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Mother Ten’s Stories
In Ghatiyali village, Ajmer District—as in many Rajasthani villages and cities—women worship the beneficent goddess Dasā Mātā (alternatively Daśā Mātā), here called Mother Ten, by telling her stories. A more accurate but awkward translation of this goddess’s name would be “Condition Mother,” for—as the stories teach—her power may transform a human’s condition (dasā; daśā). Instantaneously, she bestows or removes well-being or ill-being. It seems likely that an initially accidental homonymy in Hindi and Rajasthani between the word for condition—dasā—and the auspicious number ten—das (alternatively daś)—led to the association of Dasā Mātā with ten days of worship, ten stories, a ten-pointed design, and a string with ten knots. Thus I shall call her Mother Ten.
The days of Mother Ten’s worship in Rajasthan fall during a period crowded with rituals and festivals, and rich with songs and stories. Coming at the beginning of the hot season, this period coincides not incidentally with the harvest of winter grain crops. It begins with the major villagewide and nationwide festival of Holī on the full moon and last day of the lunar month called Phālgun (March-April). As the moon wanes and waxes again, during the succeeding month of Chaitra (April-May), many women in Ghatiyali participate in a series of ritual events appealing to and celebrating various aspects of female divinity. These rituals are all intended to secure for women and their families the comforts of a good life and, by the same token, to ward off the disasters of childlessness, widowhood, illness, loneliness, and poverty. Perhaps, above all, they are about the value of sustaining relationships.
The day after Holī is Brother Second, when sisters pray for their brothers’ long lives and brothers give sisters gifts of clothing. The first day of Mother Ten’s worship coincides with Brother Second, but Mother Ten’s stories are told at a different time of day and in a different location from those dedicated to the goddess addressed only as “Mother of Brother Second.” Eight days after Holī is the worship of Sītalā (alternatively, Śītalā) Mother, the Cool One, who controls both fertility and children’s health—especially rashes and fevers. Rowdy groups of singing, laughing women celebrate Sītalā Mother’s worship, visiting her shrine outside the village and alternately singing solemn devotional tunes and lyrics, and joking, bawdy ones. Mother Ten’s worship on that day is quietly conducted at a lull in the activities dedicated to Sītalā. Sixteen days after Holī, and five after the culmination of Mother Ten’s worship, is the festival of Gaṇgaur, in praise of the fair goddess who through austerities won Lord Śiva for her husband. Gaṇgaur worship is meant to secure auspicious wifehood for virgin girls and long-lived spouses for married women. Shortly after Gaṇgaur the spring celebration of the Goddess’s semi-annual Nine Nights (Navarātri) caps this series of festivities honoring female divinity. Like Holī, Nine Nights is actively and publicly celebrated by men, but the worship performed for Brother Second, Sītalā Mother, Gaṇgaur, and Mother Ten is largely women’s business.
It would be easy to overlook Mother Ten’s worship during the vivid pageantry that characterizes many of the events with which it coincides and overlaps. On all but the tenth day, the ritual for Mother Ten probably takes less than two hours, from the drawing of the ten-pointed design through the stories and prayers. In many ways Mother Ten’s rites are similar to the performance of vows (vrat or vrata) which both women and men, but more frequently women, undertake for the well-being of their families. Vrats, like Mother Ten’s worship, typically involve a fast, a simple domestic worship ritual, and a story. However, Mother Ten’s worship, although conducted in homes, has a collective aspect. Small groups of women, who may be neighbors and friends as well as relatives, perform it together. The tenth day sees the largest gatherings, as all married women who seek the goddess’s protection for the coming year will attend the worship in order to obtain a blessed ten-knotted string to wear around their necks.
The three stories translated here I recorded on the second, fourth, and seventh days of Mother Ten’s worship in March 1980.1 The storyteller, Shobhag Kanvar, was then a woman in her mid-fifties, and a grandmother. She is of the Rājpūt caste—traditionally the ruling, landed gentry or “warrior” caste. Her own husband and one of her two sons had urban jobs as chauffeur and truck driver, respectively; another, more educated, son held a clerical position in a nearby town. Shobhag Kanvar, who had no formal schooling and can neither read nor write, is an acknowledged religious expert in Ghatiyali. I lived in her household from September 1979 to March 1981, and she was always quick to summon me and my tape recorder when what she considered a worthwhile cultural performance was about to take place in her home. Although other women in our village performed Mother Ten’s worship, I attended and recorded only Shobhag Kanvar’s rituals.
