How Raja Rasalu Killed the Giants | Punjabi Folk Epic (9–12+)

Intro

This is chapter seven of the Punjabi epic of Raja Rasalu — the wandering prince of Sialkot. It is a dragon-slayer episode (ATU 300): a city pays human tribute to monsters, an outsider stops for a stranger’s grief, and the tribute ends.

Honest framing: Punjabi bardic tradition, recorded by Steel (Tales of the Punjab, 1894) with Temple’s notes — not a preschool animal fable.

Story

Late in the day Rasalu rides into Nila. The streets are strangely empty. At a doorway an old widow kneads bread, weeping and laughing at once. He reins in his great horse Bhâur Irâqi and asks, courteously, what is wrong.

She has lost six sons to the giants who demand daily tribute from the city. Today it is her last son’s turn. Other travellers have ridden past. Rasalu does not.

“Keep your son,” he says. “I fear neither death nor life.” He sits on her low cot as if he were her own boy home from the fields, breaks the unleavened bread, and eats.

By sharing her food he places himself under the bond of guest and host. When the city officer comes for the day’s victim, Rasalu rises in his armour and goes in the boy’s place — leading the tribute buffalo and basket of cakes, his horse following the road the buffalo already know

On the steep path he meets a water-carrier giant who reaches for the bridle. Rasalu’s sword takes the giant’s hand at the wrist. The giant flees howling. His sister the giantess laughs at his fear, comes to confront the rider, and falls to the same bright blade.

Rasalu rides alone into the giants hall. They are at table among stolen meat and tribute. They laugh at the small bright figure in the doorway — then rise. Circling on horseback, Rasalu strikes; the slow giants fall. He frees the buffalo, takes nothing for himself, and rides back to Nila with the news that the morning tribute will never come again. The city opens its gates and lights every lamp.