Episode 122 – To Catch a Thief – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 122 Show Notes

Source: Indian Folklore

This week on MYTH, what happens when a cabal of thieves piss off a young dancer? You’ll learn that lightning plus dung equals magic, that powerful men have always been gross, and that you should never trust a wedding in the woods. Then, in Gods and Monsters, Sherlock Holmes has nothing on political minsters. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 122, “To Catch a Thief”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Diwali is fast approaching, so this week we’re diving into an Indian folktale. This one comes to us from Tales of the Sun or Folklore of Southern India by Lucas Cleeve (writing as Mrs. Howard Kingscote) and Pandit Natesa Sastri from 1890. In the ancient city of Kaivalyam in the southern part of India known as the Pandya country (after the ancient Pandya dynasty that once ruled the region), there lived a dancing girl named Muttumohana. This gem of womankind (according to the original text) was born into the humble dancing-girls’ caste, but this didn’t stop her from becoming very educated and pious. She would never so much as taste food without first going and worshiping in the temple of Shiva.
She was an incredibly skilled dancer and so she was able to move through high society, rubbing elbows with kings, ministers, and Brahmins (the most powerful caste). She avoided spending any time with the more humble people, by which I mean the lower castes and less powerful, no matter how rich they might be. Muttomohana had a daughter named Chandralekha, who was very much her mother’s daughter. She was put in the best schools beside the sons of those same kings, ministers, and Brahmins. Chandralekha was extremely intelligent (which showed even when she was first learning to read and write), so her teachers spent extra time on her schooling. In short order, the young girl became a great pandita (a learned woman). By birth she was of the dancing girl caste as her mother was before her, so she was only allowed to attend school until she reached the age of maturity. She soaked up knowledge before that, mastering the four Vedas and Sastras and the 64 different varieties of knowledge.
When Chandralekha aged out of school, her mother sat her down. “My beloved daughter, you have learned under your Brahmin teacher for the last 8 years. That kind of education does not come free, which means it’s time for you to pay the Brahmin the very large fee you owe him for having taught you so much. My daughter, I give you my blessing to take as much as you need from my hoard.” I mentioned that Muttomohana was very successful and, consequently, she was also very rich. Chandralekha was thrilled at her mother’s generosity, taking the offered key from her hand and filling up five thousand mohars (the currency at the time) in each of five baskets. Setting them on the heads of five maidservants, she went to the Brahmin’s house with betel leaves, areca nut flowers, and coconuts on a platter in her hands in addition to the money.
Prostrating herself on the ground as a sign of her respect, Chandralekha thanked him and rose to her feet. “My holy guru, you took great pains to enlighten me and destroy the darkness of ignorance in my mind for eight years. You taught me all the branches of knowledge and for that, I beg your holiness to accept this offering.” She held out the platter as the maidservants pushed forward the baskets of mohars. Instead of accepting this generous gift, the Brahmin surprised her. “My dear sweet Chandralekha, have you not noticed that I am teacher to princes and other sons of the wealthy elite of Kaivalyam? I have more than enough money. I don’t want a single mohar from you; what I want is your hand in marriage.”
Fuck that dude. He’s gross. Chandralekha flushed with shock, horrified to hear such a disrespectful statement come out of the mouth of someone she thought was a holy incarnation of perfection. She was still hoping to convince him that his request was unjust and get out of this without making things worse. “My holy master, please listen. I have such deep and abiding respect for you that, though your words seemed clear and direct, perhaps they are a test of my character. Surely you are aware of the rules that say a preceptor is to be regarded as a father by his student, which means I am essentially a surrogate daughter to your holiness. I humbly request that you forget the words your holiness uttered, accept the gift I brought, and let me go home.”
Alas, this was no test. The teacher was a gross fucker who had spoken in earnest. He did not respond to his student’s words, instead looking her young body up and down with a disturbingly lascivious look. Chandralekha no longer had any doubts about what the Brahmin’s intentions were. She backed away quickly and told her servants to take the money and run. This was going to be a real problem.
Back at home, Muttumohana was waiting anxiously her daughter’s return. Her stomach dropped as she saw the utter lack of her usual cheerfulness on her face and with all of the gifts still in tow. “What happened, daughter? What went wrong to make you so gloomy?” Chandralekha told her mother the whole sordid story, and her mother was glad that her daughter had such a strong, courageous heart. She blessed Chandralekha and said she would be wedded to a young husband and lead the life she wanted, dancing-caste or no. The money, she locked back up in her vault.