To participate in Mother Ten’s worship and receive its benefits, women forego their morning meal and make sure to bathe, but otherwise they carry out their usual daily routines. Then, sometime in the afternoon, fasting women gather at the storyteller’s home. In 1980, the regular participants who assembled in Shobhag Kanvar’s courtyard for Mother Ten’s worship were the female residents of this compound’s household. These included Shobhag Kanvar, her daughter-in-law, her older sister (married to her husband’s older brother), her sister’s daughter-in-law, and me. A few neighbor women—none of them Rājpūts—attended irregularly. A couple of workmen were employed at the time doing masonry labor on Shobhag Kanvar’s new house, and were thus professionally immune to the customs of gender seclusion that generally applied in a Rājpūt courtyard. I was surprised and amused to note how these men gravitated each day to within hearing distance of the storytelling session, positioning themselves just a little behind the small circle of women. Officially nonexistent at this female event, they nonetheless interjected appreciative exclamations and offered commentary on the stories. Shobhag Kanvar responded to their interest with her customary self-possession.
The atmosphere at Mother Ten’s worship sessions was companionable as well as prayerful; no great solemnity prevailed. Children of all ages distracted and disrupted at their whim, including an infant who defecated on its doting grandmother’s lap in the midst of one session, evoking general hilarity.
Before each worship Shobhag Kanvar prepared a special ritual space on the courtyard floor. With cowdung paste as her medium, she used her hands to paint a brown ten-pointed figure, upon which she placed a skein of white cotton yarn and a small pile of whole wheat grains. Next to this design Shobhag Kanvar set a small brass jar of pure water and a small dish of red powder, mixing water with powder to make a thick, bright red paste. On each day of Mother Ten’s worship she used this paste to make auspicious dots on the ten-pointed design—one on the first day, two on the second, until a full complement of ten dots is made on the tenth day. Each day, as the worship began, every woman present took a few grains in her hand and held them while a story was told. At each story’s conclusion, following Shobhag Kanvar’s lead, the women tossed the grains in front of them while uttering prayers to the goddess.
On the tenth day the skein of yarn is twisted into necklaces called “Mother Ten’s strings” which all participating women wear throughout the year that follows. Each string has ten knots in it. These strings are understood as forms of the goddess and respected as icons. For the tenth day women dressed in their best, attendance at least tripled, and the fast was broken with special festive foods offered to the goddess and eaten collectively.
Shobhag Kanvar told three stories at each worship session. The first (and longest) was always of the goddess herself; the second was always of the elephant-headed god Gaṇeśjī; the third was of a character called the Greedy One (Lobhyā). The chief feature of the Greedy One’s stories was his futile efforts to snatch for himself the merit of women’s fasts and offerings and stories. Shobhag Kanvar would conclude the Greedy One’s tales by admonishing him that his story and his grains belonged to him, but nothing more.
In sum, then, during the ten days of Mother Ten’s worship, Shobhag Kanvar produced thirty stories—ten for Mother Ten, ten for Gaṇeśjī and ten for the Greedy One—although only two of the Greedy One’s tales had any substantial narrative content. Shobhag Kanvar told me that she had learned some of these stories from an aunt in her natal home, some from her (now deceased) mother-in-law in our village, and some from an elderly woman of a different and lower caste in our village.
Mother Ten is identified with Lakṣmī, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, while her opposite, Odasā—“Ill-Condition” or “Bad Ten” as I call her here—is identified with Kulakṣmī, the goddess of misfortune. Worshipers believe that Mother Ten brings well-being, comfort, and plenty to the families of the women who perform her rites. But if she is angered or neglected, abject poverty and every kind of bad luck will result—when Mother Ten departs and Bad Ten arrives.
A phrase that occurs in every Mother Ten story is “X had Mother Ten’s niyam” and I have consistently translated this as “X followed the rules of Mother Ten.” Niyam is variously glossed as “rule,” “habit,” or “regimen,” but also includes, unlike those terms, a strong measure of self-restraint. To have the niyam of a particular deity means to act in accordance with that deity’s traditional, prescriptive desires. These usually require acts of self-control and self-denial, such as fasting or renouncing certain foods, as well as acts of worship, such as offering grains or telling stories.
