The Origin of Opium

On the bank of the holy river Ganga there lived a Rishi, a holy sage, who spent every day and night in prayer and in thinking about God. From sunrise to sunset he sat beside the river at his devotions, and at night he slept in a little hut of palm leaves that he had built for himself among the bushes nearby. No other people lived for miles around. But a mouse lived in the hut, and it fed on whatever the Rishi left from his supper.

The sage never harmed any living thing, so the mouse was not afraid of him at all. It would come up to him, touch his feet and play around him. Partly out of kindness, and partly so that he would have someone to talk to now and then, the Rishi gave the mouse the power to speak.

One night the mouse stood up on its hind legs, pressed its front paws together politely, and said, “Holy sage, you have kindly let me talk like a human being. If it would not annoy you, I have one more favour to ask.”

“What is it, little mouse?” asked the Rishi. “Tell me what you want.”

“While you are down at the river during the day,” said the mouse, “a cat comes to the hut to hunt me. Only fear of you has kept it from eating me so far, and I am afraid that one day it will. Please turn me into a cat, so that I can stand up to my enemy.”

The Rishi was pleased to help. He sprinkled holy water over the mouse, and at once it became a cat.

A few nights later the Rishi asked, “Well, puss, how do you like being a cat?”

“Not very much, your reverence,” said the cat.

“Why not? Aren’t you strong enough now to deal with any cat in the world?”

“Yes, you have made me a match for every cat alive. But cats no longer worry me. Now I have a new enemy. Whenever you go to the river, a pack of dogs comes and barks so loudly that I am nearly scared to death. If you would not mind, please make me a dog.”

“Be a dog,” said the Rishi, and the cat became a dog.

Some days passed, and then the dog spoke up one night. “I can never thank you enough. I was only a poor mouse, and you gave me speech, made me a cat and then a dog. But as a dog I have a hard time. I never get enough to eat. Your leftovers are all I have, and they cannot fill a big animal like me. How I envy the apes who leap from tree to tree and eat all kinds of delicious fruit! Please, if it does not make you angry, turn me into an ape.” The kind sage agreed at once, and the dog became an ape.

At first the ape was beside himself with delight. He sprang from branch to branch and sucked the juice from every ripe fruit he could reach. His happiness did not last. Summer brought dry weather, and the ape in this tale found it difficult to keep cool and quench its thirst. All day long he watched wild boars wallowing in the water, and he grew jealous. “How lucky those boars are,” he cried, “keeping cool and fresh in the water all day! I wish I were a boar.” That night he described to the Rishi how hard an ape’s life was and how pleasant a boar’s must be, and asked to become one. The sage, whose kindness had no limit, turned him into a wild boar.

For two whole days the boar kept himself soaking wet. On the third day, while he was splashing about, the king of the country came by on a splendidly decorated elephant. The king was out hunting, and the boar only escaped being caught by sheer luck. He thought long about how dangerous a boar’s life was, and how fortunate the stately elephant was to carry the king on its back. He longed to be an elephant, and that night he begged the Rishi to make him one.

The new elephant was wandering through the wild country when he saw the king out hunting, and he walked towards the hunting party on purpose to be caught. The king admired the handsome beast from afar and ordered it to be captured and tamed. It was caught easily, led to the royal stables and soon tamed.

Before long the queen wanted to bathe in the holy Ganga, and the king, who planned to go with her, asked for the newly caught elephant. The king and queen climbed onto its back. You might think the elephant now had everything it wanted, with the king riding on it. But it did not. The elephant thought of himself as a noble beast, and he could not bear the idea of a woman, even a queen, sitting on his back. He felt insulted. He bucked so violently that the king and queen both tumbled to the ground.

The king gently lifted the queen up and held her in his arms. He asked if she was badly hurt, brushed the dust from her clothes with his handkerchief, and kissed her a hundred times. Seeing all this, the elephant fled into the woods as fast as he could run. “So a queen is the happiest creature of all!” he thought as he ran. “Look how everyone cares for her! The king picked her up, held her, asked how she was, dusted her clothes with his own royal hands and kissed her a hundred times. How wonderful it must be to be a queen! I must ask the Rishi to make me one.”

At sunset the elephant reached the Rishi’s hut and threw himself down at the holy man’s feet. “Well,” said the Rishi, “what is the matter? Why have you left the king’s stables?”

“What can I say? You have been so good to me and granted all my wishes. I have one more to ask, and it will be my last. Being an elephant has only made me bigger, not happier. I can see that a queen is the happiest of all creatures. Please, holy father, make me a queen.”

“Foolish child,” said the Rishi. “How can I make you a queen? Where would I find you a kingdom, let alone a royal husband? The most I can do is turn you into a girl of great beauty, lovely enough to win a prince’s heart, if the gods ever bring one your way.”

The elephant agreed, and in a moment it became a beautiful young woman. The sage named her Postomani, which means the poppy-seed lady.

