The Prince and the Fakir

Long ago there lived a king who had riches of every kind but no children at all. He grew so unhappy that one day he went out to a spot where four roads crossed and lay down flat in the dust, right in the path of the travellers. Everyone who came that way had to step across him.

After a while a fakir, a holy wanderer, came walking down the road. He stopped beside the king and looked down at him.

“Man, what are you doing, lying in the middle of the road?”

“Holy man,” the king said, “a thousand people have stepped over me today. Step over me too, and go on your way.”

“First tell me who you are.”

“I am a king,” came the answer. “I have plenty of gold and treasure, but I am getting old and I have no son. I have done many wrong things in my life. So I lie here and let people walk over me, hoping that God will forgive me and send me a child.”

The fakir thought about this. “Suppose you were given children,” he said. “What would you give me in return?”

“Anything you like.”

“I do not want your gold,” said the fakir. “I will pray for you, and you will have two sons. But one of those sons must belong to me.”

Then he took two sweets from his bag and put them in the king’s hand. “Give these to the two wives you love most,” he said. “A year from now I shall come back, and I shall take my son.”

“Very well,” said the king. “It is a bargain.”

The king went home and gave a sweet to each of his two favourite queens, and in time each of them had a baby boy. The king was overjoyed. But he did not want to lose either child, so he had a hidden room dug deep under the ground, and there the two princes were brought up out of sight.

When the year was over, the fakir appeared at the palace gate. “King,” he said, “bring me my son.”

The king went away and came back with two little boys who were the sons of two serving women, and he set them in front of the fakir, hoping to fool him.

Now just at that moment, down in their secret room, the real princes were having their dinner. A small ant had picked up a single grain of their rice and was carrying it home to her babies. On the way a bigger ant rushed at her and tried to snatch it.

“Why are you robbing me?” cried the little ant. “My legs have been lame for a long time, and this one grain is all I have for my children. If you want rice, go to the king’s sons. They are sitting in the room under the ground eating their dinner. Take yours from there!”

So the bigger ant let her go and hurried off towards the hidden room.

The fakir heard every word, for he understood the speech of ants. He turned to the king. “These boys are not your sons,” he said. “Go and fetch the two who are eating their dinner under the ground.”

The king saw that he could not trick the holy man. Sadly he brought out his own two boys, and the fakir chose the elder and led him away.

When they reached the fakir’s home, he sent the young prince out to collect fuel. The boy gathered dried cow-dung, the kind that country people burn, and carried it back. The fakir lit a great fire and set an enormous pot on it, full of oil, and soon the oil began to bubble and spit.

“Come over here beside the pot, my pupil,” said the fakir.

The prince did not like the look in his eye. “The teacher goes first,” he said politely, “and the pupil after.”

The fakir called him a second time and a third time, and each time the boy gave the same answer. At last the fakir lost patience and lunged at him, meaning to grab him and push him into the boiling pot. But the prince was quick and strong. He ducked, caught hold of the fakir and heaved him up, and it was the fakir himself who went tumbling into the pot. That was the end of the wicked fakir.

Lying on the floor the prince found the fakir’s key. He unlocked the house and found it full of prisoners: many men shut up in rooms, and in a shed two horses, two hounds, two great magic birds called simurghs, and two tigers. The prince set every one of them free, and they all gave thanks to God. The men went home, but the prince kept the horses, the hounds, the birds and the tigers, and together they travelled on to a new land.

Along the road he came upon a bald herdsman minding a herd of calves on a hillside.

“Hey, you!” shouted the herdsman. “Do you know how to wrestle?”

“I did a little wrestling when I was small,” said the prince, “and I never run away from a match. Come on, then.”

“If I throw you,” said the herdsman, “you will be my servant. If you throw me, I will be yours.”

They wrestled, and the prince threw him to the ground.

“Then you shall be my servant,” said the prince. “Stay here and look after my animals while I go and see the city. The tiger will stand guard over everything.”

On the way into the city the prince came to a cool, pleasant pool, and he took off his clothes to bathe. Now the king of that city had a daughter, and she was sitting up on the palace roof. She looked down and saw on the stranger’s body marks that, in this tale, she recognized as signs of royal birth.