As you might expect, the Brahmin didn’t take denial from someone of such a lower caste well. He was, to put it simply, pissed the fuck off. He decided to make sure that she would never have a young, eligible man come courting and so spread rumors that she was possessed by a demon. Coming from such an ostensibly reputable source, everyone believed the story and refused to come by her house. A year went by, and the story of the demon infesting Chandralekha’s soul only became more and more widely believed.
At this time, a wandering sage happened by and stopped in to visit the famous Muttumohana. She was happy to host him and soon related the story of her daughter’s woes. He listened attentively, nodding at all the right places. “That’s terrible. Since pretty much everyone now believes that a demon has possessed your daughter, the only course of action is for her to perform a Durga Puja (a celebration of the goddess Durga over the demon-king Mahishasura) on the night of the new moon at the cremation ground. Once she does this, all will consider her to be cleansed and the young men will be willing to come around again. This will end the rumors.”
The sage soon left on his wandering again, leaving the mother and daughter to ponder his advice. It seemed to be a reasonable and clever solution to the situation. They both knew there was no demon, but there was no harm in performing the Durga Puja and it would put people’s minds at ease. Thus was it decided that Chandralekha would go to the cremation ground at midnight during the next new moon. Part of the ceremony required that the celebrant go alone, so she found herself by herself with a basket full of the ceremonial items and a lantern.
Now five kos (about five and a half miles) from Kaivalyam stood the great forest of Khandavam. From their base in this deep, dark wood, eight robbers wreaked terrible havoc on the surrounding countryside. On the night of the new moon (which was, of course, the darkest night of the month), these thieves were headed to the cremation ground to bury their ill-gotten booty from earlier in the night. Having concealed said stolen goods, these eight robbers decided that the night was still young, leaving them plenty of time to go forth and steal some more shit before sunrise. Their path happened to head towards the place where Chandralekha was performing her Durga Puja. Fortunately, the ceremony was quiet enough that she heard their approaching footsteps. No one else was supposed to be here, so footsteps could only signal something bad.
Hiding her small lantern under her now-empty basket, the young dancer hid in a small hollow in the ground where she hoped no one would see her. The robbers stumbled across the remains of the Durga Puja and rightly suspected that someone must be nearby to see their wicked deeds. They searched the cremation grounds without finding anyone but were too suspicious to let it go that easy. One of them took up a thieve’s tool known as a kannakkol, which was a great iron bar used to bore holes in the mud brick walls of homes and businesses. Legend said that true kannakkols were the remnants of thunderbolts that had struck a pile of cow dung, leaving the iron bar behind. These magical tools were said to have great power – if thrown, they could bore through even thick stone walls without making a sound, and they could obey their owner’s orders.
The chief of this band of thieves had such a magical kannakkol and so, when he threw it, the bar heeded his desire and flew directly into the hole where Chandralekha was hiding. Worse, it struck her in the back and began to silently bore into her flesh. Terrified but determined, the dancer seized the bar with both hands and pulled it out of her back, teeth gritted to avoid screaming in pain. Tossing it to the ground, she stood on it with both feet to keep it from giving her away. For reasons that are not adequately explained, the robbers decided that the bar disappearing meant everything was all clear and didn’t bother to go look for it. They buried their eight boxes of stolen treasure in the sands of the cremation ground and headed back into town to do some more thieving.
As soon as she was alone, Chandralekha emerged from her hidey-hole, claimed the iron rod as her own, and then unburied the eight boxes of treasure. Balancing all of it carefully, she hurried home to tell her mother everything that had happened in the darkness. Thinking quickly, she and her mother decided to empty the treasure boxes and fill them again with stones, scrap iron, and other useless shit. These boxes were left out in the open, two laid out beside each of the legs of her cot, and the women went to bed.
The night drew to a close, meaning it was time for the robbers to return to the cremation grounds to bury the next round of stolen goods. They couldn’t help but notice that eight fucking boxes of treasure weren’t were they left them. They searched around but found no sign of any of it, forcing them to conclude that someone had indeed been there and stolen what they had already rightfully stolen. The chief robber finally realized that the kannakkol he had thrown specifically with the intent of hitting any lurking person must have done exactly that. Their thief must have been wounded. They could use that for their own trickery.
One of the thieves disguised himself as an ointment vendor complete with actual ointment in a coconut bottle. In this getup, he walked the streets of Kaivalyam crying his wares. “Ointment for sale. The best ointment in all the city, guaranteed to cure new wounds and old sores. Buy my ointment and feel better immediately!” The other seven thieves assumed seven different disguises to move through the city in secret looking for someone with a telltale kannakkol wound.
