The Wax Prince is an Indian folktale collected and published by Indian author Shovona Devi. In it, a queen devises a ruse to trick the king she gave birth to the son he desired, and she goes great lengths to keep the deceit until the marriage, when the false prince is to be presented to his potential bride; a snake couple learns of the situation and the male snake decides to assume the form and place of the human prince and marry the human princess; later, the princess asks her husband's origins and he vanishes, but at the end of the tale the prince returns and assumes human form permanently.
The first part of the tale deals with a tale type that is present in North India, ATU 459, "The Make-Believe Son (Daughter)", wherein a queen tricks the king by fashioning an image of a human child to keep up appearances that she gave birth to an heir, but eventually her creation gains human life. The second part of the tale is a local form of the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, in that a woman marries a man of supernatural origin (a snake or serpent), loses him and must regain him.
Summary In this tale, a king worries for not having children to carry on his family name, and confides in his wife, the queen, about it. The queen worries that the monarch will find a second wife that will bear him an heir and become the favourite in his eyes, so she devises a plan: she convinces the king she will bring him a child, but lies that the baby cannot be seen until a certain age, for it was predicted thus in a dream. Thus, the king gives her much gold, and she moves out of the palace into a distant house. With the gold, the queen bribes a mother-wit to bring a real child she pinches and rocks to sleep to keep up appearances of having born a prince. After some years, the king sends a tutor to teach the young prince, whom the queen also bribes. The tutor feels caught in a dilemma: he can trick the king until he farce is discovered, or he can tell the king and incur the queen's wrath, so he plans to enjoy the gifts until he departs from the kingdom when the moment is right. He supplies the king with a child's calligraphy, and maintains the farce.
In time, the king decides to marry his imaginary son to a bride, and the queen despairs that her plot may be discovered. The mother-wit, however, helps her again: she fashions a likelike humanoid doll to pass off as the prince. The queen also hides the wax doll inside a veiled palanquin to maintain her deception and says they will take the prince to the bride's house. On the road, the retinue stop by a river, where a snake slithers inside the palanquin and gives life to the doll. When the royal palanquin arrives at the bride's house, a living human prince steps outside the palanquin, and the king seized with joy for his "son", goes to embrace and kiss him, despite the queen's warnings. The wedding retinue returns home and the queen faints, thinking the king has discovered the ruse. However, the human prince goes to meet his mother accompanied by his bride and the queen is relieved and glad that the prince is real, thinking that the doll was given life by a magician.
Some time later, the prince's wife asks her mother-in-law about the prince's family, but the queen goads the newly wed princess to ask her husband herself, since the queen also wants to know how the doll came alive. Thus, while walking near the bank of the river where the palanquin stopped before the wedding, the princess asks the prince about his race, but the prince begs her not to press further. Still, the princess keeps questioning him about his origins, as he enters the water and continues to sink, asking the princess if she indeed wants to know of his true origins. The princess admits she is curious; the prince turns into a large snake and dives in the water.
The princess swoons, but is rescued by a local old woman and lives with her, afraid of returning to her parents-in-law's palace. As for the king, he notices his "son"'s long absence and surmises something must have happened to him, to which the queen, relieved, reminds him of her warning. Back to the princess, she is visited by a large snake that coils around her feet and becomes friends with her. The strange happenings reach the ears of the king, who rushes to the old woman's hut near the river, but hides in a tree trunk. One day, the large snake enters the old woman's house, but does not see the princess, since she is being tended to by the old woman due to an illness. The snake begins to circle around in a frantic manner, until it removes its slough and turns back into the human Wax Prince (which the story explains is his name). The king, his father, watches the event, burns the snake's slough, and embraces him son. On the mention of the prince's name, the princess's health immediately improves, and the whole family returns home with the old woman in tow.
Analysis Tale type ATU 459: The Make-Believe Son (Daughter) The first part of the tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 459, "The Make-Believe Son (Daughter)": a queen fashions a false image of a child (son or daughter) or a servant finds an animal to convince her husband, the childless king, that she gave birth, Accessed 06 Nov. 2025. and continues the ruse until it is time to marry the royal child; the queen worries that the king will discover the deceit and thinks of killing herself, but deities take pity on the queen and transform the image or animal into a human person.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 155-156.
Thompson-Roberts 425D Ind The second part of the tale is classified, in Stith Thompson and Warren Roberts's Types of Indic Oral Tales, as its own Indic type, 425D Ind, "Search for Serpent Husband": the heroine marries a man of mysterious origin; jealous women probe her into asking his name or origins; he reveals it and turns into a snake; after many hardships, she reunites with him.