All Mother Ten’s stories seem simultaneously to celebrate the absolute power of the goddess over human welfare and to demonstrate mortal women’s great aptitude for exercising their pragmatic wits. An explicit connection between devotion to the goddess and human ingenuity is made in the first story when the narrator describes the heroine as knowing many things because “Mother Ten had turned her heart’s key, and opened her heart, and put ideas in her brain.” Each story begins with a woman in a difficult situation, but ends with the same woman having attained an ideal condition of general prosperity and security—through a combination of the goddess’s blessings and her own efforts. Each story also ends with a prayer to Mother Ten to generalize that bliss: not only the story’s heroine but the whole world should partake of it.
The tales reveal, in passing, forms of exploitation and abuse to which women are subject, but seem to view these more as challenges to feminine ingenuity than as intolerable burdens. The vocal, smart, well-behaved but unsubmissive women in these tales understand and experience, as do the narrator and her audience, a world strongly patterned by gender distinctions. Women perceive their disadvantages in this world, as when the bride of the first story fears a beating, or when the old woman of the third story acquiesces to the greedy king’s unfair demand. But the stories express no resignation to imposed subordination. In the three tales presented here—and in all Mother Ten stories—potentially victimized females take fate into their own hands and, with help from the goddess, turn things around to their own advantage. In the process they often manipulate the men around them, and males are notably more voiceless and passive than women in these stories.
The heroines of Mother Ten’s tales also manipulate other women. No ideology of female solidarity prevails in the story world. Realistically enough, solidarities and jealousies, mutual support and mutual predation, coexist. If a mother’s worship establishes a secure fate for her daughter, and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law appreciatively bless one another, a stepmother may be deliberately cruel to her stepdaughter. If friendly neighbor-women lend grain and utensils to a lonely bride, a greedy neighbor-woman contrives to rob a defenseless old lady.
Each tale of Mother Ten seems to address one or more powerful cultural motifs surrounding female existence. “The Brahman’s Daughter and the Five Bachelors” begins with an image of brothers dividing property. To separate cooking hearths is the paradigmatic act by which a joint family divides itself, and such divisions are strongly disapproved, although widely practiced, in Rajasthan. One of the most pervasive cultural truisms in north India has it that women’s feuds and jealousies cause men to sever their brotherly ties. But here the five bachelors divide their property when they become an all-male group, and they are subsequently reunited by the clever bride. Thus as they worship the goddess of well-being, women powerfully deny the validity of a misogynous stereotype.
Another common characterization of north Indian kinship is that there is a painful antagonism between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. This is supposed to be grounded in their presumed bitter competition for the son/husband. In “The Sword-Husband,” however, the pair—mother-in-law/daughter-in-law—virtually creates a man for their mutual enjoyment, and they praise one another for this accomplishment. The story also sensibly enough reveals that a little disobedience to husband’s mother is forgivable, and may be all for the best.
To be old and alone is a dreaded fate for anyone, perhaps most of all for women. But the story of “The Old Woman and The Yellow Calf,” the third and last presented here, shows how devotion to the goddess and independent-mindedness may transform this fate. In the end, we see the old woman move from isolation to a familial situation, a move construed as one from misery to well-being. If her security lies in obtaining a new dependence, the old woman does not achieve this through begging or becoming an object of charity. Rather, her benefactor is forced to realize her personal worth. The goddess, Mother Ten, has many ways of taking care of her own. None of her devotees, as portrayed in Shobhag Kanvar’s stories, lacks inner strength and all of them have lively tongues and their wits about them.
Further Reading
Two books provide further material on rituals and festivals in rural Rajasthan: Brij Raj Chauhan, A Rajasthan Village. (New Delhi: Associated Publishing House, 1967); and S. L. Srivastava, Folk Culture and Oral Tradition (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1974). My earlier works treat related aspects of devotional storytelling, popular religious practices, and women’s expressive traditions; Ann Grodzins Gold, Village Families in Story and Song: An Approach through Women’s Oral Traditions in Rajasthan INDIAkit Series, South Asia Language and Area Center, University of Chicago, 1981; Fruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988); and Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann Grodzins Gold, Listen to the Heron’s Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994).
THE BRAHMAN’S DAUGHTER AND THE FIVE BACHELORS
A brahman had five sons. Their mother died, and what did the five sons do? They built five separate huts and five separate cooking hearths and five separate ovens for roasting grains, and even five separate manure piles. They went from village to village, begging for grain, and roasted it and ate it. The old man, their father, also went begging, made bread for himself, and ate it.
In another place there was a brahman who had one daughter. When her mother died, he married again and had another daughter. His second wife said, “Marry my daughter into a fine family, but give this one into any old place. Give her to a house with five bachelors.”
