The Field of Bones

A king had a son, and the prince had three close friends: the son of the chief minister, the son of the head of police, and the son of the richest merchant in the city. The four loved one another dearly. One day they decided to go and see faraway lands, and they set out together on horseback.

They rode and rode, and around noon they reached the edge of what looked like a thick forest. There they rested, tying their horses to trees to graze. Then they rode on, and at sunset they found a temple deep in the forest and stopped there for the night. Inside sat a sannyasi, a holy hermit, so lost in meditation that he did not notice them. When darkness fell, a light glowed inside the temple. The forest was full of wild animals, so the friends agreed to sleep on the temple’s balcony and take turns keeping watch, each for one prahara, a stretch of three hours, while the rest slept.

The merchant’s son had the first watch, from six until nine. Near the end of it he saw something wonderful. The hermit picked up a bone and spoke some words over it, and the merchant’s son heard them clearly. At once a clattering filled the temple grounds, and bones came moving in from every part of the forest and piled themselves in a heap at the hermit’s feet. Just then the merchant’s son’s watch ended, so he woke the police chief’s son and lay down to sleep.

The police chief’s son saw only the hermit sitting cross-legged beside a pile of bones, and he had no idea where they had come from. For a long time nothing happened. The only sounds were the howls of hyenas and wolves and the growl of a tiger. As his watch was ending, the hermit looked at the pile and spoke some words, which the police chief’s son heard clearly. There was a rattling, and the bones fitted themselves together, each to its partner, until the heap had become a skeleton. He wanted to keep watching, but his time was up. He woke the minister’s son and lay down, without saying anything about what he had seen, just as the merchant’s son had said nothing to him.

The minister’s son took his turn at the dead of midnight, the hour when ghosts and spirits of every kind wander the world and everything else is fast asleep. Even the wolves, hyenas and tigers had gone quiet. He saw the hermit meditating beside what looked like the skeleton of an animal. He looked out at the thick, dark forest, and his hair stood on end. He spent almost three hours trembling with fear. Then the hermit looked at the skeleton and spoke some words, which the minister’s son heard clearly, and sinews and flesh grew over the bones and skin covered them. But the body did not breathe. The minister’s son’s watch was over, so he woke the prince and lay down, telling him nothing.

The prince saw the hermit deep in prayer beside a figure that looked like an animal, lying still with no sign of life. He had slept long and well, so he did not feel the gloom of the midnight hour, and he passed the time pleasantly watching the darkness grow thinner and paler. Just as a red streak appeared in the east, he heard a sound in the temple. The hermit looked at the lifeless animal and spoke some words, which the prince heard clearly. Breath came into the creature. It came alive, stood up and dashed out of the temple into the forest. At that moment the crows began to caw, and the prince’s watch was over.

The four friends rode on through the endless forest, each thinking about the strange things in the temple, and hardly spoke until midday, when they stopped by a pool under a tree to eat wild fruit and drink. Then the prince said, “Friends, didn’t you see something in the hermit’s temple? I will tell you what I saw, but first let each of you tell his part, in the order of our watches.”

So the merchant’s son described how the bones had come running in and piled up at the hermit’s feet, the police chief’s son how they had joined into a skeleton, and the minister’s son how flesh and skin had covered it. Each said he remembered the words exactly. “From what you saw, you can guess the rest,” said the prince. “When the hermit spoke over the body, it stood up, a fine strong deer, and while I was admiring it, it leaped out of the temple into the forest.”

The four friends were delighted to think they now had magic powers, and they were sure that if they said the hermit’s words, the same things would happen. But they decided to test them. Near the foot of the tree lay a bone. The merchant’s son picked it up and said his words over it, and at once a hundred bones came rushing from all directions and lay in a heap at the foot of the tree. Then the police chief’s son spoke his words over the heap, and the bones shook, joined together and became the skeleton of a four-footed beast. Next the minister’s son spoke his words, and the skeleton was covered with flesh, skin and fur. To their horror, it was a royal tiger of the largest kind.

The friends were terrified. If the prince spoke his words and brought the tiger to life, it might kill them all. The other three begged him not to, but he refused to listen. “Your mantras, your magic words, have been shown to work,” he said. “How can I know whether mine works too unless I try it? And we won’t necessarily die. Here is a tall tree. You can climb to the very top, and I will follow you up as soon as I have said my mantra.” However much they warned him of the danger, he would not change his mind.

So the minister’s son, the police chief’s son and the merchant’s son climbed to the top branches, and the prince climbed halfway up. From there he looked hard at the lifeless tiger, said his words, and scrambled up the tree as fast as he could. In a flash the tiger stood up with a fearful roar, sprang at the four horses grazing nearby and killed them all, then dragged one of them off into the thickest part of the forest. The friends clung to the branches, nearly frozen with fear, but the danger had passed. Soon, from the sound of its roar, they guessed the tiger was at least two miles away, and they climbed down.

