The Boy Whom Seven Mothers Suckled

A king had seven queens, and it grieved him deeply that none of them had borne a child. One day a holy beggar told him of a tree deep in a forest with seven mangoes hanging from a single branch. If the king picked those mangoes with his own hands and gave one to each queen, all seven would become mothers. The king went to the forest, found the branch, picked the seven mangoes, and gave each queen one to eat. Soon he heard the joyful news that every one of his queens was expecting a baby.

Not long afterwards, while out hunting, the king met a young woman so beautiful that he lost his heart to her on the spot. He took her home and married her. He had no idea that she was really a Rakshasi, a demon woman who feeds on living creatures. He grew so foolishly fond of her that he did anything she asked.

“You say you love me best of all,” she said one day. “Prove it. Have your seven other queens blinded and put to death.” The king was miserable, especially because the queens were all with child, but he chose to obey her demand. The seven queens were blinded and handed to the chief minister to be killed. The minister, though, was a kind man. Instead of killing them he hid them in a cave on a hillside.

Blind and starving in the cave, the queens grew desperate. One by one, as the six elder queens gave birth, their hunger drove them to a terrible deed, and their babies did not survive. Each time, the youngest queen was handed a share of the food, and each time she quietly put it aside without eating it. When her own son was born, she made up her mind to keep him alive and nurse him. The others asked for their portions, and she handed them the shares she had set aside. They could tell at once that this food was old and dry, and she told them plainly that she would not harm her child. To her relief, the other six were glad. They promised to help her care for the baby, and so the boy was nursed by seven mothers. Over the years he grew into the toughest, strongest lad who ever lived.

Meanwhile the Rakshasi queen was causing endless harm in the palace and the capital. The food at the royal table could never satisfy her enormous appetite, so night after night she secretly devoured the king’s family, his servants, his horses, his elephants and his cattle, until nobody was left in the palace but the king and herself. Then she took to slipping into the city in the evenings and carrying off a person here and there. The king had no one to serve him and no one to cook for him, because nobody dared to take the job.

At last the boy of the seven mothers, now a sturdy young man, offered to work for the king. He served him well, and he made sure the queen never got the chance to catch him, because he always went home long before dark, and she only seized her victims at night. So she thought of another way to be rid of him. The boy liked to boast that no task was too hard for him, so the queen told him she was ill and could only be cured by a special melon. It was twelve cubits long, its stone was thirteen cubits long, and it could only be had from her mother, who lived across the ocean. She handed him a letter for her mother, and in it she asked her mother to eat the boy the moment he delivered it. The boy suspected a trick, so he tore the letter to pieces and set off anyway.

He travelled through many countries until he stood on the shore of the ocean, with the land of the Rakshasis on the far side. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, “Granny! Granny! Come and help your daughter, she is terribly ill!” An old Rakshasi heard him across the water. She came over, listened to his message, took him on her back and carried him to her own country. There she gave him the giant melon straight away and told him to start home. The boy said he was worn out and asked to rest for a day, and she agreed.

In her room he noticed a stout club and a rope hanging on the wall, and asked what they were for. “Child, that is how I cross the ocean,” she said. “Anyone who holds the club and the rope and says these words will be carried over the water:
O stout club! O strong rope!
Take me at once to the other side.”
He also noticed a bird in a cage hanging in a corner and asked about it. “That is a secret no mortal may know,” said the old Rakshasi, “but how can I keep it from my own grandchild? That bird holds your mother’s life. If the bird dies, your mother dies with it.”

The next morning the old Rakshasi and all the others went off to distant lands to hunt for food. The boy took down the cage, the club and the rope, held the bird tight, and spoke the magic words. In the blink of an eye he was standing on his own side of the ocean. He walked home and handed the astonished queen her twelve-cubit melon with its thirteen-cubit stone. The caged bird he kept well hidden.

After a while the townspeople came to the king with a complaint. Every evening, they said, a monstrous bird seemed to come out of the palace, seize people in the streets and swallow them, and the city was nearly empty. The king could not imagine what this creature might be. His young servant said he knew the monster and would kill it, as long as the queen stood beside the king while he did so. The king ordered it, and the queen took her place. The boy brought out the bird from its cage, and at the sight of it she fainted.

“Sire,” the boy said, “you will soon see who has been eating your people. As I pull each limb from this bird, the same limb will drop from the creature that devours them.” He pulled off one of the bird’s legs, and in front of all the citizens one of the queen’s legs fell away. Then he squeezed the bird’s throat, and the queen died.

The boy told the king everything: who he was, and what had happened to his mother and the six other queens. The seven queens were brought to the palace, and by a miracle their sight came back. The king accepted the boy whom seven mothers had nursed as his true heir, and they all lived together in happiness.

Where this tale comes from

“The Boy Whom Seven Mothers Suckled” comes from Lal Behari Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal. A Rakshasi is a female Rakshasa; in his notes Day describes these beings as huge demon giants whose name means “raw-eaters.” Lives hidden inside living creatures turn up more than once in his book: in a fish, in this caged bird, and in pairs of bees.

Day’s text is blunt about how the starving elder queens survived in the cave and how the Rakshasi queen died. This page tells those parts more gently but leaves the events of the story unchanged. Because of them, it suits older readers best.

Read the original: Lal Behari Day, Folk-Tales of Bengal (Project Gutenberg #38488)

Reading guidance: Older teen and adult readers; includes blinding pregnant women, infant killing and cannibalism, starvation, animal mutilation and execution. The softened wording still describes severe events. Removed from child age categories.

A closer reading

The opening wrong is not only the Rakshasi’s demand. The king authorizes the blinding and killing of seven people entrusted to his care. Calling him unable to refuse would hide that choice. The minister’s refusal to carry out the executions shows that another response was possible, although hiding the queens does not provide adequate protection from hunger.

The boy survives because his mother resists the others and then all seven share his care. Later he uses a false family identity to obtain the secrets of transport and the bird. The old Rakshasi’s trust in ‘my own grandchild’ makes kinship the mechanism of the trick, while the title’s seven mothers represent kinship created through care.

The public demonstration links the queen to the hidden life, but it uses deliberate cruelty to the bird. The miraculous restoration of the queens cannot undo the loss of the six babies, and the ending does not explain any reckoning with the king’s responsibility.

Try this with the story

Separate the king’s order, the minister’s refusal, the youngest queen’s resistance and the seven mothers’ cooperation into four decisions. For each, identify who gains protection and who remains at risk. Discuss why the final reunion does not erase earlier losses.

Think about it

• What choices does the king make, and what alternative does the minister demonstrate?
• How does shared care give the boy his identity?
• Why does calling the old Rakshasi ‘Granny’ make the trick work?
• Which losses are not repaired by the final miracle?

More stories like this

• Life’s Secret — another Bengali tale where a life is hidden inside a living creature
• The Boy with the Moon on His Forehead — a second Day tale about wronged queens and a hero son
• The Field of Bones — a Day tale in which three Rakshasis have eaten an entire city