Life's Secret is a Bengali folktale collected by Lal Behari Day in his work Folk-Tales of Bengal. It concerns a prince whose lifeforce is tied to a necklace, and, as soon as it falls in the hands of his stepmother, he falls into a death-like sleep. With the help of a maiden predicted to marry "a dead husband", who is the seemingly dead prince, he recovers the necklace and unmasks his stepmother. Variants exist in India, both with a heroine and a hero whose life is attached to a magical necklace.
Summary In this tale, a king has two wives, Suo and Duo, both childless. One day, a fakeer goes to the palace to beg for alms, and is greeted by queen Suo, who gives him a handful of rice. In return, the fakeer gives her a nostrum, to be swallowed with the juice of a pomegranate flower; the queen will give birth to a son she will name Dalim Kumar ("Dalim" - pomegranate; "Kumar" - son). The fakeer also warns her that her son's life will be bound to a necklace of gold, inside a wooden box, inside a boal fish's heart that lives in a pool in the palace. In time, Suo gives birth to Dalim Kumar. The boy grows up and likes to play with pigeons. One day, a pigeon flies in Duo queen's quarters. Duo promises to return the pigeon if Dalim asks his mother the secret of this life. Dalim Kumar talks to his mother about it; at first, Suo refuses to tell her son about it, but eventually concedes and tells him about the necklace. Dalim Kumar tells his step-mother about it. Duo begins a plan: with some herbs, she feigns that her bones are so frail that they crackle and pop, and her only cure is the boal fish.
After the fish is caught, at the same time Dalim begins to feel unwell and, as the wooden box is open and Duo places Dalim's necklace around her neck, Dalim falls dead. The king's grief is so deep, and he orders his son's body to be placed in one of his garden-houses, with provisions, and trusts the son of his prime minister, Dalim Kumar's friend, with the keys to his tomb. Dalim Kumar wakes up at night while his step-mother does not wear the necklace, and dies in the daytime so long as Duo wears the necklace. After some time, the prime minister's son notices that, despite being dead, Dalim Kumar's body does not decay, and decides to investigate further. Dalim Kumar's friends discovers he is alive, and both plot to retrieve the necklace.
Meanwhile, Bidhata-Purusha's sister gives birth to a daughter, and Bidhata-Purusha prophesises his niece shall marry a dead bridegroom. After she comes of age, her mother takes the girl with her to avoid her fate, and they reach Dalim Kumar's garden-palace. The girl enters the palace and meets Dalim Kumar, who claims to be her future dead bridegroom. Dalim Kumar's friend marries them and leaves them be. The next day, Dalim Kumar "dies" again, to his wife's consternation, but revives at night. The girl learns of his condition and, after some years, and the birth of their two children, decides to meet her step-mother-in-law and retrieve her husband's necklace.
The girl disguises herself as a poor female barber and goes to Queen Duo's palace to hire herself. Unaware of the girl's identity, she takes her in as her servant. The girl instructs her elder son to play with the necklace around Duo's neck, and to cry if the boy parts with it. Duo lets the child play with the necklace, certain of her triumph. Dalim Kumar's wife steals the necklace and brings it back to her husband. Dalim Kumar, his friend and his family enter the king's palace with grandeur; the prince meets his parents and tells the whole truth. The king then sentences his queen Duo to be buried alive.Day, Rev. Lal Behari (1883). Folk-Tales of Bengal. London: MacMillan and Co. pp. 1-15.Jurich, Marilyn (1998). Scheherazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature. Greenwood Press. pp. 99-100. .
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 412, "The Maiden (Youth) with a Separable Soul in a Necklace".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 139. Folklorist Stith Thompson included in the same tale type stories about a heroine and a hero whose soul lies in a magical necklace.
Motifs The tale contains the motif E711.4, "Soul in necklace".Thompson, Stith; Balys, Jonas. The Oral Tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958. p. 169.
Fate's entity The character of Bidhata is the personification of fate: he predetermines a person's fate from birth, by writing the individual's destiny on their forehead.Day, Rev. Lal Behari (1883). Folk-Tales of Bengal. London: McMillan and Co. p. 9 (footnote nr. 1). He is also called Bidhātā Purush in Bengali language, and Vidhātā Purusha in Sanskrit, as well as Vidhātṛ, Dhātṛ, and Dhātā.
Interpretation According to Marilyn Jurich, the tale follows the war between two female tricksters: Queen Duo, the king's younger wife, and Dalim Kumar's wife. Queen Duo tricks the prince into revealing his secret, steals the necklace, and has the upper hand for a time, when Dalim Kumar meets Bidhata's niece, whom he marries and who tricks queen Duo into delivering her the prince's life necklace. Another rivalry occurs between both queens: the king prefers the younger queen, Duo, until the elder, Suo, gives birth to a son, earning their co-husband's favour.