One of Chandralekha’s maidservants had seen her mistress cleaning the obviously painful wound on her back. Hearing the fake ointment vendor’s call, she ushered him into the house to sell his miracle cure. Not suspecting this salesman was actually a thief, she excitedly went to tell Chandralekha the happy news of this miracle ointment. The clever dancer immediately recognized the brutish lout as a thief instead of a medicine vendor. Alas, the brutish lout was cunning and he too immediately recognized the wounded lady as their thief. They both played out the sham with Chandralekha buying some of this miracle ointment and both going on their way.
The fake salesman went back to rendezvous with his other seven thieves outside Kaivalyam. He told the others that he had found their mysterious box-thief who had robbed them of their treasure. They all agreed there was no sense in sitting idle on this, so they decided to break into the dancer’s house that very night to take back their treasure and kidnap their thief.
For her part, Chandralekha was equally prepared. The treasures were locked up in the vault and the boxes of bullshit were left out in the open (where the fake oil salesman had definitely seen them during his visit) next to the cot. Rightly suspecting that the thieves would strike again that night, she went to bed on the cot but only pretended to fall asleep. Sure enough, the robbers soon bored a hole in her bedroom wall with another kannakkol and entered the house. They saw what they assumed was their unsuspecting victim apparently asleep and chortled silently to themselves. Even better, they saw their eight boxes sitting beside her bed where she clearly thought she was guarding it, but she had been too weak and had fallen asleep on the job. “Look guys – that bitch is asleep on the job! Let’s take our boxes back tonight and come back to grab her tomorrow night.”
It seems like they should be able to manage both at once since the solitary dancer had managed to carry all eight boxes back by her lonesome, but whatever. Chandralekha let them go since all they were taking was the garbage bait. Each placed one box on their head and hurried out of the bored-out hole, then raced back to their cave. Only when they arrived in their hideout did they open the boxes and learn that they had been tricked. The chief robber smiled begrudgingly. “Clever girl. She can have her victory today – tonight, she’s going the fuck down.”
The robbers therefore spent the day kind of impressed with their target but also planning for her defeat. Said target was also busy that day. Chandralekha was certain the thieves would be breaking into her room again that night, so she sharpened the kannakkol into a small, deadly blade and hid it under her pillow. She usually kept her secret night snacks there (some betel leaves, nuts, and chunam to chew on if she got munchy around midnight). That done, she took a nap so that she could be rested for the night’s activity (having not had much sleep the night before). Soon, the sun was setting and the dancer was once more in bed pretending to sleep.
The eight robbers once more bored a hole into Chandralekha’s bedroom with their kannakkol and surveyed the scene. “That rotten thief slept clean through everything yesterday, so we don’t have to worry about her waking up tonight. Killing her here would be quicker and cleaner than she deserves. Let’s position ourselves around her bed, two to a corner. We can grab her bed together and drag her away on it to the woods with her being none the wiser. That way, we can torture and kill her slowly as punishment.”
Moving like a well-oiled machine, the robbers positioned themselves around the bed and lifted it without jostling it, carrying it out the hole and out of town without waking the sleeper. Thrilled at their unmitigated success, they carried her all the way to their cave hideout deep in the woods. Of course, you and I know that Chandralekha was never asleep and she certainly wasn’t idle while they were carrying her bed this long, long way. It was mango season, and many of the trees overhead were heavy with ripe and unripe fruit. She picked mangoes slowly, making the bed heavier until she felt confident that her kidnappers wouldn’t notice her own weight missing. Once she was satisfied, the nimble dancer grabbed hold of a branch overhead and pulled herself into the sky without a sound. The robbers carried the mango-laden bed without noticing that their quarry had escaped. Again.
Chandralekha sat in her leafy hiding place for the last few hours of that anxious night, not wanting to climb down and leave any trace of her escape in case the robbers discovered that they’d been tricked and doubled back. She doubted they’d think to look up, especially with no tracks. No one ever looks up.