With no horses left, they walked through the forest until they came out on the seashore. They sat there hoping a ship would pass, and before long they saw one far out at sea. They waved their handkerchiefs and made every sign they could think of. The captain and crew saw them and came in to pick them up, but said that, being short of food, they could not keep them long and would set them ashore at the first port.

After four or five days at sea, they saw tall buildings and towers near the shore, and thinking it must be a large city, the four friends went ashore. They walked down a long avenue of fine trees to a bazaar with hundreds of shops, but not a single person in them. Sweet shops had rows of sweets piled up and nobody to sell them. The blacksmith’s shop had its anvil, bellows and tools, but no smith. Stalls held heaps of dried, withered vegetables and no one to sell them. The streets were empty of people and animals. There were carts without bullocks and carriages without horses. The doors and windows of every house stood open, and no one was inside. It seemed a city of the dead, with every body carried away.

Astonished and frightened, the friends walked on until they came to a magnificent palace. At the gatehouse hung shields, swords and spears, but there were no gatekeepers. They found no guards in the grounds, and in the stables there was plenty of grain and grass but no horses. They went through long corridors and six great courtyards without seeing anyone. In the seventh courtyard, at last, they saw living people: four princesses of matchless beauty came towards them. Each princess took one of the friends by the arm and called him her husband. They said they had been waiting a long time for the four friends and were overjoyed that they had come. They led them to the inner rooms and served them a splendid feast with their own hands, for there were no servants. Before anything else, they told the friends that no questions must be asked about why the city was empty. Then each princess went to her own rooms with her new husband.

Soon after the prince and his princess were alone, she began to cry. When he asked why, she said, “O prince, I feel so sorry for you. You carry yourself like a king’s son, and I am sure you have a king’s son’s heart, so I will tell you everything about myself and my three companions who look like princesses. I am the daughter of the king this palace belonged to. Those three creatures dressed as princesses, who have called your friends their husbands, are Rakshasis, demon women. They came here some time ago and ate my father the king, my mother the queen, and all my many brothers and sisters. They ate the ministers and the servants, and little by little they ate everyone in the city, all my father’s horses and elephants, and all the cattle. You saw for yourself that there is nothing alive here. They have spared only me, and probably not for long. When they saw you and your friends coming, they were glad, because they mean to eat you all before long.”

“If that is true,” said the prince, “how do I know you are not a Rakshasi yourself, trying to catch me off my guard?”

“I can give you proof,” said the princess. “Rakshasis eat a hundred times as much as people do. What they eat at table with us cannot fill them, so at night they fly to distant lands to hunt for people and cattle, since there are none left here. Ask your friends to watch whether their wives stay in bed all night. They will find that they go out for most of the night, but I will be with you the whole night long. Only make sure the Rakshasis suspect nothing, or they will kill me first and then eat all of you.”

The next day the prince called his three friends together in strict secrecy and told them what the princess had said. He asked them to lie awake at night and see whether their so-called princesses went out. There was already one sign that she was right: the three pretended princesses slept all day long, worn out by their night-time wanderings, while the prince’s princess never slept in the daytime. So the three friends lay in bed pretending to be sound asleep, breathing deeply. Each of them saw his partner slip out of the room at a certain hour, thinking him asleep, stay away all night and come back to bed only at dawn, then sleep most of the day and wake only in the afternoon. They watched for two nights and two days. The prince also lay awake, but his princess never left the room for a moment and never slept by day. Now the three friends began to believe that their partners really were Rakshasis.

The princess also told the prince that after eating people and animals, the Rakshasis threw the bones to the north of the city, where an enormous pile had grown. The four friends went there one day, and sure enough, there were great hills of human and animal bones. That convinced them completely.

The question was how to escape. One thing was in their favour: the Rakshasis slept most of the day, which gave the friends plenty of time to make plans. The princess advised them to go down to the shore every day and watch for ships, and she always went with them, carrying her finest jewels, pearls and precious stones in a bundle. One day they saw a ship far out at sea. They signalled to it, it came in, and after much pleading the captain took the four friends and the princess aboard.

The princess urged the crew to row with all their strength and promised them a rich reward. She knew the Rakshasis would wake in the afternoon and come after them at once, and that unless the ship was more than eighty miles from land they would seize it and kill everyone aboard, for a Rakshasi could stretch her body out to a length of ten yojanas. The friends and the princess cheered the rowers on, and with the wind behind it the ship flew over the sea like lightning.

Near sunset a dreadful shriek rang out from the shore. The Rakshasis had woken, found everyone gone, and guessed that they had escaped by ship. They raced along the shore, spotted the ship far away and stretched out their bodies towards it. Luckily the ship was just over eighty miles from land, but only just: the Rakshasis’ heads, with their jaws gaping wide, nearly touched its stern. Everyone aboard heard them cry, “O sister, so you mean to eat them all by yourself!”

The minister’s son, the police chief’s son and the merchant’s son had always half suspected that the prince’s princess might be a Rakshasi too, and those words convinced them. But they made no difference to the prince, who knew her too well to believe it.

The captain explained that he was sailing to distant lands in search of gold mines and could not take them with him. Since they were now safe from the Rakshasis, he would put them ashore at a port the next day. No port came in sight for a long time, but towards evening they reached one and the five of them went ashore.