Her husband went searching for such a house but could not find one anywhere. Many days passed and he kept wandering and searching. At last he heard about the brahman widower with his five bachelor sons and he arranged the match. They came for the marriage very poorly dressed. The stepdaughter was given in marriage to the middle brother. For wedding gifts, her stepmother gave her a broken tray, a broken brass pot, and a torn quilt and mattress. That woman was so unfeeling, as a real mother could never be, that she filled the huge clay jar with pieces of old plaster which she had dug up from the ruin of a broken-down wall [traditionally, this vessel would be filled with a special fried treat made of white flour]. She covered the mouth of the jar with a red cloth. This was the send-off that she gave to her stepdaughter.
The five bachelors, their old father, and the bride traveled in a borrowed ox cart. After some time, when they were approaching a river, the five bachelors felt they were dying of hunger. They began to grunt rudely to show how hungry they were. The father-in-law said, “Don’t do that! What will this little one think? Look, you are five bachelors and you are grunting very rudely. Don’t do that. Instead, let us go to the riverbank, relieve ourselves, wash, and then we will eat whatever is in the huge clay jar.”
Now the girl knew there were pieces of plaster in the jar. She was a blooming young girl of seventeen or eighteen years, and very clever, and she knew that her stepmother had filled the jar with pieces of plaster. She thought, “Now these five bachelors will beat me.” They were about to open the jar.
The girl’s mother when she was alive had always faithfully followed the rules of Mother Ten, and during the ten special days for the worship of Mother Ten she always told that goddess’s story first, and only afterward did she eat her food. Actually, her daughter had been born by the grace of Mother Ten. So now the girl prayed to Mother Ten: “Sustain my honor, sustain my honor! My mother always followed your rules and I was given to her by you. Therefore only you can sustain my honor, and if you don’t, then right now the five bachelors will beat me.” Just at that moment, as the men sat to eat, by the grace of Mother Ten the jar was filled with fried treats. Because the girl’s mother had followed the rules of Mother Ten, Mother Ten fulfilled the needs of her daughter.
The father-in-law was quite pleased. He told her husband’s younger brother to give the bride a snack of the fine treats. So she ate and drank. Then they tied up the mouth of the jar and put it back in the cart. And they all went on their way.
They came to the village of the five bachelors. When the clever women of the village saw the new bride they said, “Oh, look! Lakṣmī has come. [A new bride is often identified with Lakṣmī, the goddess of prosperity, who is of course identified with Mother Ten.] She has all good qualities and no bad qualities.” Then five women of the village went to the huts where the five bachelors lived and took the new bride inside.
The bride got up early the next morning after the father-in-law and his sons had left to go begging for grain. She looked all around and saw all the huts, all the cooking hearths, all the roasting ovens and all the manure piles.
The bride went to her neighbors and said, “Aunties, please give me five kilos of wheat and just a little bit of dried greens too so that I can boil vegetable sauce.”
The neighbor women said among themselves, “Lakṣmī has come, poor thing, let her have what she wants. Where else will she go?” And they gave her the grain and dried greens. Then she ground the wheat into flour and went back to ask the neighbor women for a sifter so she could sift the flour. They said, “Lakṣmī has come, let her have what she wants.” They gave her a sifter. She boiled the greens into vegetable sauce and sifted the flour.
Then she asked the neighbor women, “Which cooking hearth is my husband’s father’s and which manure pile and which roasting oven?” They pointed the father-in-law’s out to her. First she dug up all the five brothers’ manure piles and combined them with her father-in-law’s, making them all into one. Then she tore out the five brothers’ cooking hearths and threw them in that manure pile. Then she broke up the five brothers’ roasting ovens. After this she set to work cleaning all the huts. She swept and cleaned them thoroughly and then began to make bread. [Here Shobhag Kanvar broke out of her recitative storytelling voice to interject her own commentary, conversationally: “Lakṣmī is a woman and a house is not man’s, it is woman’s.”]
Soon the five bachelors arrived, each bringing one or two kilos of grain which they had received while begging. They began at once to yell, “Oh no! Someone dug up my cooking hearth! Oh woe is me! Someone broke up my roasting oven.”
But the bride said, “Don’t make a racket. All of you bring your separate bags of grain and put them in a pile right here next to me. Then go to the tank and bathe. After you have cleaned your bodies and washed your clothes, on the way back, go to the temple and bow in front of Ṭhākurjī [a name often used for God, meaning “ruler”]. Then come home and eat bread.”