Postomani lived in the hut, caring for the flowers and watering the plants. One day, while the Rishi was away, she was sitting at the door when a richly dressed man came towards the hut. She rose and asked who he was and why he had come. He said he had been hunting nearby and had chased a deer without catching it, and now he was thirsty and hoped the hermit could give him something to drink.

“Please treat this hut as your own home,” said Postomani. “I will do all I can for you. I am only sorry that we are too poor to welcome a man of your rank properly, for unless I am mistaken, you are the king of this country.”

The king smiled. She brought a pot of water and was about to wash his feet herself, but the king stopped her. “Holy maiden, do not touch my feet. I am only a Kshatriya, a man of the warrior caste, and you are the daughter of a holy sage.”

“Sir, I am not the Rishi’s daughter, and I am not a Brahman girl, so there is no harm in my touching your feet. Besides, you are my guest, and it is my duty.”

“Forgive me for asking,” said the king, “but what caste are you?”

“The sage has told me that my parents were Kshatriyas.”

“Was your father a king, perhaps? Your rare beauty and noble bearing make me think you were born a princess.”

Postomani did not answer. She went inside and came back with a tray of the most delicious fruit, which she set before him. But the king would not eat until she replied, and when he pressed her, she said, “The holy sage tells me my father was a king. He was beaten in battle and ran away into the forest with my mother. A tiger killed my poor father, and my mother died just as I was born. Strangely enough, there was a beehive in the tree under which I lay, and drops of honey fell into my mouth and kept me alive until the kind Rishi found me and brought me here. That is the whole story of the unhappy girl standing before you.”

“Do not call yourself unhappy,” said the king. “You are the loveliest of women. You would grace the palace of the greatest king on earth.”

In the end the king courted her, and the Rishi married them. Postomani became the king’s favourite queen, and the first queen fell out of favour. But Postomani’s good fortune was brief. One day, standing beside a well, she grew dizzy, fell into the water and drowned.

The Rishi then came to the king. “Do not grieve, O king,” he said. “What fate has decided must happen. The queen who has drowned was not of royal birth. She was born a mouse, and at her own request I changed her into a cat, a dog, an ape, a boar, an elephant and finally a beautiful girl. Now that she is gone, take your first queen back into your favour. As for the girl people called my daughter, with the gods’ blessing I will make her name live for ever. Leave her body in the well and fill it with earth. From it will grow a plant named after her, posto, the poppy. From that plant will come a drug called opium, which will be famous as a powerful medicine through all the ages, and which people will swallow or smoke for its drowsy power until the end of time. Whoever swallows or smokes it will take on one quality from each creature Postomani once was: mischievous like a mouse, fond of milk like a cat, quarrelsome like a dog, dirty like an ape, fierce like a boar and hot-tempered like a queen.”

About this tale

“The Origin of Opium” is one of Lal Behari Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal, but in a footnote Day says it is not one of his own. A woman storyteller recited it to him, he explains, and he identifies her by the pen name “An Inmate of the Calcutta Lunatic Asylum.” His note also glosses Rishi as “a holy sage.”

Posto is the Bengali word for the poppy, the plant opium is made from, and the girl’s name, Postomani, comes from it. Like many folk tales, this one explains how something in the world began. This is an imagined origin story, not a scientific account of the plant or reliable information about a drug’s effects. Its animal comparisons and claims about queens are stereotypes voiced in the tale.

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

Reading guidance: Ages 9–12 with adult guidance; includes accidental drowning, caste and gender prejudice, and a fictional drug-origin explanation. The magical medicine claims are not advice.

A closer reading

The wishes begin with a concrete danger, the hunting cat, but each new body creates another difficulty. A larger dog needs more food; an admired elephant carries people it resents. The sequence asks readers to compare an attractive feature with the whole life that comes with it. The creature repeatedly looks at another being’s apparent advantage from outside.

The final transformation also exposes the limits of appearances. The king praises the girl’s supposedly royal ancestry, although the reader knows the story of her birth is invented. Caste and royal status influence his judgment, not her actual history. The elephant’s contempt for carrying a woman and the sage’s final caricature of a queen are prejudices to examine, not truths to repeat.

Postomani’s accidental drowning is not explained as a deserved punishment. Nor does the ending establish that the gods remedy every problem: it turns a death into a fictional explanation of a plant. Keeping those distinctions avoids turning a complicated tale into medical advice or a claim that ambition deserves death.

Try this with the story

Chart each transformation with the benefit hoped for and the new difficulty discovered. Circle the point where the wish changes from avoiding danger to seeking status. Compare what the king believes about Postomani’s birth with what the reader knows.

Questions to ask

• Which wishes address danger, and which concern comfort or status?
• What does the king believe about Postomani’s ancestry?
• Why should the final animal comparisons be read as fictional satire rather than drug facts?

Related stories

• The Indigent Brahman — another Day tale where a holy power grants a poor creature’s wishes
• The Match-Making Jackal — an animal with big ambitions in the same book
• The Boy Whom Seven Mothers Suckled — another king with a new favourite queen