Daybreak was nearing when the thieves reached their cave and set the bed (which had been balanced on their heads for easier carrying) on the ground. Only then did they notice that instead of a human woman, the bed contained only a heap of fresh mangoes. “Okay, seriously – what the actual fuck? Is this bitch a flesh-and-blood woman or a devil in disguise?” That was not entirely a rhetorical question. Given everything that had happened to them so far, they were seriously beginning to doubt that they were Chandralekha’s equal. Which, fair. The lieutenant answered his chief. “Dude, she’s definitely a normal, mortal woman. She’s sneaky, sure, but we can still catch her and kill her. Let’s head back to the woods. She must have slipped off the bed somewhere without us seeing her, but she still had to leave tracks.” Thus agreed, they ate a light meal (hey, it had been a long night of hard labor already and they were hungry) and then headed out to search for the dancer.
Day broke out in the wilderness, waking Chandralekha from a fitful, uncomfortable sleep. She could see now that she was deep in the jungle, which wasn’t great. She needed to get out of here, but after some deliberation, she decided to wait until later. The thieves would surely be looking for her by now; she didn’t fancy her odds in a straight-up fight, which is what would happen if they spotted her. Pulling out her bag of sneaky snacks, which she’d grabbed from under her pillow (along with the makeshift knife), the dancer made her own light meal and looked for a better hiding spot. She soon spotted a deep hollow in a tree that she could lower herself into from above, making her basically invisible from the ground. In her hopefully secure little bunker, Chadralekha settled in to wait for however long it took.
As she had suspected, the thieves were indeed looking for her, having split up to cover more ground. Any one of them should be able to handle one young girl if they found her, so this seemed like a wise plan. One of the thieves had chosen to head back along the path they’d taken to the cave, looking for any sign of the missing woman. Not too far from the tree where Chanralekha was in fact hiding, he noticed that the cover was unusually dense. Intuition said that this would be a very good place to hide, so he looked around a little. He didn’t find tracks but, as thick as the brush was here, that didn’t mean anything. What he needed was a better vantage point. The thief thus scurried up a tree to examine the area from up high – which meant he would also be able to spy into his prey’s hiding spot.
Once Chandralekha spotted the thief climbing up the tree, fear coursed through her. She was dead. That’s all there was to it, she was dead. There was no way he could miss her from where he was, almost close enough for her to reach out and touch. Even if she tried to scramble out of the hollow and lunge with the knife, he’d hear her coming long before she could extricate herself and he would be much more deadly with a blade. Just as she was losing all hope, a last desperate idea occurred to her.
As the thief turned towards her and spotted her in the hollow, Chandralekha put on her biggest smile, one tinged with just a touch of sultry seduction. “Hello there, future husband. It’s clear that God has fated for us to be wed, elevating you to the position of husband over me. As your wife, I ask for you not to raise the alarm. Come over here instead, quiet like, and we can have some married fun if you catch my drift. Sex. I mean sex in every position your dirty mind can think of. Nothing’s off limits since, as of this moment, you are my husband and I am your wife.”
Chandralekha was every bit her mother’s daughter, with all the beauty and charm that nature and years of training could afford her. The thief never stood a chance. He was completely convinced that this beautiful, lithe young woman was super into him and, forgetting everything he and the other robbers had agreed to, he nearly leapt into the hollow to take advantage of the marital bliss she was offering. She welcomed him with a smile and open arms, offering him some of her betel leaf to chew. It was customary at the time, especially among the less educated and illiterate of the kingdom, to chew betel leaf as a way of showing how deep their love is. Betel leaf dyes your tongue bright red and, so the theory went, the redder your tongue was, the more you loved your partner.
Chandralekha had already been chewing her leaf for a while, so she stuck out her tongue to show her new husband just how red it was, clearly indicating that her affection for him was genuine. Thrilled by this proof, he happily stuck out his own tongue to show his new bride that he too was super into her. She leaned in to examine his tongue more closely, holding it with her left hand to see it better. In one swift motion, she swiped with the knife in her right, slicing off that asshole’s tongue and nose. He stumbled back, bleeding and trying to scream (which didn’t work very well without a tongue). He couldn’t go far in the hollow, which made it easy for Chandralekha to slit his throat with the wickedly sharp knife. Leaving his corpse to cool in the tree, she moved to another nearby spot in the trees to wait.
By now, evening was fast approaching and the other seven robbers had all returned to the cave empty-handed. Seeing that their last member was delayed, they all figured he must have found their quarry and was delayed by having to man-handle her all the way back. They waited around their campfire for him to return as the new moon rose and then set, but of course he never returned. You know, cause he was super fucking dead.