Motifs According to Stith Thompson and study of motifs of Indian literature and oral folklore, the tale contains the motifs B604.1 "Marriage to snake",Thompson, S., Balys, J. (1958). The oral tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 80. D391 "Transformation: serpent (snake) to person",Thompson, S., Balys, J. (1958). The oral tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 103. and D435.1.4. "Wax prince animated by serpent becomes human being".Thompson, S., Balys, J. (1958). The oral tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 104.
The husband's vanishing In his work about Cupid and Psyche and other Animal as Bridegroom tales, Swedish scholar identified that, in certain tales, the heroine causes her supernatural husband's disappearance by inquiring his name. Swahn named this motif The Name Taboo and surmised that it occurred "primarily in India".Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. pp. 238, 251. In Thompson and Roberts's Types of Indic Oral Tales, this motif appears in Indic type 425D Ind, "Search for Serpent Husband": the heroine insists to know her husband's caste or name, and he, in return, gives her an answer, but vanishes in the water like a snake.Thompson, Stith; Roberts, Warren Everett. Types of Indic Oral Tales: India, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1960. p. 63. This episode corresponds with motifs C32.2., "Tabu: questioning supernatural husband"; C32.2.1, "Tabu: asking name of supernatural husband"; C32.2.2, "Tabu: asking where supernatural husband comes from", and C32.2.3, "Tabu: asking for caste of supernatural husband."Thompson, S., Balys, J. (1958). The oral tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 85.
Variants According to scholarship, tale type ATU 459 is "widespread throughout North India and other Asian areas, but never found in Europe".Islam, Mazharul. Folklore, the Pulse of the People: In the Context of Indic Folklore. Concept Publishing Company, 1985. pp. 165-166.
The Tale of Thakur and the Barber
In an Indian tale titled The Tale of Thakur and the Barber, collected from informant Menhdi Lal, from Bibipur, Bara-Banki District, a Thakur takes his Barber, named Gokul Nai, to a pilgrimage next to the Ganges. Tired of attending to the Thakur, the barber tells the Thakur he will leave him if he asks the man something he cannot answer. They reach a city and the barber goes to buy some provisions, when he sees a man cradling a dead snake and crying "Hae! meri nagin" ("Alas, my female snake"). The barber returns to the Thakur and reports the finding, hoping the Thakur does not have an explanation for the event. Thus, the Thakur recounts a tale: a Rája complained that his Ráni had only given him daughters, and threatened to kill her if their next child was a girl. As he predicted, the queen gave birth to a girl, but the queen devised a ruse: she told the king that the prince was born under the asterism of Mul and could not be seen for twelve years. Twelve years passed, and the king arranged for his son's marriage. As the royal palanquin led the would-be bridegroom and the queen, she worried for her fate and her daughter's; the Kahars put down the palanquin next to a tank, and the Rája of the snakes, who lived in the tank, appeared to the princess inside the palanquin and asked her the reason for her sadness. After learning of the queen's ruse, the Snake Rája convened with his snake subjects in the tank how to help the princess; despite their reservations about helping humans, who killed their numbers, the Snake Rája assumed human form and replaced the princess inside the palanquin. When the palanquin reached the bride's palace, the queen worried about her ruse being discovered, but a man came out of the palanquin, to her relief. The Snake Rája married a human princess, and they lived together. After some time, the Snake Rája's snake wife missed her husband and went in search for him, finding him married to a human girl, so she assumed a human disguise and convinced the human princess to ask the Snake Rája about his caste. The human princess kept asking the Snake Rája about his origin, but he refused to divulge anything and asked her to stop asking, but, after much insistence, he took the princess to the tank, resumed his snake form and dived in. The human princess mourned for the loss of her husband, and settled there in a small hut. A Mali woman (gardener or florist) who delivered flowers to Snake Rája learnt of the princess's plight and told Snake Rája about it. The Snake Rája decided to return to his human wife and left his snake-wife behind. The snake-wife followed him into the small hut and prepared to bite the human princess to death, but the Snake Rája placed some poisoned gum on the couch leg. The snake-wife touched the gum and became stuck, dying after. The Snake Rája lamented the death of his snake-wife. The Thakur ends his tale, and both go to another town. The barber goes to buy some provisions and finds a moving goat's head on a door alternatively weeping and laughing. The barber asks the Thakur about it, and the Thakur retells a tale about how King Vikramaditya, who had powers to transfer his soul outside his body, did this to a parrot's body and the king's servant transferred his own soul to Vikramaditya's body; Vikramaditya's wife then played a trick on the false king and asked him to transfer his soul to a goat, which she beheaded, while the true king retook his body.
The Snake Prince (Kumaon)