How Raja Rasalu Swung the Seventy Fair Maidens, Daughters of the King

As Raja Rasalu, kind-hearted and strong, rode on towards King Sarkap’s city to play chaupur, he came to a forest on fire. A voice called out of the flames, “Traveller, for heaven’s sake, save me from the fire!”

The prince turned towards the blaze and saw that the voice belonged to a tiny cricket. Small as it was, Rasalu snatched it from the fire and set it free. The little creature was so grateful that it pulled out one of its feelers and gave it to him. “Keep this,” it said. “If you are ever in trouble, put it into a fire, and I will come to help you at once.”

The prince smiled. “What help could you give me?” he said. But he kept the feeler all the same and went on his way.

When he reached King Sarkap’s city, seventy maidens, the king’s daughters, came out to meet him, cheerful and carefree, full of smiles and laughter. But the youngest of them, seeing the brave young prince riding along on Bhaunr Iraqi to his doom, felt sorry for him and called out:

“Fair prince on the horse so grey,
Turn back, turn back, I pray!
Or lower your lance for the fight,
For your head will be lost tonight.
If you love your life, then stay
Away, away, away!”

But he smiled at her and answered lightly:

“Fair maiden, I come from afar
To win both in love and in war!
King Sarkap will wish I had stayed,
For I’ll cut him in four with my blade;
Then off as a bridegroom I’ll ride,
With you, little maid, as my bride!”

When Rasalu answered so bravely, the maiden looked into his face and saw how handsome, brave and strong he was, and she fell in love with him at once. She would gladly have followed him to the ends of the earth.

But her sixty-nine sisters were jealous and laughed at her scornfully. “Not so fast, brave warrior!” they said. “If you want to marry our sister, you must first do as we say, because you will be our little brother.”

“Fair sisters,” said Rasalu cheerfully, “give me my task, and I will do it.”

So the sixty-nine sisters mixed a great sackful of millet seed with an equal sackful of sand, gave it to Rasalu and told him to separate the seed from the sand.

Then Rasalu remembered the cricket. He took the feeler out of his pocket and pushed it into the fire. At once there was a whirring in the air, and a huge swarm of crickets landed beside him, among them the cricket whose life he had saved.

“Separate the millet seed from the sand,” said Rasalu.

“Is that all?” said the cricket. “If I had known what a small job it was, I wouldn’t have brought so many of my relations.” The swarm of crickets set to work, and in one night they had separated every seed from the sand.

When the sixty-nine sisters saw that Rasalu had finished his task, they gave him another. He was to push each of them in her swing, one after another, until they were tired.

Rasalu laughed. “There are seventy of you, counting my little bride over there,” he said, “and I am not going to spend my whole life pushing girls on swings. By the time I have given each of you a turn, the first will want another! No, if you want to swing, all seventy of you get into one swing, and then we’ll see what I can do.”

So the seventy maidens, cheerful and carefree, full of smiles and laughter, climbed into a single swing. Raja Rasalu, standing in his shining armour, tied the ropes to his mighty bow and pulled it back as far as it would go. Then he let go, and the swing shot up into the air like an arrow with its load of seventy laughing maidens.

But as the swing came back down, Rasalu drew his sharp sword and cut the ropes. All seventy maidens tumbled to the ground in a heap. Some were bruised and some were badly hurt, but the maiden who loved Rasalu was not hurt at all, because she fell out last, on top of the others.

Then Rasalu strode fifteen paces on until he came to seventy drums, which everyone who came to play chaupur with the king had to beat in turn. He beat them so hard that he broke them all. Next he came to seventy gongs hanging in a row, and he struck them so hard that they cracked to pieces.

When the youngest princess saw this, she ran to her father, for she was the only one who could still run, and cried out in fright, “Father, a mighty prince is riding this way and wrecking everything! He swung all seventy of us and threw us to the ground. He has smashed your drums and gongs in his pride. He will surely kill you and take me as his bride!”

But King Sarkap replied scornfully, “Silly girl, you are making a fuss about nothing. He will be shaking in his armour for fear of me. As soon as I have eaten my bread, I will go out and cut off his head!”

For all his boasting, King Sarkap was really very frightened, because he had heard of Rasalu’s fame. He learned that Rasalu was staying at an old woman’s house in the city until it was time for the game. So Sarkap sent servants to him with trays of sweets and fruit, as if to an honoured guest. But the food was poisoned.

When the servants brought the trays, Raja Rasalu stood up proudly. “Go and tell your master that I want no friendship with him,” he said. “I am his sworn enemy, and I will not eat his food.” And he threw the sweets to King Sarkap’s dog, which had followed the servants, and the dog fell dead.

Rasalu was very angry. “Go back to Sarkap,” he said bitterly, “and tell him that Rasalu sees no bravery in killing even an enemy by a trick.”

About this telling

Flora Annie Steel included this episode in her Tales of the Punjab. R. C. Temple’s note suggests that its setting is meant to be Kot Bithaur on the Indus near Atak, and he explains that the measure of millet and sand was a man in the original, a little over 80 lbs, given here as a great sackful.

In Steel’s version the fallen maidens are “bruised and broken”; this telling says only that some were hurt. The rhymes are new English versions of Steel’s verses, and the poisoned dog is mentioned in a single line.

Read the original: Flora Annie Steel, Tales of the Punjab (Project Gutenberg #6145, How Raja Rasâlu Swung the Seventy Fair Maidens)

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12 with adult preview; Rasalu deliberately injures the sisters by cutting a swing’s ropes, and a dog dies from poisoned food. Discuss the hero’s conduct critically.

A closer reading

Rasalu dismisses the cricket’s possible usefulness, yet the small creature commands exactly the kind of many-handed help the millet task requires. Size is a poor measure of value. The cricket’s amused response also reverses the prince’s earlier confidence: what seems impossible to him is a small job for the swarm.

The swing episode complicates the opening description of a kind hero. Rasalu does not merely outwit the sisters; he deliberately cuts ropes and seriously hurts them. His final condemnation of treachery in an enemy invites readers to compare his own conduct rather than assume that a famous hero acts consistently.

The dog dies after Rasalu rejects the food because he refuses friendship with Sarkap. The text does not say he has detected poison beforehand, so its death reveals the attempted poisoning rather than proving his perfect foresight. The youngest daughter warns him and does not join the sixty-nine sisters’ task-setting.

Try this with the story

Make two columns headed ‘protects someone’ and ‘harms someone’ and place the cricket, sisters and dog episodes in them. Where an event is ambiguous, explain why. Compare the evidence for Rasalu’s kindness with his final statement about treachery.

Questions to ask

• Why is the cricket better equipped for the millet task than Rasalu?
• Which sisters set the tasks, and what does the youngest do instead?
• How does the swing episode complicate the description of Rasalu as kind?
• Does Rasalu know the food is poisoned before he rejects it?

You may also like

• How Raja Rasalu Journeyed to the City of King Sarkap — the part of the story just before this
• How Raja Rasalu Played Chaupur with King Sarkap — the great game that follows
• Raja Rasalu — an overview of the Raja Rasalu legend