“That young man is royal,” she said to herself. “He is the one I will marry, and nobody else.”

She went to her father. “Father,” she said, “I am ready to choose a husband.”

“Good,” said the king, and he sent heralds through the streets. “Let every man in the land, great or humble, come to the hall today. The princess will choose her husband.”

The whole kingdom crowded into the hall, and the prince came too, still wearing the old robe he had taken from the fakir’s house. He sat down quietly among the crowd.

The princess came out onto a balcony and looked over all the faces until she found the stranger in the fakir’s robe. She gave her maid a dish of sweet-smelling henna water.

“Go to that traveller dressed as a fakir,” she whispered, “and sprinkle him with this.”

The maid did exactly as she was told. A murmur ran through the hall.

“The maid has picked the wrong man!” people said.

“The maid has made no mistake,” she answered. “If anyone has made a mistake, it is my mistress.”

So the princess was married to the young man everyone thought was a fakir. Her father agreed, but secretly he was disappointed. So many rich lords and chiefs had been there, and his daughter had picked a ragged wanderer! He kept his feelings to himself.

One day the young husband said, “Let all the king’s sons-in-law come hunting with me.”

The other sons-in-law laughed. “Since when does a fakir go hunting?” But they agreed, and they all chose a pool where they would meet when the day was done.

The prince went back to his animals and sent the tigers and hounds out across the hills. In no time they brought him gazelles, hog-deer and wild mountain goats called markhor, more than he could count. He loaded up all the game and rode to the meeting place. The other sons-in-law had caught nothing at all.

They all went home together to lay their game before the king, and the old king stared at the great pile the stranger had brought.

Then the young man told him the truth. “I am not a fakir,” he said. “I am a king’s son, just as you are a king.”

The old king was overjoyed. He had no son of his own, and now he took the young man’s hand and hugged him, and sat him down at his side. “Thank Heaven you came to our city and married my daughter,” he said. “I could not be happier. From now on, my kingdom is yours.”

Where this tale comes from

This tale is from Indian Fairy Tales, edited by Joseph Jacobs and published in London by David Nutt in 1892. In his notes Jacobs says it was “kindly communicated” by Mr. M. L. Dames from his unpublished collection of Baluchi tales, and he remarks that wicked fakirs are rather rare in Indian stories.

A few things are told more gently here. In the original the fakir is burnt up in the pot of oil; here he simply tumbles in and that is the end of him. The children of “slave-girls” become the sons of serving women, and the herdsman who loses the wrestling match becomes a servant rather than a slave. The simurgh is a great bird from Persian legend.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Indian Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7128, The Prince and the Fakir)

Reading guidance: for mature readers. The story involves children promised and substituted as property, attempted killing in boiling oil, the fakir’s death and a wager of personal servitude.

A closer reading

The ant’s small dispute reveals what the king’s elaborate hidden room cannot conceal. She speaks of the princes only to protect her own grain of rice; the fakir turns this accidental testimony into knowledge of the king’s lie. The king is trying to keep his own children safe by offering other women’s children instead, so his fear does not make that substitution fair.

The prince’s refusal to approach the pot changes the balance between teacher and pupil. A respectful title cannot make a harmful command worthy of obedience. Later, he releases the fakir’s captives, yet accepts lifelong service as the stake of a wrestling match. The story’s heroic ending can be appreciated while questioning that unequal bargain and its assumption that royal birth proves worth.

Try this with the story

Compare three agreements: the king’s promise of a child, the prince’s response at the pot, and the herdsman’s wrestling wager. Identify who is being promised or put at risk, whether that person has a choice, and what a fairer agreement would require.

Talk about it

• Why did the king lie down where four roads met?
• How did the ants give away the king’s trick?
• Why do you think the prince said, “The teacher goes first”?
• How did the princess know the stranger was really a prince?

Related stories

• The Son Of Seven Mothers — another Indian tale of a prince hidden away as a child
• The Soothsayer’s Son — another Jacobs tale of a hero helped by animals
• The Ivory City And Its Fairy Princess — another prince’s journey from Indian Fairy Tales