs for an explanation and the boy reveals she is his mother, the Raja is his father and the six cowives tried to get rid of him. The Raja asks the boy to come live with him. The boy declines, so the Raja kills the six ranis.Elwin, Verrier. Folk Tales of Mahakoshal. London: Oxford University Press, 1944. pp. 386-389.
Dogri language