Variants Dalim-Koumar In a Bengale tale collected by Tapanmohan Chatterji with the title Dalim-Koumar ou Le Prince Grenade, a king has two queens, Suo and Duo. Suo has a child, while Duo is childless, and envies the other. Suo's son is named Dalim-Koumar, since his life is tied to a pomegranate. One day, one of Dalim's doves flies to Duo's room and she catches it. Duo promises to return it, if the boy reveals where his "life" is. The boy retorts that his life is inside him, but the queen explains that an astrologer told the boy's mother the boy's life is inside the pomegranate, and Duo wants to know where it is. Dalim runs to his mother to ask her about it and, despite some avoidance, Suo tells him the secret. Dalim goes to tell Duo the information. Some time later, queen Duo feigns illness, and she tells the king her only cure is a certain pomegranate on a certain tree that lies away from the village. The king's servant takes the pomegranate from the tree, which instantly causes the boy to fall ill. Duo cracks open the fruit and finds a little box with a golden necklace inside. She wears it on her neck and Dalim falls dead immediately. The king and Suo cry for their lost son, and order his body to be placed inside a white marbled pavilion. Meanwhile, Dalim Kumar's fiancée, a princess, prepares herself for the sati, but promises to defeat death by the strength of her love and by giving offerings to the gods. The princess decides to vigil his body alone, in the pavilion. All the while, queen Suo retires to her chambers out of grief, and Duo becomes the king's favourite, being showered with affection and jewels, but, in order to avoid suspicions, takes off the necklace at night - which revives Dalim in his tomb. Thus, Dalim revives at night and dies in the morning. One day, Dalim Kumar awakes and sees the princess, his fiancée, in the pavilion, and they embrace. The prince tells the princess about the necklace, and she promises to fetch it and give it to him. After Dalim falls into a sleep again, the princess disguises herself as a barber woman and goes to queen Duo's palace. With a child in tandem, the princess convinces Duo to let the child play with the necklace. After fulfilling her task, the princess takes the necklace back to Dalim Kumar. He awakes and embraces his fiancée, thanking her for her help. The next day, Dalim Kumar and the princess enter his father's city to let him know his son is alive, and to punish the perfidious queen.Chatterji, Tapanmohan. Sous Les Manguiers: Légendes du Bengale. Andrée Karpelès (Traduction). Paris: Editions Bossard, 1923. pp. 142-158.
The Dead Prince In a tale collected by Sunity Devi, Maharani of Coochbehar, with the title The Dead Prince, an astrologer has a sister. His sister gives birth to a girl and, after six days, asks her brother to predict her daughter's future - since, on the sixth day after birth, one's own future is written on their forehead by the Creator. The astrologer prophecizes that she will marry a dead man. Trying to avoid this fate, the girl's mother takes her daughter after she is 12 or 13 years old and wanders through a forest. Meanwhile, a Maharajah has two wives, a first Maharani with a son named Dalim Kumar, and a second Maharani, with no son. The second Maharani hates her step-son. One day, the prince is found dead, apparently he drowned while in the castle's grounds. The second Maharani suggests her husband burn the prince's body, but the boy's grieving mother asks her husband to build a palace to house the prince's body, with his instruments and provisions for 10 years. The Maharajah fulfills her request. Back to the girl and her mother, they are still wandering through forests and jungles, and the girl says she is thirsty. The girl stops to rest by a tree, while her mother goes in front of her to find any water source. They get separated: the mother thinks she lost her daughter and returns home, while the girl reaches the palace in the jungle. While she is there, one evening, the prince awakes and sees her. Days, months pass, and the girl and prince begin to like each other and marry. One day, the girl, now a woman, asks the prince his story. He tells that an astrologer predicted at the time of his birth his destiny as a great ruler, if he lived, and gave his father a necklace (which was "his life"), with a warning to not allow anyone wear it around their neck. So, to protect his son, the Maharajah places the necklace in a golden box and hid in the depths of a pool in the palace. However, the Maharajah's second wife, who also knew of the necklace, and ordered the fisherman to catch the fish that swallowed the golden box. The second Maharani stole the necklace and wore it around her neck - and it has been like this since then: whenever she wears the necklace in the morning, the prince dies, but come night, she takes off the necklace and the prince is alive. After hearing the story, the prince's wife, then, promises to get back the necklace. Some time later, some of the Maharajah's huntsmen and sportsmen report back to him that the prince's palace is haunted, since they hear a woman's voice and a baby's cry. The Maharajah ponders that, if his son was alive, he would have married and fathered a child at that time, but dismisses the huntsmen's concerns. Back to the prince's wife, she takes her child, disguises herself as a poor woman ("naptini") and goes to her father-in-law's palace to hire herself as a servant to the second Maharani. She has the Maharani play with her child, while she paints her feet, and the baby plays with the necklace. The prince's wife steals the necklace and rushes back to Dalim Kumar's palace to give him. Later, Dalim Kumar is visited by his father and mother, who rejoice that their son is alive. The prince suggests they throw the necklace to the depths of the ocean. Finally, the girl's mother learns of her daughter's survival and her story, and thanks her brother for his prediction.Devi, Sunity, Maharani of Coochbehar. Indian Fairy Tales. Calcutta: Art Press, 1923. pp. 70-84.
Chundun Rajah