The Wise Jackal

Long ago there lived two princesses, Nala and her younger sister Dehra. Their father, the Rajah, spent all his time on the business of his kingdom and hardly noticed them. Their stepmother was cruel to them, and everyone in the palace, even the servants, was afraid of her. So although the girls lived among beautiful things, nobody ever tried to make them happy.

One day Nala said, “Dehra, I’m going to run away. Will you come too?”

“But where would we go?” asked Dehra.

“Anywhere we like,” said Nala. “We’ll start with the jungle. We can build a hut out of branches and sleep on grass and flowers, and there’s fruit everywhere.”

“Then I’ll put on my blue silk sari and my pearls,” said Dehra, “and you wear your yellow silk and your rubies, so anyone we meet will see that we’re princesses.”

“No, robbers might carry us off for our jewels,” said Nala. “Let’s knot them into the corners of our saris instead. We can keep our bangles on, though. Bangles won’t mark us out here.”

Off they went, deeper and deeper into the jungle. There was fruit to pick whenever they were hungry, green parrots darting through the leaves and monkeys chattering and swinging overhead. The sisters had not felt so happy in a long while.

Then, in a clearing, they found a palace built of white marble. Its huge gate stood open, and above it shone a line of golden writing:

“Come in, Nala, have no fear; Silver and gold are waiting here.”

As they watched, the golden letters shifted and made a new verse:

“Dehra, follow where she goes, And learn how Fate both gives and throws.”

Dehra shivered. “Your verse is much nicer than mine, Nala. Mine gives me goosebumps.”

“Mine scares me a bit too,” Nala admitted. “What if this palace belongs to a Rakshas?” A Rakshas is an ogre, and who else would put up such a grand palace in the middle of a jungle?

“Then he could come home any minute and gobble us up!” said Dehra. “Let’s go.”

Just then a small jackal with a kind face trotted up. “Don’t worry, the Rakshas is away,” he said. “You can stay in his palace for a good long time, and I’ll warn you before he comes home.”

So the sisters walked in through the gate and across the courtyard. Inside there was gold, there were jewels, there were silk dresses, and there was a marble bathing pool filled with clear water where they could bathe each day. Red lotus flowers floated on the pool, and the girls tucked some into their hair, because, in this tale’s royal world, the red lotus marks a princess.

“Listen,” Nala said one day. “If you’re on your own here and a stranger comes asking for food or water, rub charcoal on your face and put on some rags first, so you look plain.”

“Whatever for?” asked Dehra.

“Because if a stranger sees how pretty you are, he’ll take you away, and we’ll lose each other.”

“Then you must do it too,” said Dehra. “You’re even prettier than I am.” They peered into the pool to look at themselves. The sisters stood side by side, each worried about losing the other.

Some time later, Dehra was off in the jungle chatting with the jackal when a prince rode up to the palace with his servants. They had been hunting, and they were hot and longing for a drink. Nala quickly pulled rags over her silk sari and blackened her face with charcoal before she went to the gate.

The servants burst out laughing at the sight of a grubby girl in rags living in such a grand palace. But the prince thought, “Wash her face and mend her clothes, and she’d be very pretty indeed.”

Nala could not understand the prince’s language, but at last she worked out that he wanted water and fetched him a full jug. To her amazement, instead of drinking, he tipped some of it over her head!

“Oh!” cried Nala, stepping back. The water had washed the charcoal away, and the prince saw the most beautiful girl he had ever set eyes on, rags and all. He loved her from that moment. The rags were pulled away, and there she stood in her yellow silk with her rubies at her throat, lovelier still.

“I am a Rajah’s son,” said the prince, “and I will take you home to my father’s palace and marry you.”

His servants brought a palanquin, a curtained chair carried on poles, and set Nala inside, and off they went through the jungle. Nala peeped out between the curtains at the prince on his white horse, at the swinging monkeys and the flashing parrots, and remembered the day she and Dehra had escaped together.

“Oh, Dehra,” she wept, “I need you. What will you do all alone?”

