The Match-Making Jackal

There was once a weaver whose family had been very rich long ago. His father, though, had squandered everything he inherited on wild living, so the weaver, who had been born in a house like a palace, now lived in a wretched hut. His parents and all his relations were dead, and he had nobody in the world.

Near his hut was a jackal’s den. The jackal remembered how wealthy and grand the weaver’s family had once been, and he felt sorry for him. One day he came to the weaver and said, “Friend weaver, I can see how miserable your life is, and I have a mind to change it. I am going to try to marry you to the daughter of the king of this country.”

“Me, the king’s son-in-law?” said the weaver. “That will happen when the sun rises in the west.”

“You doubt what I can do?” said the jackal. “Just wait and see.”

Next morning the jackal set off for the king’s city, many miles away. On the way he went into a garden of betel vines and picked a big bundle of the leaves. When he reached the capital he managed to sneak into the palace grounds. There was a bathing tank there where the women of the royal household bathed morning and afternoon, and the jackal lay down at its entrance.

Just then the princess arrived with her maids to bathe. She was surprised to see a jackal lying there and told her maids to chase it off. The jackal got up as if he had just woken, but instead of running away he opened his bundle, popped some betel leaves into his mouth and began to chew. The princess and her maids could hardly believe it. “What an extraordinary jackal!” they said to one another. “Where can he be from? A jackal chewing betel! Thousands of people in this city can’t afford that treat. He must come from some very rich land.”

“Sivalu,” said the princess, using the old name for a jackal, “which country are you from? It must be wealthy indeed if jackals chew betel there. Do the other animals chew it too?”

“Dearest princess,” said the jackal, “I come from a land overflowing with good things. Betel leaves grow there as thick as grass grows in your fields. All our animals chew them, cows, sheep and dogs alike. We lack nothing.”

“How happy that country must be,” said the princess, “and how much happier the king who rules it!”

“Our king,” said the jackal, “is the richest in the world. His palace is like the heaven of the god Indra. I have seen your palace, and beside his it is a shabby hut.”

The princess was so curious that she hurried through her bath and ran to tell the queen about the amazing jackal at the tank. The queen was just as curious and had him brought to her. Standing before her, the jackal began munching betel leaves.

“You must come from a very rich country,” said the queen. “Is your king married?”

“If it please your majesty, he is not. Princesses from all over the world have hoped to marry him, but he has turned them all down. Lucky the princess he finally chooses!”

“Sivalu, don’t you think my daughter is as lovely as a fairy, and fit to marry the proudest king alive?”

“She is certainly beautiful, the most beautiful princess I have ever seen,” said the jackal. “But I cannot say whether our king will take a fancy to her.”

“Take a fancy to her!” said the queen. “Just describe her to him as she is, and he will be wild with love. But seriously, Sivalu, I want to see my daughter married. Many princes have asked for her, but none of them was the son of a great king, so I refused them. Your king sounds great enough. I would gladly have him as my son-in-law.” She sent for the king, who came, listened to the jackal describe his master’s wealth and splendour, and said he was quite willing to give his daughter to such a man.

The jackal went home to the weaver. “O lord of the loom,” he said, “you are the luckiest man alive. It is all arranged: you are to be a great king’s son-in-law. I have told them you are a great king yourself, and you must act like one. Do exactly what I tell you, or instead of making your fortune you will get us both put to death.”

“I will do everything you say,” said the weaver.

The clever jackal worked out a plan in his head. A few days later he went back to the palace just as before, chewing betel and lying down at the entrance to the tank. The king and queen were delighted to see him and asked eagerly how things had gone.

“To put your minds at rest,” said the jackal, “so far I have succeeded. If you knew how hard it was to persuade my master to marry your daughter, you would never stop thanking me. For a long while he refused even to think of it, but bit by bit I won him over. Now you only need to choose a lucky day for the wedding. But let me give you some friendly advice. My master is such a great king that if he came in full state, with all his followers, horses and elephants, there would be no room for them in your palace or even in your city. I suggest that he come quietly, as a private person, and that you send your own elephants, horses and carriages to the edge of the city to bring him and just a few attendants to the palace.”

“Thank you, wise Sivalu,” said the king. “I could never find room for the followers of such a great king. Do use your influence to make him come privately, for if he came in state it would ruin me.”

“I will do my best,” said the jackal solemnly. The royal astrologer chose a lucky day for the wedding, and the jackal went home.

Back in the village he got busy with preparations. The weaver was dressed in rags, so the jackal told him to borrow a suit of clothes from the village washermen. Then the jackal went to the king of the jackals and asked for a thousand jackals to come with him on a certain day. He went to the king of the crows and asked for a thousand crows, and to the king of the paddy-birds, the herons of the rice fields, with the same request.

When the great day came, the weaver put on his borrowed clothes. The jackal arrived with a thousand jackals, a thousand crows and a thousand paddy-birds behind him, and the wedding procession set off. Near sunset it was about two miles from the palace. There the jackal told the thousand jackals to howl as loudly as they could. The thousand crows cawed with all their might, and the thousand paddy-birds added their harsh screeches. Nobody had ever heard such a din since the world began.