When the brothers were returning from the tank it was easy to see that they had just bathed, because one had a wet ear and one had a wet back, and so on. The villagers were surprised and said to one another, “Ah, who has put a nose-ring on the bachelors today?” [That is, who has brought them under control like an ox?] But persons in the know said, “Ah, today Lakṣmī has come into their house.” They went to the temple, and some bumped into the columns, and some looked at Ṭhākurjī, but soon they all came running home, just dying of hunger.
Then the bride said, “Don’t make a racket, just sit down.” They sat and she placed trays of food in front of them. First she served her father-in-law and then she served the two younger bothers of her husband and then she served the two elder brothers of her husband and last she served her husband. One of them ate five pieces of bread and one ate four and one ate six. But they all said, “Ah, today our brother’s wife has satisfied us. It is good that our brother’s wife has come. For so many days we have eaten nothing but roasted grains.” The brothers decided, “Today we went to two villages but tomorrow we will go to four and we will bring a lot of grain and eat a lot of bread.”
And so they did. The brahman’s daughter returned to her neighbors the five kilos of wheat that she had borrowed from them, and there was more left over. So she cleaned it and ground it into flour. Every day she put all the grain that the men brought in one pile. They had plenty of food now because this girl was born by the grace of Mother Ten and wealth was in her hand. She knew many things in her heart. This was because Mother Ten had turned her heart’s key, and opened her heart, and put ideas in her brain.
After a few days had passed, she said to her husband’s younger brother, “The earnings of five sons are enough. Your old man’s earnings are no longer needed. Now he is old. Let him collect small kindling and dry wood and bring it for the cooking fire.” So the father-in-law went and gathered little sticks, brought them and threw them down by the hearth, and the bride ground grain and kneaded dough and prepared bread.
The five brothers brought huge bundles of grain tied up with cloth. Some days they brought 40 kilos, some days 80 kilos, some days 120 kilos, sometimes each of the five brought a full 40 kilos so that all together they had 200 kilos. They had so much grain it wouldn’t fit in the huts.
One day in the rainy season the father-in-law found a dead snake lying on the ground and he brought it home and threw it up on the roof of his hut. Soon afterwards, the queen of that land was bathing. She had removed her necklace, which was worth millions, and set it down nearby. Just then it happened that a hawk flew by and took the necklace and flew away with it. It flew over the huts of the five bachelors and there was the dead snake lying on the roof. The hawk dropped the necklace and picked up the dead snake and flew away. The hawk took the snake because it was something to eat.
Now the bride was standing outside and saw this happen. She immediately took the necklace into the hut. Soon the king’s men began to tour the kingdom, announcing in all the towns and villages that whoever found the queen’s necklace and brought it to the king would have as a reward whatever he demanded. The whole kingdom was searching for the necklace. Then the bride told her husband’s father to tie it up in a handkerchief and take it to the king. She said, “Tell him that you want nothing at all. Tell him only that on Divālī, Lakṣmī’s day, light should burn in the five bachelors’ huts and in the castle. But outside of those two places, in the whole kingdom, nothing should burn—no lamp, no electricity, nothing at all. Tell him, ‘On the day of Lakṣmī worship, Divālī, there should be absolutely no light allowed anywhere except in the king’s castle and in the five bachelors’ huts.’ ” [Divālī falls on the pitch-dark new-moon night in fall. It is normally celebrated in each household by placing many clay lamps—small dishes of oil with wicks floating in them—on top of walls and roofs and on window sills.]
The father-in-law did as she said and the king agreed to his conditions. He called together all the chiefs of police and they went with their soldiers to each and every house to sit and enforce complete darkness. The entire city was completely dark, but lamps were burning in the five bachelors’ huts and in the castle.
Both Mother Ten and Bad Ten came on Divālī night. Bad Ten slipped easily into each and every house, under cover of darkness. But where could Mother Ten enter? She saw no light and so she could not enter any house. She wandered all over the village, here and there, but Mother Ten could not enter anywhere because of the darkness. She thought to herself, “I’ll find a place or else I’ll turn back.”
Then, suddenly, she saw lamps burning in the bachelors’ huts, flickering and gleaming. The lamps had been filled with oil by the brahman girl. She had also lit a big torch and it was shining in the bachelors’ huts like the moon. But the rest of the village was completely dark. Where the lamp was, there was Lakṣmī’s dwelling.
Now Mother Ten wanted to enter right away, but the brahman’s daughter would not open the door. She said, “No, you go present yourself elsewhere in the village.” It got to be late, 4 A.M., and Mother Ten was very upset. She said, “You brahman girl, you open the door!” But the girl said, “Give me a promise, give me a promise.”
