The Hermit’s Daughter

Near the town of Ikshumati, beside a wide river where a great forest grew down to the banks, lived a holy man named Mana Kanaka, who spent much of his life in prayer. His wife had died when their only child, Kadali-Garbha, was a baby. The girl grew up with no other children near her, but she was never lonely: the wild creatures of the woods were her friends, because they knew she would never harm them. Birds ate from her hand, and deer followed her about for the bread she carried in her pocket. Her father taught her to read learned books in the ancient language of her land, and told her about the loving God of all gods in whom he believed. She knew where every bird nested and where the squirrels hid their nuts; she helped in the garden that fed them both, cooked their meals, and wove her own clothes from soft tree bark.

When she was about sixteen, everything changed. One day, while her father was away cutting wood, she sat reading at the door of the hut with birds fluttering round her head and her pet doe beside her. Hoofbeats sounded, and there beyond the fence was a handsome young man on a great black horse, staring at her in silence. It was Dridha-Varman, the king of that country, who had lost his companions while hunting. Before he could speak, Kadali-Garbha saw her father coming and ran to him, as shy as any wild thing, for she had never seen a young man in her life.

Mana Kanaka knew the king at once, and fear gripped his heart when he saw how Dridha-Varman looked at his daughter.

“Who are you, and who is that lovely girl?” asked the king.

“I am only a humble woodcutter,” said Mana Kanaka, “and this is my only child. Her mother died long ago.”

“If her daughter is like her, she must have been very lovely,” said the king. “I have never seen such beauty.”

“She was,” said Mana Kanaka, “and her soul was as beautiful as her face, though she lived far too short a time.”

“I want your daughter for my wife,” said the king. “She shall never wish for anything in vain: servants, companions of her own age, fine clothes, the best food, horses and carriages, and no work to do with her own hands.”

Kadali-Garbha hid her face on her father’s arm. “Do not send me away, dear father,” she whispered.

Mana Kanaka stroked her hair. “Dear child, your father is old and must leave you soon,” he said gently. “It is a great honour to be chosen by the king. Look at him, and see how kind he is.”

She looked, the king smiled, and her fear began to fade. Mana Kanaka sent her indoors so that he could talk with the king alone, but at the door she turned to look back, and knew that she already loved him.

The marriage was soon settled. Mana Kanaka was sad to lose her, but glad she would have someone to care for her when he was gone. The king rode to the hut every day with presents, and Kadali-Garbha grew as eager for the wedding as he was. On the wedding day he sent ladies of the court to dress her. One of them was a wise woman who could see the future, and she knew that jealousy waited for the young queen at the palace. She drew the bride aside. “Take this packet of mustard seed,” she said, “and scatter it along the road as you ride to the palace. Mustard grows quickly, and if you ever need to come home, the green shoots will show you the way. I fear they will not have time to wither before you need them.”

Kadali-Garbha laughed. “If I want my father, I need only ask my husband to send for him,” she said. Still, she hid the packet in her dress, and as the king galloped off with her held before him on his horse, leaving the attendants far behind, she scattered the seed along the path.

For some weeks no one was happier than the young queen. The king spent hours listening to her stories of the forest and refused her nothing. But among the court ladies was a beautiful woman who had hoped to be queen herself, and she was determined to ruin Kadali-Garbha. Everyone at court loved the queen, so she went instead to Asoka-Mala, a wise woman who lived in a cave near the town, and told her a pack of lies: the queen did not love the king, and with her magician father she meant to poison him.

Asoka-Mala saw at once that the story was false and the woman simply jealous, but she loved money. “Bring me fifty gold pieces now, and fifty more when the queen is sent away, and I will tell you what to do,” she said. When the gold came, she gave her advice. “The barber sees the king alone every day. Get him to say he has found out a secret about the queen. But you must give some proof, or you will lose your gold and be punished for harming a queen everyone loves.”