Then she had an idea. She tore a scrap from the edge of her sari, wrapped a ruby in it and let it fall to the ground. Every so often she did it again, so that a trail of rubies stretched behind her. When only one was left, they arrived at the palace of the prince’s parents, the Rajah and the Rani. Nala remembered the golden words over the gate, which had told Dehra to follow her, and she dropped her last ruby right outside the palace. “If Dehra comes after me,” she thought, “the rubies will show her the way.”

The Rajah and the Rani were overjoyed to welcome such a beautiful girl. The Rajah gave her a fresh necklace of rubies, the Rani was proud to have her as a daughter-in-law, and within a week she and the prince were married. Everybody was kind to her.

Back in the Rakshas’s palace, though, Dehra wept and wept. “Nala! Nala! Where have you gone?” she called, again and again, but there was no answer. She wandered out past the lotus pool, sure that someone had stolen her sister, and stared up at the golden words that had promised Fate would be both kind and cruel.

“Only half of that has come true,” she said out loud.

“And which half is that?” asked a voice behind her. It was the jackal.

“The cruel half,” Dehra sobbed. “Fate hasn’t been kind to me at all.”

“That’s not very grateful,” said the jackal. “You’ve been living like a queen in a marble palace for ages. It’s hardly fair to say you’ve had no good luck.”

Dehra only cried harder.

“Anyway, that’s not why I came,” said the jackal. “The Rakshas is heading home, and you need to leave now.” He was a wise jackal, so he added, “Don’t worry. Things will come right, and I’ll help you find your sister.”

The two of them set off through the jungle, and before long the jackal’s sharp eyes picked out a small bundle of yellow silk in the grass, with a ruby inside. Then they found another, and another, until the trees thinned out and they came to open country.

“This is as far as I can go,” said the jackal. “Out here there are towns, and towns are full of men, and men can’t stand jackals.”

“Then what am I to do?” asked Dehra.

“You must look like an old woman,” said the jackal, “or somebody will snatch you away and you’ll never find Nala.”

He showed her a plant whose juice stained her face a dull brown, and he taught her how to make her skin look wrinkled. Then he slipped off to a cottage nearby, where an old woman had spread a coarse red sari over a bush to dry, and came trotting back with it in his mouth.

“Where did you find that?” asked Dehra.

“Oh, it was growing on a bush,” said the jackal. So Dehra wrapped herself in it and set off down the road, bent and slow like an old woman.

Now and then she came upon another of Nala’s rubies. Sometimes there was a long gap between them, but in the end the trail led her into a city, and the very last ruby lay by the gate of the Rajah’s palace. Dehra sat down nearby and wondered how she could ever get inside.

When evening came, the wife of a poor workman felt sorry for the tired old woman and let her sleep in a hut at the bottom of her garden. That garden ran right up to the palace grounds, where there was a marble pool full of red lotus flowers.

“I’ll bathe in that pool every morning,” Dehra decided, “very early, before anyone is up.”

And so she did. The water washed off the brown stain and the wrinkles. She rinsed the old red sari and hung it on a branch, dressed in her own blue silk and pearls, and sat on the steps with lotus flowers in her hair, feeling like a princess once more. But the lotus flowers reminded her of Nala, and she missed her sister more than ever.

After a few days, the Rajah’s gardeners reported that somebody was picking his lotus flowers every morning before dawn. The Rajah was furious and announced a reward for anyone who caught the thief.

“Keep your reward, Father,” said his second son, a very handsome prince. “I’ll catch the thief for nothing.”

“He’ll manage it easily,” said the Rani, who thought the world of him.

That night the prince paced round and round the garden until he was too tired to stay on his feet. He lay down beside the pool and fell fast asleep, and when he opened his eyes the sun was coming up. There on the marble steps sat a beautiful girl in blue silk, with pearls round her neck and lotus flowers in her hair.

He sprang to his feet. “Surely you’re not the thief!”

“I never meant to steal,” Dehra whispered.