So Mother Ten gave a promise. She swore: “If I forget my promise may I wither upon my feet, may I hang upside-down in a washerman’s pool. For fourteen generations I will never leave you.” This was the promise Mother Ten gave to that brahman girl.
Then the girl opened the door and Mother Ten put her foot in the hut. At once the hut flew away and in its place was a nine-story castle, made of glass, with gold and silver fittings, and many diamonds and rubies, and hundreds of thousands of rupees. How could this be? It was all given by Mother Ten, and what does she lack?
Oh, my Mother Ten, as her wishes were fulfilled, so let the world’s wishes be.
THE SWORD-HUSBAND
There was once a brahman who had no sons or daughters. One day his wife said to him, “Take this sword, arrange its engagement, and get it married. Arrange the engagement and marriage of our ‘son.’ ”
This brahman’s wife always followed the rules of Mother Ten. During the days of Mother Ten’s worship she would daily make a design on the ground with cowdung paste, put whole grains and the skein of yarn on it, and tell Mother Ten’s stories. She was deeply devoted.
She told her husband to arrange the sword’s marriage. She told him what to say to the bride’s party: “My son has gone on a long business trip and I want to fix his engagement. If he is not back in time for the wedding, then, no matter. In the ceremony the sword can take the marriage rounds.”
[Shobhag Kanvar here broke out of the story sequence to explain to me, a foreigner, that among brahmans, merchants, and her own Rajput caste, in not-so-distant times it truly happened that swords were used as proxy grooms in wedding ceremonies.]
Because she followed the rules of Mother Ten, the brahman’s wife was acting out of faith. Her husband went at once. He found a suitable family and told them his son had gone on a long journey in order to earn a lot of money, but that meanwhile he wanted to arrange his marriage. He fixed the time, and on the appointed day the sword’s wedding party set off with much pomp. The sword was ornamented with all the splendor of a bridegroom, including a turban and a garland and everything else that was necessary.
They reached the bride’s village and went to her house. The wooden marriage emblem (toraṇ) was set over the doorway and the sword struck it. Then they took the sword into the house and performed the “knotting together” and the “joining of hands” ceremonies coupling the bride and the sword. In this fashion the sword took “marriage rounds” with the girl. [By mentioning these four important moments of the Rajasthani marriage ritual, familiar to everyone, Shobhag Kanvar provides verisimilitude to the outlandish image of a sword-bridegroom.]
Then the wedding party departed for the brahman’s village, bringing the new bride. They took the bride inside the house, and for a few days young girls came and wanted to visit the bride. Her mother-in-law sat in the entranceway of the house, and the daughter-in-law sat there too, and every day girls and boys came to visit, and they passed the time in conversation. So a month or two went by. Then the girl’s family came to take her back, so they took her. [A new bride’s first sojourn in her marital home is normally a short one.]
But soon that old woman, the brahman’s wife, said to her husband, “Time passes so pleasantly when my daughter-in-law is here. You must bring her back.” So he brought her back to live with them. The neighbor girls wanted to visit with her, but her mother-in-law forbade it.
The mother-in-law ordered her “son’s” bride, “Don’t ever let the cooking fire go out, and don’t ever let the water in the water pots run dry, and don’t ever go to the houses of others because there you will receive false instruction.”
However, one day by chance it happened that the cooking fire went out, and the water pots were empty. Then the daughter-in-law ran to the neighbor’s house and said, “Oh Auntie, please give me at once some burning coals so I can start my cooking fire. Hurry before my mother-in-law calls me. If it weren’t for her I would always be visiting at neighbors’ homes.”
Then the neighbor women all taunted her. “You fool, you have no groom, you have no man in your house, you married a sword. Your mother-in-law and father-in-law have no son.”
Hearing this the girl became angry. “Oh ho, they have no son. They told me he had gone on a long journey to earn a lot of money, but you tell me they have no son.”
“Yes, they have no son, they are childless, and are just taking advantage of you to live easily” [because a daughter-in-law does all the household chores]. Hearing all this made her so angry that she decided to trick her mother-in-law. One day she got her chance. The mother-in-law fell asleep sitting up; her head hung over and she was nodding. The daughter-in-law saw that she was wearing a bunch of keys at her waist. Stealthily, she took the keys and began to open the doors of the inner rooms of the house. She opened the locks of the doors with her mother-in-law’s keys while her mother-in-law was sleeping.
In the first room she found grain in piles and boxes lying around. In the second room, there were various goods, and in the third, there was iron and wood and this and that, household things, lying around.
