The Brahmin Girl Who Married a Tiger

In a certain village there lived an old Brahmin who had three sons and a daughter. The youngest child, their daughter, often told her parents that she wanted to marry a handsome boy she had seen. Her parents had to keep thinking up excuses to steer her away from all these boys. Years went by, and when she was nearly grown up, her parents began to look hard for a husband for her, because, in the social world depicted by the source, her parents feared disgrace if she remained unmarried.

Now near the village there lived a fierce tiger who had learned a great deal of magic and could change himself into different shapes. He loved the food that Brahmins eat, and every so often he would turn himself into a hungry old Brahmin and go to temples and rest houses where free meals were served to Brahmins. He also wanted, if he could get one, a Brahmin wife to take back to the woods to cook his meals for him in her own style. One day, while he was eating in his Brahmin shape at one of these rest houses, he heard people talking about the girl who fell in love with every handsome boy she saw.

“What luck!” he said to himself. “I’ll turn myself into the most handsome young Brahmin there ever was, and win her heart.”

The next morning he took the form of a great scholar of the Ramayana. He sat down near the bathing steps of the village’s holy river, smeared his body with sacred ash, opened the Ramayana, and began to read aloud.

“What a beautiful voice the new scholar has,” said some of the village women. “Let’s go and listen.” And they sat down in front of him to hear him explain the great poem. Soon the girl came down to the river to bathe. The moment she saw the young scholar, she fell in love with him, and she pestered her mother to speak to her father before she lost him. Her mother was delighted too. What a husband luck had brought them! She ran home to fetch her husband, and when he came and saw the scholar, he raised his hands in thanks to the great god Shiva. The scholar was invited home to eat with them, and since he had come on purpose to marry the girl, of course he agreed.

There was a grand dinner in the scholar’s honour. The old Brahmin asked him about his family, and the cunning tiger said he had been born in a village beyond the nearby forest. The old man did not stop to ask anything more. The young man was so handsome that he married his daughter to him the very next day. A month of feasting followed. All that time the bridegroom pleased his new family in every way, and they thought he was an ordinary young man. He ate up every Brahmin dish that was set in front of him.

But when the month was over, the tiger began to long for his usual food and his home in the woods. A change of diet for a day or two was fine, but going without meat for more than a month was hard. So he said to his father-in-law, “I must go back to my old parents soon, because they will be missing me. But why go to the trouble and expense of my coming all the way back here to fetch my wife? If you will let me take her with me now, I will bring her to her new home myself and hand her over to my mother, and make sure she is well looked after.”

The old Brahmin agreed. “My dear son-in-law,” he said, “you are her husband, and she belongs with you. Sending her off feels like sending her into the wilderness with her eyes covered. But we trust you completely, and we trust you to be kind to her.”

The girl’s mother cried at the thought of her going away, but the journey was fixed for the next day. The mother spent the whole day making cakes and sweets for her daughter, and when it was time to leave, she tucked a few neem leaves into her bundles and her hair, to keep away evil spirits. The family asked the husband to let the girl rest wherever she found shade and eat wherever she found water, and he agreed. And so they set off.

For an hour or so the young couple walked along, chatting happily. Then the girl saw a lovely pond with birds singing all around it. She asked her husband to come down to the water with her and share some of the cakes and sweets.

But he said, “Be quiet, or I shall show you my true shape.”

That frightened her, so she walked on in silence. When they came to another pond, she asked him again, and he answered in the same tone. Now she was very hungry. She did not like the way he spoke, which had changed completely since they entered the woods, and she said, “Show me your true shape, then.”

The moment the words were out, her husband changed. Four legs, a striped coat, a long tail and a tiger’s face came over him, and where a man had stood there was a tiger! Her fear only grew when the tiger spoke to her in a human voice.

“Know from now on that I, your husband, am a tiger, this very tiger who is talking to you. If you care about your life, you will obey every order I give you, for I can speak to you and understand everything you say. In a little while we will reach my home, and you will be its mistress. In front of the house you will see half a dozen big tubs. Every day you must fill each one with food, cooked your way. I will bring you everything you need.” And he led her slowly to his house.

The girl was miserable, but if she refused, he would kill her. So she cried all the way to the tiger’s house. He left her there and came back with some pumpkins and some meat, and she quickly cooked him a curry. Then he went out again and came back in the evening with vegetables and more meat. “Every morning I will go out to hunt and find food,” he said, “and I will bring something home. Whatever I leave in the house, you must cook for me.”

So the next morning, as soon as the tiger had gone, she cooked everything in the house and filled all the tubs. When the tiger came back, he growled, “I smell a man! I smell a woman in my wood!” She was so frightened that she shut herself inside the house. When he had eaten all he wanted, he told her to open the door, and they talked for a while. Then he rested and went out hunting again. Many days passed like this, and in time the tiger’s wife had a son, who turned out to be a tiger too.

One day, after the tiger had gone into the woods, the girl sat crying alone. A crow came to peck at some rice scattered near her, and when it saw her crying, it began to cry too.

“Can you help me?” asked the girl.

“Yes,” said the crow.

So she took a palm leaf and scratched on it with an iron nail the story of all her troubles in the wood, and begged her brothers to come and rescue her. She tied the leaf around the crow’s neck, and the crow, as if it understood, flew to her village and landed in front of one of her brothers. He untied the leaf, read it, and told the others. All three set out for the woods at once. They asked their mother for food for the journey, but she did not have enough rice for three, so she made a big ball of clay and pressed what rice she had all over the outside, to make it look like a ball of rice.

They had not gone far when they saw a donkey. The youngest brother, who loved a joke, wanted to take it along. The two older brothers said no at first, but in the end they let him have his way. Further on they saw an ant, and the middle brother took that. Near the ant lay a huge fallen palm tree, and the eldest brother picked it up to fight off the tiger.