“They’re only my father’s flowers. Take as many as you want,” said the prince, and he could not stop gazing at her.

“No, no!” said Dehra, hurrying to grab the old red sari. “Please don’t tell anyone you saw me.”

“You must be from the same country as Nala,” said the prince. “You talk just like her.”

Dehra let the red sari fall. “Nala is here? You know her?” she asked. She had not heard anyone say her sister’s name for so long that it sounded like music.

“Of course she’s here,” said the prince. “She’s married to my brother, and we all love her. People call her the Star of the Palace. But you are even prettier.”

When she heard that, Dehra stopped being afraid.

“Come on, let’s go and find Nala,” said the prince. He took her hand and led her indoors.

“Why, she’s the image of the young Rajah’s wife!” cried everyone they met.

He brought Dehra before his parents, and she told them who she was and how far she had travelled to find her sister. Then the prince asked if he might marry her, and the Rajah and the Rani liked her so much that they told him he could marry her as soon as he wished.

After that, Dehra was taken to a lovely room with silk hangings and lamps that glittered with jewels. Nala sat there in rich silks and jewels, in the dress of her new household, but her face was sad, because she was thinking of the sister she thought she had lost.

She looked up, and there was Dehra. “Oh, Dehra!” she cried. “Fate has been kind after all!” The two sisters hugged and kissed and could not let each other go. When Nala heard that Dehra would marry her husband’s brother, and that all four of them would live in the palace together, she could hardly believe her ears.

“The jackal promised me it would all come right,” said Dehra, “and it has.”

“What a good jackal he is,” said Nala. “Those golden words over the Rakshas’s gate should be changed to say:

‘Search near, search far, and you will find That Fate to patient hearts is kind.’

If he were here, I’d ask him to arrange it.”

About this tale

This tale comes from The Magic Bed: A Book of East Indian Fairy-Tales, edited by Hartwell James and illustrated by John R. Neill, published in Philadelphia in 1906 as part of a series of fairy-tale books for American children.

Many Indian folk tales have a helpful jackal, the clever animal who knows the jungle and the ways of people. In this story the jackal is a good friend to the princesses, even if he is a little too fond of finding saris “growing on bushes.”

Read the original: Hartwell James (ed.), The Magic Bed: A Book of East Indian Fairy-Tales (Project Gutenberg #37708)

Reading guidance: For ages 9–12 with adult discussion. The story includes neglect, threatened capture, a girl carried away to marriage, and disguises used for safety; the ogre stays offstage.

A closer reading

Nala turns possessions meant to advertise rank into a private route back to her sister. Each dropped ruby costs her something and helps Dehra proceed even when the trail has gaps. The jackal’s skill is practical: he recognizes the signs and knows where his help must stop because humans endanger him outside the forest.

The palace offers comfort without safety. Nala is taken away before she can explain herself, and Dehra later fears being carried off too. Their disguises answer that danger; the girls’ beauty does not make abduction romantic or their wishes unimportant. The eventual marriages resolve separation within the tale, but the princes’ and parents’ decisions receive more attention than the sisters’ consent.

The jackal is both helpful and imperfect. Calling Dehra ungrateful ignores her immediate grief for her missing sister, and the sari did not really grow on a bush: he stole it from another woman. These details make room to appreciate his assistance without treating everything he says or does as wise.

Try this with the story

Follow the ruby trail in three stages: Nala creates it, the jackal recognizes it, and Dehra continues alone. Write what each contributes. Then rewrite the jackal’s first response to Dehra so that he acknowledges her fear before offering practical help.

Talk about it

• How did Nala make sure her sister could find her?
• Was the jackal right to call Dehra ungrateful? Why or why not?
• Why do you think the golden letters gave the sisters different verses?

More stories like this

• The Match-Making Jackal — another Indian tale where a kind jackal helps someone find a royal match
• The Fish Prince — another tale from The Magic Bed
• The Jackal And The Partridge — another Indian tale about a clever jackal