Our heroine meanwhile had set out for home as soon as it started to get dark. She figured that with the corpse stiff in the tree, the others weren’t likely to be nearby. She hadn’t seen or heard anyone else the rest of the day, so she felt pretty confident that they wouldn’t find her before she could escape back to the city. It took her until midnight, but eventually she reached home once more and found her very worried mother. She related to her how well their plans had worked out. Then, she lay down in her mother’s bed (since hers was lost forever) and passed out into an exhausted slumber.
As morning dawned, Chandralekha awoke, stretched, and got back to work. The thieves had twice broken in by boring through her walls, so clearly that needed to be strengthened. Iron plates were added to the mud brick, which would hopefully do the trick even against a kannakkol. She cleaned her knife and put it back in her little bag, then added a bag of powdered chili peppers. As evening neared, she had a new bed brought in for her to sleep in, though she would of course not actually be sleeping again tonight. The thieves would eventually realize that there were only seven of them now and come back seeking revenge. She’d be waiting.
Sure enough, around midnight (these robbers are victims of their own habits it seems) they bored through her east wall. The iron plate proved inadequate to keep them out entirely but it did slow them down, making the resulting hole much smaller. One of the remaining seven thieves shoved a confused head through the hole (since that’s all that would fit) to figure out what the fuck was stopping his kannakkol from doing its job. Chandralekha had moved silently to the wall as soon as she noticed the hole being made and was waiting. With that deadly knife, she sliced off his nose, leaving only a ruined mess behind. Before he could pull his head back out of the small hole, she took a fistful of chili powder and ground it into the open wound. As you can imagine, it hurt like a burning motherfucker from hell and the maimed robber finally escaped the hole, screaming incoherently.
“You fucking dipshit, how could you let a little girl take your nose like that? Let me show you how it’s done, you pathetic fuck.” He used his own tool to open the hole a little wider (but not much, since the iron plate made it all much more difficult). He figured he had just enough room to squeeze through – if he sucked in his gut anyway. He shoved himself through but was only halfway there when the plucky dancer slashed once more with the knife, taking his nose as she had his partner’s. Proving that these thieves had more brute determination than actual cunning, each in turn insulted the previous robber, shoved himself into the hole, and had his nose cut the fuck off. Only once all seven had ruined, chili-burned holes instead of noses did they decide to stop this shit show and retreat. Fearing that they would be discovered if they remained, especially since they were now very distinct and easily identifiable, they fled back to the forest where they had to take a few days off from plundering and pillaging to nurse their mutilated faces.
Chandraleka was glad to have come out of this encounter on top once more, but she was also worried that each victory was just angering the robbers more. They would be desperate to regain their lost machismo from the young girl who had thrice defeated them, especially now that she had permanently disfigured and dishonored them. “I’ve probably got some time while they heal from those wounds, but they’ll be back in a few days. I can’t keep this up forever. They only have to get lucky one time to kill me. I’ve been clever enough to outfox them so far, but if they are able to make this a fair fight, I’m doomed.”
It was clearly time to stop handling this affair all on her own. Chandralekha headed over to the palace for an audience with the prince, who you might recall from the beginning of this tale was a former classmate of hers. It pays to have friends in high places. She related to him everything that had happened since stumbling across the robbers at the cremation grounds during the new moon. The prince was duly impressed with the dancer’s bravery and cleverness and was all too happy to offer his assistance the next time these wicked thieves made trouble for Chandralekha. He sent one of his spies to watch her house every night and report back to the palace immediately if they should be spotted.
The robbers were not spotted at Chandralekha’s house immediately however because, to put it bluntly, she’d scared the piss out of them. One of them had recognized the magical kannakkol she had turned into a knife, which only made their fear stronger. They didn’t want to challenge her on her home turf again. Instead, they devised a plan to invite her out to the forest under the pretense of a truce. They even hired a messenger to go to her house with the invite rather than risk one of themselves going, even in disguise (a missing nose is hard to hide).
“My honorable young lady, I have been sent here to present you with a chance at great fortune. From your home and your clothes, it is clear that you are a member of the dancing caste, yes? Perfect. The masters in the forest who sent me are giving a nautch (a traditional dance performed by professional dancers) as a gift to their relatives for a wedding that is to take place the day after tomorrow. You have impressed them and so, as a sign of their good faith, they offer you a jar of mohars for every minute of your performance.” That’s one hell of an offer, if it was legitimate. Which it very much was not.