After walking a while, the princess, who had never been used to long walks, said she was tired and hungry. They sat down under a tree, and the prince sent the merchant’s son to buy sweets in a bazaar they had heard was nearby. The merchant’s son did not come back, because he was certain the princess was a Rakshasi just like the other three. When he was gone too long, the prince sent the police chief’s son after him, and he too stayed away, believing the same thing. Then the minister’s son was sent, and he joined the other two. At last the prince went to the sweet shop himself, and there his three friends held him back by force, swearing that the woman was no princess but a Rakshasi like the rest. So the four friends abandoned the princess and went home to their own country, full of stories about their adventures.

The princess, meanwhile, walked to the bazaar and stayed for a few days with a poor woman. Then she set out for the four friends’ city, whose name and location the prince had told her. When she arrived, she sold some of her valuable jewels and rented a grand house with servants. She had herself announced as a dice-player blessed by heaven, and she challenged every player in the city to play her for a lakh of rupees a game, an enormous sum: if she lost, she would pay the winner a lakh, and if she won, the loser would pay her a lakh. She also got the king’s permission to lock up in her house anyone who could not pay what they owed.

The merchant’s son, the police chief’s son and the minister’s son all thought themselves brilliant players. They played her, paid her many lakhs, and when they could not pay the rest they were locked up in her house. Finally the prince offered to play. The princess let him win the first game on purpose, which made him bold enough to play many more, and he lost them all. He could not pay the lakhs he owed, and he was about to be dragged off to her dungeon when the princess told him who she was. His three friends were brought out of their cells, and the four of them were wild with joy. The king and queen welcomed their new daughter-in-law with open arms and great celebrations.

Everyone in the palace was happy except the princess. She could not forget that the Rakshasis had eaten her parents, brothers and sisters, and that their bones lay in great heaps north of her father’s capital along with the bones of his people. The prince had told her that he and his friends could bring bones to life, so they could rebuild her family. The difficulty was how to kill the three Rakshasis. Surely the hermit who had taught them how to give life could also teach them how to take it?

So the four friends and the princess went to the hermit’s temple in the forest and begged him for a charm that could kill from a distance. The hermit agreed. A deer was passing at that moment. He took a handful of water, spoke some words over it, which the prince heard clearly, and threw it on the deer, and it fell dead. He spoke other words over it, and the deer jumped up and ran off into the forest.

Armed with this killing charm, the prince, the princess and the three friends travelled to her father’s capital. As they came near the city of death, the three Rakshasis rushed at them with gaping jaws. The prince sprinkled the charmed water on them, and they died instantly.

Next the friends went to the hills of bones. The merchant’s son gathered the right bones for each body, the police chief’s son fitted them into skeletons, the minister’s son covered them with sinews, flesh and skin, and the prince breathed life into them. The princess wept with joy to see her parents and family alive. After a few days of great celebration they left the city, now full of life, and went home to their own country, where they lived for many years in great happiness.

Where this story comes from

“The Field of Bones” comes from Lal Behari Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal. Day’s notes gloss sannyasi as a religious devotee, prahara as a three-hour watch, and mantra as a charm in this story. The retelling follows his approximate conversion of a yojana to eight miles; a lakh means one hundred thousand, not a fixed present-day currency value.

The sequence of bones, flesh and returning life gives the story its repeated visual pattern. The tale has man-eating demons and a deadly tiger, so it is better suited to older readers.

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

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12 with adult preview; includes horses killed by a tiger, a community eaten by demons, abandonment, imprisonment and magical killing and resurrection.

A closer reading

The four spells first produce danger and later restoration. Their technical ability does not change; their purpose and judgment do. The prince’s insistence on testing his own contribution kills the horses, while the princess later gives the same combined skills a reason to act: restoring an entire community.

The friends check the princess’s warning over two nights and then inspect the bones. Yet a single taunt from the Rakshasis outweighs that evidence for three of them. Their abandonment contrasts with the tale’s opening declaration of friendship. The princess must use her jewels, travel and gaming skill to regain a hearing; the reunion does not itself explain why they now trust her.

Her city remains lost after her marriage is celebrated. By insisting on returning, she changes the endpoint from one couple’s happiness to recovery for the people left behind. The magical charms belong to the fiction; the story offers no real-world protection from danger.

Try this with the story

Compare the tiger experiment with the final restoration: list the same four skills, the purpose of using them and who bears the consequences. Then weigh the observed evidence about the princess against the Rakshasis’ taunt.

Talk about it

• Who pays the price for the prince’s first experiment?
• Why do the friends abandon the princess despite what they observed?
• Why is a royal wedding insufficient as an ending for the princess?
• How does the second use of the four spells differ from the first?

Related stories

• The Boy with the Moon on His Forehead — another hero who defeats a whole band of Rakshasas
• The Boy Whom Seven Mothers Suckled — a Rakshasi queen who eats a king’s household
• The Ghost-Brahman — a spooky Bengali tale with a clever ending