Chandralekha and the Eight Robbers | Indian Wit Tale (12+)

In the ancient Pandya city of Kaivalyam lived Muttumohana, a dancing-woman known less for wealth than for learning and piety. She raised her daughter Chandralekha beside the sons of kings, ministers, and Brahmins. The girl mastered letters early, then the Vedas, the shastras, and the sixty-four arts, until her guru himself called her a pandita—a learned woman.

When her schooling ended, Muttumohana told her to pay a generous guru-dakshina. Chandralekha filled five baskets with gold mohars and carried betel, flowers, and coconuts to her master’s house. She prostrated herself and offered the gifts with thanks.

The Brahmin refused the money. He had enough from princes and ministers’ sons, he said. What he wanted was that she marry him.

Chandralekhas face went cold. A preceptor stands as a father; she stood as a daughter. She answered that his words must be a test of character, begged him to take the fee, and asked leave to go home. His silence and his look told her he meant the demand. She called her servants, took the baskets back, and left.

Her mother heard the story and blessed her firm heart. The gold was locked away. But the rejected tutor spread a rumor that a demon possessed Chandralekha. Suitors stayed away. After a year, a visiting sage advised a public remedy: on the next new-moon midnight she should perform puja alone in the cremation ground, so the city’s fear might lift. Muttumohana knew no demon held her daughter, yet she proclaimed the rite so rumor could die in public view.

The night of the eight robbers

Near Kaivalyam lay the forest of Khandavam, home to eight robbers who plundered the country. That same new-moon night they came to the burning-ground to bury eight boxes of stolen treasure before riding out again.

Chandralekha heard footsteps. She covered her lamp with her empty basket and hid in a hollow. The robbers’ chief whirled a kannakkol—their wall-boring rod, said to obey its masters throw—and cast it eastward. It found her hiding place and began to pierce her back. Without a sound she pulled it free, pinned it under her feet, and waited.

When the thieves left, she took the rod, dug up the eight boxes, and hurried home. Mother and daughter emptied the treasure and refilled the boxes with stones, scrap iron, and rubbish, then set them under Chandralekha’s cot.

At dawn the robbers found their cache gone. Sure the rod had wounded someone, one of them walked Kaivalyams streets as an ointment-seller. A maid, seeing her mistress’s back wound, brought him in. Chandralekha knew the thief at once; he knew the thief of the boxes. They parted with a little ointment bought and sold—and both sides understood the war had begun.

That night the eight broke into her room. Finding her “asleep” and their boxes under the cot, they carried the boxes off and planned to seize her later. In their cave they opened stone and iron. Rage replaced wonder.

Cot, mangoes, and the knife

Chandralekha forged a small sharp knife from the stolen rod and kept it under her pillow with her betel purse. The next night the robbers returned, lifted the cot with her still on it—two men at each leg—and marched toward the jungle through an avenue of mango trees heavy with fruit.

She plucked ripe bunches onto the cot until the weight felt right, then swung silently into a branch. The thieves walked on. At daybreak they set the cot down and found only mangoes. “Devil or woman?” they askedand searched the wood.

Chandralekha hid in a reed-ringed hollow. One robber climbed the tree above her. With a calm smile she called him husband, invited him down, and shared betel. When he put out his tongue to match hers—an old folk sign of affection—she seized it, cut tongue and nose, and killed him before he could cry out. At nightfall she walked home and told her mother everything. By morning she had plated her bedroom walls with iron and filled a bag with powdered chillies beside the knife.

Seven robbers bored a hole in the east wall. As each thrust his head through, she cut off his nose and packed chilli powder into the wound. One after another they fled, crying na, na, unable to shape words. They rested days in the forest curing their shame.

The false nautch

Chandralekha knew they would return. She went to the palace and told her former classmate, the prince, the whole chain of dangers. He posted a spy in her house and promised aid.

The robbers, fearing her knife, sent a servant instead: a wedding nautch in the forest, a crore of mohars for every minute of dance. She agreed—and went straight to the prince. She asked for seven strong men disguised as drummer, cymbal-player, nagasvara piper, and the rest of a nautch party, and for troops to lie in ambush. The prince himself took the drummer’s place; six commanders dressed as musicians; a thousand soldiers followed at a distance.

At the pavilion the noseless hosts softened enough to want one measure of dance before murder. Chandralekha’s art held them spellbound—until the cymbals crashed ta tai tom, the agreed signal. Disguised followers seized the seven; the hidden army closed in; the robbers and their men were taken. For their long ravages around Kaivalyam they were executed.

The prince, won by her courage and wit, married Chandralekha despite her birth. When he learned what their shared tutor had demanded, he banished the Brahmin—mercy weighed against years of teaching, but no return to favor. Virtue, the old proverb says, is not priced by the bazaar where a girl is born.