But in the seventh of seven inner rooms, there was a ten-pointed design on the floor, a ten-pointed design and upon it were whole grains of gold—whole grains of gold and a gold lamp. In this inner room a king’s son was sleeping. He had been given by Mother Ten and lived in this room where the goddess provided him with food and drink.
As soon as she saw this miracle the daughter-in-law said to herself, “Oh ho, I have been in all the rooms and what is this that I have found here?” Then she asked him, “Who are you?” And he answered, “I am the brahman’s son. I was given by Mother Ten. Because my mother always follows her rules and tells her stories, Mother Ten has given me to her.” Right away the girl and the prince began to play parcheesi [a common way to refer to marital intimacy in Rajasthani folklore]. After that she prepared food for him.
Now the daughter-in-law worked hard and pleased her mother-in-law and father-in-law. But secretly she had a duplicate made of the key to the innermost room. She put the original back when her mother-in-law was sleeping. Her mother-in-law was not suspicious because she was a trusting person and she never knew that the girl had done this.
Every day the daughter-in-law finished her work of making bread and bringing water as fast as she could, and then she went at once to the inner room. And at night when her mother-in-law and father-in-law were sleeping, she went there also. Living in this way two years passed, and by the grace of God she became pregnant. One day when she was about seven months pregnant the mother-in-law noticed her daughter-in-law’s big stomach. She said in surprise, “Oh, a lot has happened!” Now the brahman couple did not know about their son in the innermost room.
When the girl was eight months pregnant she asked her mother-in-law to get some special sweets for her and to inform her relatives of the coming happy event. But the mother-in-law said, “Daughter-in-law, aren’t you dying of shame?” The daughter-in-law only repeated, “You must send the good news to my home.” Then the mother-in-law answered, “How will I cut my nose [experience great public shame] and send the news to your home? My son has gone on a long journey to earn a lot of money and is not here and never has come here. You have certainly cut all our noses.” This is the kind of thing she was saying. But the daughter-in-law insisted: “No, your son is here, right here, and you must send the good news to my parents’ house.”
So the mother-in-law thought, “All right, the nose is cut anyway.” Then she sent a man immediately to tell the girl’s family a child was going to be born, and they should come and bring sweets.
The girl’s family was very happy when they received this message. They came to their daughter’s husband’s village with great pomp and celebration, with a band playing and a big display of money. They came in ox carts and horse carts and motor cars. They came making a great show; two hundred, four hundred, perhaps five hundred people came, and they had a great celebration. But the women of the village gossiped. “Aren’t the brahman and his wife dying of shame? Look, there is no groom, no son, and who knows where she got her stomach. They ought to be ashamed.” But the daughter-in-law said, “If anyone speaks like that then throw them out of here and don’t listen to them.”
Then the daughter-in-law said to her father-in-law and mother-in-law, “Clean everything in the house and bathe and have the band play and put on good clothes and I also will dress in finery and pearls.” When all these preparations were complete, she told them to be seated together [as a couple would for a religious ritual or for their child’s wedding]. Then she went and stood in front of the closed locked doors and prayed: “If Mother Ten is true, then all of these locks will open right now of their own accord and the prince will come out. If this does not happen then Mother Ten is false.”
Then her mother-in-law mediated and prayed, “Mother Ten, I have fasted on your fast days for twenty-four years and told your stories with firm attention and always followed your rules. Now, because of my truthful principles, give me a son.”
Then, “khat, khat, khat” the locks broke and the prince, a blooming youth with curling mustaches, twenty-five years old, emerged and sat down next to the brahman’s daughter, his wife. Then the mother-in-law fell at her daughter-in-law’s feet and the daughter-in-law fell at her mother-in-law’s feet. The mother-in-law said, “Daughter-in-law, in your fortune, in your destiny, it must have been written that you would be a happily married woman, and for this reason Mother Ten gave me a son.”
But the daughter-in-law said, “Dear Mother-in-law, you told the stories of Mother Ten, and if you had not done that, then where would it have been written for me to have a ‘lord of the house’ [husband]?”
Then the whole village gathered to see the wonder. They came to see what had happened. The boy given by Mother Ten was so handsome he was just like a king, his face shone like the moon’s. Then their house became a nine-storey palace and Mother Ten dwelled with them there. Where Mother Ten dwells there is always wealth in plenty, so they never wanted for anything.
Hey, Mother Ten, give well-being to the whole world and then give it to me.