While the uproar went on, the jackal raced to the palace. “Do you think you will have room for the wedding party?” he asked the king. “They are about two miles off. You can hear them now.”

“Impossible, Sivalu,” said the king. “From that noise there must be a hundred thousand of them at least. How could I house so many guests? Please arrange for the bridegroom to come alone.”

“Very well,” said the jackal. “I warned you from the start that you could not hold all my great master’s attendants. I will do as you ask. My master will come alone, in plain clothes. Send a horse for him.”

The jackal took the horse and a groom back to where the weaver was waiting. He thanked the thousand jackals, the thousand crows and the thousand paddy-birds for their help and sent them all home. Then he and the weaver, now on horseback, made their way to the palace.

The wedding guests were very disappointed by the bridegroom’s looks, but the jackal explained that his master had dressed humbly on purpose, since his father-in-law had said he could not receive him in state. The royal priests performed the ceremony, and the couple were married. As the jackal had told him to, the bridegroom hardly said a word, because the jackal feared his talk would give him away.

But that night, lying in bed, the weaver began counting the beams and rafters of the room and said out loud, “That beam would make a fine loom, that one a good roller, and that one over there an excellent sley,” which is the comb a weaver uses to beat the threads together. His bride was astonished. “Is the man they have married me to a king or a weaver?” she wondered. “I fear he is a weaver, or why would he talk about looms and sleys? Oh, is this what fate had waiting for me?”

In the morning she told the queen what her husband had said. The king and queen were taken aback and questioned the jackal about it. The quick-witted jackal answered at once. “Your majesty need not be surprised. Around my master’s palace live seven hundred families of the finest weavers in the world. He has given them land free of rent and is always thinking of their welfare. He must have spoken those words in one of his kindly moods.”

Still, the jackal felt it was high time to slip away with the princess, since his simple friend might put them in danger at any moment. So he told the king that urgent affairs of state meant his master could not stay another day. He must leave for his kingdom with his bride at once, travelling on foot in disguise, while the princess, now a queen, would go in a palki, a covered litter. After much argument the king and queen agreed.

When they reached the edge of the weaver’s village, the palki bearers were sent away, and the princess, asking where her husband’s palace was, had to walk. They soon came to the weaver’s hut. “This, madam, is your husband’s palace,” said the jackal.

The princess beat her forehead with her hands in despair. “Is this the husband the god of marriage meant for me? I would a thousand times rather be dead!”

But there was nothing she could do, and before long she accepted her fate. She made up her mind to make her husband rich, and she knew a secret way to do it. One day she asked him to fetch her a pice’s worth of flour, a pice being a tiny coin. She mixed the flour with a little water and spread the paste over her skin. When it dried, she rubbed it off with her fingers, and as it fell away in little balls it turned into gold. She did this every day for a while, until she had more gold than any king keeps in his treasury.

With that gold she hired a whole army of masons, carpenters and builders, and in no time they built one of the finest palaces in the world. Seven hundred families of weavers were found and settled all around it. Then she wrote to her father, saying she was sorry he had never visited her since her wedding, and that she and her husband would love him to come now. The king agreed, and a day was fixed.

The princess made grand preparations. She set up hospitals in different parts of the town for sick, injured and old animals. Thousands of animals stood by the roadside chewing betel leaves. The streets were laid with Kashmir shawls for her father and his attendants to walk on. There was no end to the show of wealth and splendour. The king and queen arrived in state and were overjoyed at their son-in-law’s seemingly endless riches. And then the jackal stepped forward, bowed to them both and said, “Didn’t I tell you so?”

About this story

“The Match-Making Jackal” comes from Lal Behari Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal. Day explains in a note that Sivalu is a name for the jackal, much like Reynard for the fox in Europe, and that the god the princess blames is Prajapati, who presides over marriages.

In this telling, the court treats betel-chewing as a sign of luxury, which lets the jackal turn an ordinary bundle of leaves into evidence of an imaginary rich kingdom. Day closes this tale with the storyteller’s rhyme about the withering Natiya-thorn.

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

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12 with adult guidance; the comedy includes deception into marriage, threats of execution and the princess saying she would rather be dead. Her eventual prosperity does not undo the deception.

A closer reading

The jackal’s trick repeatedly converts an absence into a compliment. The supposed king has no visible court because his retinue is too large; he wears borrowed clothes because he is modest; he talks about looms because he cares for weavers. Each explanation protects the same claim from evidence that ought to challenge it.

The final wealth does not reveal that the jackal was truthful all along. The princess creates it after being deceived into marriage. She supplies the gold, organizes the buildings and reproduces the details of his boasts, including the seven hundred weaving families and betel-chewing animals. His last line takes credit for a reality she has made. Readers can enjoy the escalating bluff while questioning the lack of choice left to her.

Try this with the story

List three of the jackal’s claims beside the evidence actually available at the time. Add a final column showing what the princess later builds. Explain why a claim becoming true later does not make the earlier deception honest.

Questions to ask

• How does the jackal explain away evidence against his claim?
• Which details of his invented kingdom does the princess later create?
• Who earns the final credit, and who receives it?
• What choice was the princess denied?

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