The Mother and the Daughter Who Worshipped the Sun

Once upon a time there lived a mother and a daughter who worshipped the Sun. They were very poor, but they never forgot to honour the Sun. They gave it everything they earned except two flat cakes of meal, one for the mother and one for the daughter. Each of them had one cake a day, and that was all.

One day, while the mother was out working, the daughter grew hungry and ate her cake before dinner-time. Just as she finished it, a priest came by and asked for some bread. There was nothing in the house except the mother’s cake, so the daughter broke off half of it and gave it to the priest in the name of the Sun.

After a while the mother came home, very hungry, for her dinner, and to her surprise there was only half a cake in the house.

“Where is the rest of the bread?” she asked.

“I ate my share because I was hungry,” said the daughter, “and just as I finished, a priest came begging, so I had to give him half of your cake.”

“A likely story!” cried the mother angrily. “It’s easy to be generous with other people’s things! How do I know you had eaten your own cake first? I think you gave him mine to save yours!”

The daughter insisted that she really had eaten her cake before the priest came. She promised to give her mother half of her own share the next day. She begged to be forgiven for the sake of the Sun, in whose honour she had given the bread away. But it was all no use. The mother sternly told her to leave. “I won’t have greedy girls in my house,” she said, “who begrudge their own food to the great Sun!”

So the daughter wandered off into the wild countryside with no home to go to, sobbing bitterly. When she had walked a very long way, she was so tired that she could not go a step farther. To be safe from wild animals, she climbed into a big pipal tree and rested among its branches.

After a while a handsome young prince, who had been hunting deer in the forest, came to the big pipal tree. Its cool shade looked so inviting that he lay down beneath it to sleep off his tiredness. As he lay there with his face turned up to the sky, he looked so beautiful that the girl could not take her eyes off him. And her tears, which were still falling like a summer shower, dropped soft and warm onto the young man’s face and woke him with a start.

Thinking it was raining, he got up to look at the sky and see where the sudden shower had come from, but there was not a cloud anywhere. Yet when he lay down again, the drops fell faster than ever, and one landed on his lip and tasted salty, like tears. So he swung himself up into the tree to see where the salty rain was coming from, and there, to his amazement, sat a beautiful girl, crying.

“Where have you come from, lovely stranger?” he asked. Weeping, she told him that she had no home, no house and no mother. He fell in love with her sweet face and gentle words, and he asked her to be his wife. So she went with him to the palace, her heart full of thanks to the Sun for sending her such good fortune.

Now she had everything she could wish for. Only, when the other women talked about their homes and their mothers, she said nothing, for she was ashamed of hers. Everyone thought she must be some great princess, because she was so lovely and so splendid. But deep down she knew she was nothing of the kind, so every day she prayed to the Sun that her mother would never find her.

But one day, as she sat alone in her beautiful palace, her mother appeared, as ragged and poor as ever. She had heard about her daughter’s good luck and had come to share it.

“And you shall share it,” begged her daughter. “I will give you back far more than I ever took from you, if only you will go away and not shame me in front of my prince.”

“You ungrateful girl!” stormed the mother. “Have you forgotten that it was thanks to me that your luck came to you? If I hadn’t sent you out into the world, where would you have found such a fine husband?”

“I might have starved!” wept the daughter. “And now you have come to ruin me all over. O great Sun, help me now!”

At that very moment the prince came to the door. The poor girl was ready to die of shame and worry. But when she turned to look at the place where her mother had been sitting, there was nothing there but a golden stool, more wonderful than any stool ever seen on earth.

“My princess,” asked the prince in astonishment, “where did that golden stool come from?”

“From my mother’s house,” said the daughter, full of thanks to the great Sun for saving her from disgrace.

“Well, if there are such wonderful things in your mother’s house,” said the prince cheerfully, “I must go and see it. Tomorrow we will set off, and you shall show me everything in it.”

The daughter made one excuse after another, but it was no good. The prince’s curiosity had been stirred by the marvellous golden stool, and nothing would change his mind.

So, in her trouble, the daughter cried to the Sun, “O gracious Sun, help me now!”

But no answer came, and the next day she set off with a heavy heart to show the prince her mother’s house. They made a splendid procession, with horsemen and footmen in royal uniforms all around the bride’s covered chair, where the daughter sat, her heart sinking with every step.

But when they came within sight of the place where her mother’s hut used to stand, there on the horizon stood a shining, blazing golden palace that sparkled and flashed like solid sunshine. Inside and out, everything was gold: golden servants, and a golden mother!

They stayed there for three days, admiring the countless wonders of the Sun palace. When the third day was over, the prince, who loved his bride more than ever, set off for home. But when he reached the spot where he had first seen the glittering golden palace in the distance, he thought he would take just one more look at the marvellous sight. And there was nothing to be seen but a low hut with a thatched roof!

The prince turned to his bride in a fury. “You are a witch!” he cried. “You have tricked me with your wicked magic! Confess, or it will be the worse for you!”

But the girl fell on her knees. “My gracious prince,” she said, “I have done nothing! I am only a poor girl with no home. It was the Sun that did it.”

Then she told him the whole story from beginning to end, and the prince was so pleased that from then on, he too worshipped the Sun.

About this tale

This tale comes from Tales of the Punjab, Told by the People, by Flora Annie Steel, with notes by R. C. Temple. In his notes, Temple explains that the pipal is a large fig tree, valued for its shade and sacred to Hindus.

In the original, the angry prince threatens to strike his bride dead unless she confesses; here his threat is softened. The “palanquin” in which the bride rides, a covered chair carried on poles, is called a covered chair here.

Read the original: Flora Annie Steel, Tales of the Punjab (Project Gutenberg #6145, The Mother and the Daughter Who Worshipped the Sun)

Reading guidance: ages 9–12 with adult discussion. The tale includes a daughter expelled from home, fear of starvation, shame about poverty and a husband’s threat.

A closer reading

The first dispute contains two different questions: whether the daughter should give away food that belongs to her hungry mother, and whether expelling her is a fair response. Her offer to share the next day’s cake attempts a repair; the mother’s refusal makes a small household loss into a threat to her daughter’s survival. Neither charity nor parental authority makes the other person’s needs disappear.

Gold solves one embarrassment and creates another. The stool conceals the mother’s poverty but invites the prince to visit a supposedly wealthy home; the palace then conceals that home only temporarily. The final change comes when the daughter explains the whole sequence. The prince’s earlier threat and the mother’s later claim to deserve credit for the marriage both deserve scrutiny, even though the story ends by celebrating devotion to the Sun.

Try this with the story

Trace the half-cake, golden stool and golden palace. For each, record the immediate problem it appears to solve and the new problem that follows. Discuss why the final spoken explanation does something the golden objects cannot do.

Questions to ask

• Why did the daughter give away half of her mother’s cake?
• How did the prince find the girl in the tree?
• Why was the daughter ashamed of her mother?
• How did the Sun help the daughter, and why do you think it did?

Related stories

• The Faithful Prince — another tale from Flora Annie Steel’s Tales of the Punjab
• Princess Aubergine — another Punjabi tale of a girl who marries a prince
• The Son of Seven Mothers — another tale of a poor mother and child from the Punjab