“How can I prove something that is not true?” the woman wondered all the way home. Then she remembered that the queen loved to wander in the forest and seemed to understand the speech of animals. She would tell the barber that Kadali-Garbha was a witch, who gathered wild herbs, some of them poisonous, muttering strange words as she picked them.

The barber had served the king for years and did not want to make him unhappy, but he too loved money, and he agreed if he was well paid. He went about it cleverly. He asked the king if he had heard of the lovely lady the woodmen sometimes saw in the forest, followed by wild creatures. The king guessed it was his wife, and because he liked to hear her praised he let the barber talk on. “What is she like?” he asked. “Tall or short, fair or dark?” “She knows all about plants,” said the barber. “She gathers herbs every day and makes healing medicines. Some say she makes poisons too, but I don’t believe it. She is too beautiful to be wicked.”

A tiny doubt crept into the king’s mind. When they were alone he asked his wife whether she knew how to make medicines from herbs.

“Oh, yes! My father taught me,” she said. “But I haven’t made any since I married.”

“Are you sure?”

She laughed. “Of course I am. A queen has no need to make medicines.”

Still the king was uneasy, and the next time the barber came he asked about the woman in the woods. The barber invented a long tale: a waiting woman had followed the lady to a house near the palace and seen her throwing herbs into a great pan over a fire, singing in a strange language. The king began to wonder whether his wife was a witch after all. He realised he did not really know who she or her father was; he had loved her simply for her beauty. He decided to watch her secretly and say nothing.

He could not treat her as warmly as before, and she soon wondered what she had done wrong. A court lady now followed her whenever she went into the forest. When told to go away, the lady only kept a little further off, and the wild creatures would not come near while anyone else was there. When Kadali-Garbha asked her husband to let her go alone, he said, “There are wild beasts in the woods. Be content with the palace gardens, or take a game-keeper to guard you.”

She knew this was not his real reason. “If my lord wishes, I will stay in the gardens,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “for the animals will not come near one of their enemies. But will you not tell me why you no longer trust your wife, who loves you with all her heart?”

The king was moved and ashamed, yet he still would not tell her the truth. He only embraced her and called her a good little wife. If he had spoken out, she could have shown the story to be false. Instead she stayed inside the garden walls, longing for her old freedom, and grew pale and thin.

The jealous woman was not satisfied, so she paid Asoka-Mala for a new plan. “Let the barber tell the king that the woman has been seen gathering herbs in the forest in the dead of night,” said the witch.

It happened that Kadali-Garbha, too unhappy to sleep, had risen quietly one night and walked in the gardens to calm herself. The king woke to find her gone, and when she came in she told him exactly where she had been, though not why she could not sleep. So when the barber, shaving him next morning, said that the woman had been seen at night, muttering the king’s own name over her herbs, Dridha-Varman thought at once of that night. He hurried to the queen’s rooms. She was not there, and her ladies had not seen her all day. The whole palace was roused, and messengers rode in every direction, but there was no trace of her. Now the king felt certain his wife was the witch. “Perhaps she has poisoned my food and gone so that she need not watch me die,” he thought. He refused to eat or drink, and had all the queen’s ladies locked up until she was found. Among them was the jealous woman, who bitterly wished she had left the queen alone.

In her grief, Kadali-Garbha had gone to her father. With the help of the wise woman who had given her the mustard seed, she had disguised herself as a messenger and ridden a sturdy pony along the line of green shoots, reaching the hut by nightfall. Mana Kanaka was overjoyed to see her, but when he heard her story he was furious. “He shall never see your face again,” he said. “You never knew it, child, but I am a magician, and the beasts and the winds obey me. I know who has made this trouble, and I will bring every misfortune on the king and on them.”

“No, father!” cried Kadali-Garbha. “I love him with all my heart. Only prove to him that I am innocent, and make him trust me as he did.”

