Retaliation

In a certain village lived a poor Sudra. He had vowed to the village goddess that if a certain undertaking succeeded he would offer her a couple of goats. He succeeded, and thought she alone had granted his wish. Joy and faith rose together. As promised, he brought two fat goats and sacrificed them to her.

Those goats, and the Sudra who soon afterward died of a sudden fever, were reborn to meet the results of goodness or sin. Because they had been offered to the goddess, the goats were reborn as king and minister of a large country. The Sudra, whose faith had been as strong as his vow, was reborn in a priestly caste. None of them knew their former lives—not until death approached the priest, as this tale shows.

The king and his minister ruled peacefully. In an unfrequented wilderness stood a famous temple of a powerful goddess, and there the priest regularly conducted her worship. Years passed: the rulers happy in their kingdom, the priest calm and holy in the wood, eating what grew wild. His life was as pure as life can be. Yet fate would not forgive his acts in his former birth.

The king and minister had vowed that if they returned successfully from conquering an enemy they would offer human sacrifice to the wilderness goddess. They returned, left their kingdom like ordinary men, and came to the wood. All along the way they searched for a victim; fortunately for others, no one was found. Still they would not leave the vow unfinished, and resolved to seize the temple priest and offer him.

What could the poor priest do against such strong men? When they told him what they meant to do as he entered to worship, he said, “Sirs, you have come resolved to offer me up. I cannot escape your hold. But if you allow me to perform my puja this morning also, I shall gladly die after I have done my duty.”

They watched at the entrance and let him in. He went into the garbhagriha—the holy of holies—and worshipped. Then he gave the image a severe blow on its back and cried, “Most merciless goddess! What have you done for all my faith? In this lonely wilderness, knowing no duty but your worship, I have been your true servant for many years. And for all that I must fall prey to the king and minister who sharpen their knives outside to cut off my head. Is this the result of all my puja?”

The goddess laughed from the empty air: “My true priest, your acts in your former life must trouble you in this. Charitable acts of this life cannot even protect you in the next birth. In your former birth you murdered two goats. They were born as king and minister and have dragged you here to murder you. But the death you are about to suffer will relieve you of only one of those two murders. For the other you and they would be reborn again, and again they would kill you. Only in your third life from this would you enjoy the fruits of all this devotion. Since now you know the story of your former life, you will forgive me, I think.”

As knowledge of his former life dawned by her grace, the priest seemed ready to die to pay for his sin. But the thought that in the next life he must suffer the same punishment vexed him. Falling at her feet, he begged her to try her best to let him off that next misery. Her heart moved at the severity of fate that would make her devotee pass through one more miserable life before enjoying his devotion’s fruit. So she devised a plan to clear both crimes at once.

“Priest,” she said, “intelligence can conquer even fate—so the proverb runs. When Kali gave Vikramaditya five hundred years in his town, Bhatti his minister made the king live six months in the capital and six in the jungle, and so stretched his master’s life to a thousand years. By intelligence we sometimes conquer fate too. Hear my advice. Ask the king who has come to murder you to hold one end of the knife, and request his minister to hold the other. Ask both to aim the blow at your neck; that will accomplish everything in this life. They will have no revenge left for your next birth.”

Her voice stopped. The priest came back cheerful to king and minister and asked them each to hold one end of the knife and so murder him. They agreed and thus performed their vow. The poor priest, without another miserable life, was born a king in his next birth and lived in prosperity.

Sastri reports hearing the tale from his stepmother and presents its lesson as repayment across lives. This is the collector’s account of a particular telling, not a single rule shared by all Hindu households.

About this story

“Retaliation” comes from Tales of the Sun (1890) by Mrs. Howard Kingscote and Pandit Natesa Sastri. Its Tamil title, Palikkuppali, belongs to the proverb Palikkuppali vangukiradu, which Sastri translates as “tit for tat.”

Sastri says he first heard it as a boy from his stepmother and later found the same story told in the Trichinopoly district. The plot rests on rebirth: the goats offered to the goddess are born again as a king and minister, and the debt must be paid. A note in the book adds that the story “does not contain a purely Hindu moral.” The priest’s death is told without detail.

Read the original: Kingscote and Natesa Sastri, Tales of the Sun, 1890 (Project Gutenberg #37002)

Reading guidance: Older teen and adult readers; includes animal sacrifice, a threatened and completed human sacrifice, and a religious explanation of suffering that needs critical discussion.

A closer reading

The opening sacrifice is later retold from the victims’ side: the two goats return as people with power over the man who killed them. The reversal exposes an ethical problem in doing harm as an act of devotion. Sincerity does not make the original victims’ suffering disappear.

The goddess’s solution changes the accounting of the debt without stopping the killing. The priest escapes an additional life of punishment, not the violence happening now. That limitation is central to the unsettling title: retaliation repeats the form of the original harm even when it claims to settle it.

The story assigns changes of caste and rank within its supernatural scheme, but social position is not evidence of a person’s moral worth. Nor should its explanation of suffering be applied to real victims as proof that they deserved harm in a previous life. The priest’s constrained request is made under a threat he cannot escape, not in circumstances of free choice.

The Vikramaditya example compares two attempts to alter a fixed condition through interpretation: counting time differently and combining two debts. These are narrative puzzles within the tale’s system of fate. Readers can examine their logic while rejecting the idea that another person’s body is an acceptable means of keeping a vow.

Try this with the story

Make a diagram with two goats, their later roles and the priest’s two supposed debts. Explain what the goddess’s plan changes and what it leaves unchanged. Then propose a different ending that breaks the retaliation cycle, clearly labelling it as your own response to the source.

Talk about it

• How does the story shift attention from the sacrificer’s faith to the goats’ experience?
• Does the goddess stop the killing or change its consequences within the tale?
• Why should the rebirth explanation not be used to blame real victims?
• What would an ending that stops retaliation need to change?

Related stories

• The Poisoned Food — Kali punishes a village that wronged an innocent man in this Tamil tale
• The Three Calamities — a devoted minister hears the goddess weeping over the fate awaiting his king
• Good Will Grow Out of Good — a Tamil saying that good sown brings good and evil brings evil