THE OLD WOMAN AND THE YELLOW CALF
There was an old woman who always followed the rules of Mother Ten. She ate bread only after telling the stories of Mother Ten. Mother Ten was pleased with her and thought to herself, “This is our old woman and we will give her a calf.”
That night when she was sound asleep, the old woman dreamed that she heard a command: “Go to the yellow-dirt mine and make the sound ‘pīlar pīlar pīlar pīlar pīlar pīlar’ and a yellow female calf will come to you” (pīlā means “yellow”).
Immediately the old woman jumped up from her bed and went to the yellow-dirt mine and called “pīlar pīlar pīlar pīlar pīlar pīlar.” Right away a yellow female calf came to her, and the old lady took it back to her home. She took it to her home and tied it up outside her house.
Now this was no ordinary calf. When it made dung, its dung was pure gold. But the neighbor woman would come and take away the golden dung and the old woman didn’t know anything about it. In this way several days passed and the old woman was still very unhappy because, although she always performed the proper worship of Mother Ten, still she had nothing. She did not know that the calf’s dung was golden, but she did know that someone was taking away its dung every day. [Village women regularly collect cow dung as it has many household uses.] So she decided to bring the calf inside at night and she tied it to the leg of her bed. In the morning she discovered the calf’s golden dung and she was very happy.
But the neighbor woman became jealous. She was so jealous she could not bear it. So the neighbor woman went to the king. She told the king, “There is an old woman and she has such a calf, such a calf as ought to live with kings. That female calf would look beautiful in your palace.”
The king gave a command to summon the old woman to the palace. The king’s messenger came to her house and said, “Old Woman, the king is calling you.”
She replied, “Brother, when Rām [a name of God] calls then I must go but if the king is calling, why should I go? What has the king to do with me?”
But the messenger said, “Let’s go, lady. The king told me: ‘Inform the old woman that she must show me her calf. That very calf of hers would look fine in my palace.’ ”
Then the old woman agreed to go. She went to the king and said to him, “Lord, Mother Ten was satisfied with me. One day I went to sleep hungry and at midnight Mother Ten came to me and said, ‘Friend, why do you sleep hungry? Go to the yellow-dirt mine and make the sound “pīlar pīlar” and you will get a female calf.’ So, great King, for ten days I tied it outside and my neighbor came and stole the dung, but now for several days I have tied it inside. Because she could not stand her jealousy she came and told you. All right, if you demand it, then take it. Why do I need the female calf? King, demand it and take it, if you want it.”
The king said, “Bring the calf and tie it in the palace. It makes golden dung so it belongs in my palace.”
So the old woman brought the calf and tied it in the king’s palace. Then the calf began to make a great deal of dung, but it was not golden. The palace was soon filled with it. The calf made watery dung, all by the grace of Mother Ten. It shot out dung with great force, on top of the king’s royal bed and all over his trunks and boxes; everything was covered with it. And the calf also kicked; it kicked the mirrors and the cupboards and broke them.
The king summoned the neighbor woman and said, “You wretch, you told me this calf made golden dung, but it has filled my castle with its excrement and it has broken the royal beds and the mirrors and the cupboards. It has broken everything and I am in great distress. You must bring someone at once who can remove it from the palace.”
She answered, “Great King, I know nothing about it, that old woman knows.” Again the king’s messenger came to the old woman’s house. “Old woman, old woman, the king summons you.”
She replied, “What’s all this? The king is always calling me. I went only yesterday.” But she went to the palace.
The king said to her, “I can’t stand it. Take the calf away.” He said, “Old woman, you must know magic, you must be a magician, because when it was with you the calf made golden dung but as soon as it came to me it began to make foul excrement.”
She said, “King, I only follow the rules of Mother Ten and I tell her stories. The calf was given to me by her. I have picked no one’s pocket, I have stolen nothing. I have let nobody else’s livestock loose. The calf was given to me by Mother Ten, but you couldn’t bear to see me have it so you demanded it and took it for yourself.”
Then the king decided to keep the old woman in his court for the rest of her days, to give her everything she needed to live comfortably. He said, “Mother [addressing her for the first time with appropriate respect], you sit here near me in my castle and praise God and tell my court about noble things, tell about Mother Ten, and eat your bread right here.”
Hey, caretaker, Mother Ten, as the king looked after her, so you look after everyone.
Notes
1. I would like to acknowledge the thoughtful cooperation of Shobhag Kanvar and Vajendra Kumar Sharma, without whom I would not have been able to bring these tales to a Western audience.