It was hard to persuade him, but at last Mana Kanaka promised not to harm the king, and the two of them rode to the palace together. When Dridha-Varman saw his wife holding her father’s arm, just as on the day they met, all his anger vanished and his love came flooding back. He would have embraced her before the whole court, but she drew back. Mana Kanaka drew himself up and pointed at the king. “You promised to love and protect her, and you have listened to lying tongues,” he said. “I will tell you whose they are, so that justice may be done.”

“No, father,” said Kadali-Garbha. “Let their names be forgotten. Only show my lord that I am his loving, faithful wife.”

“I need no proof,” cried the king. “But so that no one copies their wickedness, name the slanderers, and they shall be punished.”

So Mana Kanaka told the king the whole plot. The jealous lady and the barber were sentenced to prison for life, but because Kadali-Garbha pleaded for them, the sentence was cut to two years. Nobody said a word about the witch in the cave. Mana Kanaka knew very well what part she had played, but magicians and witches take care not to make enemies of each other, so he held his tongue.

The grateful king begged his father-in-law to stay at court and offered him a high position, but Mana Kanaka refused every reward. He loved his little home in the forest more than any palace. “All I wish for is my child’s happiness,” he said. “Do not listen to stories against her any more. If you do, I shall hear of it, and if you are unkind to her, I will punish you as you deserve.”

The king had to let him go, but from then on he often took Kadali-Garbha to visit her father in the forest. Later, when the queen had children of her own, their greatest treat was a trip to the little house deep in the wood. They too learnt to love animals and kept many pets, but not one of them was ever kept in a cage.

Where this story comes from

“The Hermit’s Daughter” closes Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit (1919), a collection put into English by S. M. Mitra and retold for young readers by Mrs. Arthur Bell. Her introductory note says some of the tales come from the ancient classics of India and others had been handed down by word of mouth for centuries.

Mrs. Bell presents questions and answers as a way of teaching children through stories, and the book prints twenty after each tale; the last here asks whether you would have forgiven those who tried to harm Kadali-Garbha. This retelling follows that English adaptation. The slanderers are sent to prison, and the witch escapes without punishment, as in the source.

Read the original: S. M. Mitra and Mrs. Arthur Bell, Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit, 1919 (Project Gutenberg #11310)

Reading guidance: ages 9–12 with discussion of a young bride, surveillance, false accusations of poisoning, unjust imprisonment, and the choice to forgive. The threats are not carried out as physical attacks.

A closer reading

Kadali-Garbha’s knowledge of plants first belongs to a life of care: her father teaches her, and animals trust her. The barber turns the same knowledge into an accusation by pretending to defend her while repeating a rumor. His claim that she is ‘too beautiful to be wicked’ is no test of innocence; it keeps the supposed poison-making in the king’s mind while making the speaker sound sympathetic.

The mustard seeds offer something the king’s lavish promises do not: a practical route home if the marriage becomes unsafe or unhappy. Kadali-Garbha uses that route and later refuses an immediate embrace before her father speaks. Her choice to forgive is therefore not the whole resolution. Her father’s continuing protection, renewed visits to the forest, and restored freedom also matter. His silence about Asoka-Mala complicates the justice of an ending in which powerful associates protect one another.

Try this with the story

Follow three uses of plants: the daughter’s knowledge of herbs, the barber’s rumors, and the mustard-seed path. For each, note who controls the information and whether it restricts or restores her freedom. Identify what the king actually observes and what he merely assumes when she leaves the palace.

Talk about it

• Why did the king believe the barber instead of asking his wife what was wrong?
• Kadali-Garbha stopped her father from punishing the king and begged mercy for the plotters. Do you think she was right? Why?
• If someone told lies about your friend, what would you do to find out the truth?

Related stories

• The Son of Seven Mothers — a Punjabi tale where jealous rivals at court plot to ruin a young queen
• The Snake Prince — a marriage broken by a secret and mended by a wife’s courage
• The Royal Thief-Catcher — another story from Mitra’s Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit, set at a royal court