By now the sun was high, and the brothers were very hungry. They sat down by a pond and opened their bundle, and found to their dismay that their ball of rice was nothing but clay. They were so hungry that they drank all the water in the pond and went on. Leaving the pond, they found a big iron tub that belonged to the village washerman, and they took that too, along with the donkey, the ant and the palm tree. Following the directions their sister had sent with the crow, they walked on and on until they reached the tiger’s house.

Their sister was overjoyed to see them and ran out to meet them. “My dearest brothers, I’m so glad you’ve come to rescue me! But the tiger will soon be home. Hide up in the loft until he goes out again.” And she helped them climb up.

Soon the tiger came home. He could smell people, and he asked his wife whether anyone had come to the house. “No,” she said. But up in the loft, the brothers, sitting with all the things they had found on the way, were so frightened at the sight of the tiger that the youngest began to shake, and they all tumbled down onto the floor.

“What’s all this?” cried the tiger, startled.

“Nothing,” said his wife. “Only your brothers-in-law. They arrived a little while ago, and they want to meet you when you have finished your dinner.”

“How can my brothers-in-law be such cowards?” thought the tiger. He asked them to say something to him, and the youngest brother put the ant into the donkey’s ear. The ant bit it, and the donkey let out a horrible bray.

“Why do your brothers have such rough voices?” the tiger asked his wife.

Next he asked to see their legs. The brothers were growing braver, seeing how easily the tiger was fooled, and the eldest stuck out the palm tree.

“Upon my word, I’ve never seen a leg like that!” said the tiger, and he asked to see their stomachs. The middle brother showed him the iron tub. The tiger shuddered. “Such a voice, such a leg, and such a stomach! I’ve never heard of anyone like this!” And he ran away.

It was already dark, and the brothers wanted to make the most of the tiger’s fright. They ate what little food their sister had and told her to come with them at once. Luckily, her tiger child was fast asleep. She bolted the front door from the inside, gathered up as much of the tiger’s treasure as she could carry, slipped out at the back of the house, and ran off home with her brothers.

The tiger came back at about midnight and found the door shut. He went round to the back and found his wife gone and his house robbed. Now he saw how he had been tricked. He made up his mind to have his revenge and bring his wife back into the wood to punish her. But how? He took the shape of a young bridegroom once more, making himself a few years older to match the time that had passed, and the next morning he went to his father-in-law’s house.

The girl and her brothers saw him coming from far off. They knew who he really was, and they planned how to get rid of him. The old parents welcomed him warmly, and the brothers rushed about fetching food for a grand meal, and the tiger was very pleased with the welcome.

Behind the house there was an old, broken-down well. The eldest brother laid thin sticks across its mouth and spread a fine mat over them. In this household a guest could be offered an oil bath before dinner, so the three brothers invited the tiger to sit on the fine mat for his bath. As soon as he sat down, the thin sticks broke under his weight, and down went the cunning tiger with a great crash! At once the brothers filled the well with stones and rubble, and the tiger never did any harm again.

But in memory of the time she had been married to a tiger, the girl built a small pillar over the well and planted a holy basil plant, called tulasi, on top of it. Every morning and evening for the rest of her life, she cleaned the pillar and watered the tulasi plant.

The 1890 collection presents this story as an explanation of a Tamil saying about a threatening change in behavior: “Be quiet, or I shall show you my true shape.”

Where this story comes from

This tale comes from Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India (1890), by Pandit S. M. Natesa Sastri and Mrs. Howard Kingscote. Sastri gives the Tamil proverb in the original language, “Summa irukkiraya, suruvattai kattattuma,” and says the story is told to explain it.

The brothers’ trick, using a braying donkey, a fallen tree and a washerman’s tub to pretend to be giants, is a favourite in Indian folk tales. In the original book the mother places margosa (neem) leaves with her daughter as protection against evil spirits. The narrative itself shows that these do not prevent the deception. This adaptation also omits the source’s killing of the tiger-child: here the child is left asleep, and its later fate is not narrated.

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

Reading guidance: For mature readers. The story includes coerced marriage and domestic service, threats to kill the wife, a child left behind and the tiger trapped and buried in a well. The source note mentions an omitted child killing.

A closer reading

The tiger’s disguise combines attractive appearance, learned speech, ritual signs and a plausible family story. The parents share their daughter’s enthusiasm and arrange the wedding after little inquiry. Blaming only the girl for choosing by looks ignores the adults’ decisions and the tiger’s deliberate deception.

Once isolated, she is threatened into cooking and obedience. Her written account is the turning point: the crow carries her own explanation to people who can help. The brothers then defeat a shapeshifter by manufacturing appearances of their own, using the donkey, tree and tub to suggest opponents more powerful than they are.

The tulasi memorial makes the ending less simple than an escape followed by complete forgetting. It may be read as ritual remembrance, an unresolved bond or the source’s expectation of continuing marital duty; the telling does not explain her motive fully. None of those possibilities makes enduring abuse a duty or turns the earlier coercion into her fault.

Try this with the story

List the signs that persuade the family to trust the scholar and the facts they never check. Then trace the girl’s message from writing to the brothers’ arrival. Compare her reliable report with the false appearances used by both tiger and rescuers.

Think about it

• What warning signs did the girl notice before her husband showed his true shape?
• How did the brothers use the donkey, the palm tree and the tub to frighten the tiger?
• Why do you think the girl planted a tulasi plant over the well?

Related stories

• The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal (Alternate Retelling) — another Indian tale about a tiger who cannot be trusted
• The Brahmarakshas And The Hair — another tale from Tales of the Sun
• Why Brahma Cannot Eat in the Dark — another South Indian tale where a clever young wife outwits danger