Chandralekha wasn’t born yesterday and she knew who had to be behind this strange offer in the same forest she’d just escaped. She could use this though, so she told the messenger to come back the next morning to escort her to the nautch in the woods. As soon as he was gone, she headed over to the palace to inform the prince. “So you and I both know this is a trap, right princey? They’re definitely going to try and murder me when I go out there, which means that we need to kill them first. I’ve got a scheme. A proper nautch requires seven members plus the dancer: a drummer, a cymbal player, a nagasvara piper, and so on. Give me seven of your strongest fighters to pretend to be my musicians and have the rest of your troops lie in ambush in the woods. When the signal is given, they can rush in and capture the robbers.”
The prince thought her plan was quite clever and was once more impressed with this young dancer. He offered to be part of her fake nautch party as her drummer and chose six of his best commanders from the army to be the other six. Taking another thousand men, he would disperse them through the forest in ambush near where the nautch was to be performed. By sunrise, all were in place and waiting for Chandralekha’s signal.
A few hours after sunrise, the messenger returned to the dancer’s house to lead her to the nautch ambush. They stopped in the city to pick up her ‘musicians’ and then headed on to the forest. No sooner had they left than the spy left his hiding spot to inform the thousand soldiers to follow at a safe distance to lay their own counter-ambush for the seven surviving robbers. They traveled a long way through the forest before finally reaching the nautch pavilion that had been set up. By that time, they’d been traveling most of the day leaving only a few hours before sunset.
Surprising no one, her hosts for this ‘wedding’ were all either missing their noses or had their faces bandaged up in the nose region. I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you. Well, not that shocked. Chandralekha was so graceful and elegantly dressed, and her musicians so imposing, that the robbers decided to let her live just a little longer. “She’s already totally in our power with no chance of escape. What’s the harm in letting her dance for a while? We get to watch a really skilled performance and she gets to live (even though she doesn’t know she’s dancing for her life).” They all agreed that this seemed reasonable and so the order was given to begin the performance.
Chandralekha had literally trained for most of her life for this and she held her wicked audience captive with the strength and grace of her movements. She practically floated across the earth in one of the most beautiful displays any of them had ever seen. The subtle enchantment was suddenly shattered by the unexpected crash of the cymbals. This was, of course, the prearranged signal for the troops to attack. The seven musicians tossed their instruments aside, discarded their disguises, and leapt at the noseless robbers. Before the servants of the robbers (who were posing as wedding guests) could decide whether to leap into the fray, the larger force of soldiers emerged from the trees and ended any remaining resistance.
It wasn’t long before the city heard that the thieves who had been plaguing Kaivalyam had finally been captured. The prince paraded them through the streets so all could see that justice was being done and then he ordered them all beheaded. They had raped, robbed, and murdered many, many people over the years, so they had this coming. The robbers dealt with, the prince asked Chanradlekha for her hand in marriage. He had been deeply impressed by the dancer and, her low caste notwithstanding, realized that she was the most incredible woman he’d ever met. He was actually age-appropriate for her, so this was a much better match than the skeevy teacher who started this story. When the prince learned that her teacher (who had also been his teacher after all) was a creepy fuck, he banished the old asshole from the kingdom. Justice had been served and all who weren’t wicked lived happily ever after, which means it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s misplaced animal is the lost camel.
This fun little story also comes to us from Tales of the Sun. Once, long ago, there was a city called Alakapuri, which was famous for the great bounty it harvested from both land and sea. As such, it became a great trading hub and was settled by people from all over who spoke a myriad of languages. At this time, the city was ruled by King Alakesa, who all agreed was a wise and honorable man. In fact, he was such a just and diplomatic soul that the cow and the tiger settled their beef and drank peacefully side by side at the same pond; the cats and the rats played together like old friends instead of like Tom and Jerry; and the kite (a bird of prey) and the parrot laid their eggs in the very same nest as though they were family. The story says that ‘the women never deviated from the path of virtue and regarded their husbands as gods’, which I Do Not Like. Maybe Alakesa wasn’t as great as the story thinks. Anywho. The rain apparently came regularly (which seems like something outside the control of a king, no matter how good) and all of the city’s people lived in peace and happiness. That’s nice.
In the city of Alakapuri, there lived a rich merchant who, one day, lost one of his camels. Being a responsible merchant, he searched far and wide for it, looking in every direction with no luck. In time, he came to a road that led to the neighboring city of Mathurapuri, which was ruled over by King Mathuresa. The king and his four ministers – Bodhaditya, Bodhachandra, Bodhavyapaka, and Bodhavibhishana – had gotten into a nasty fight, the details of which have been lost, and all four quit the king’s employ. Being lifelong politicians, they agreed to set out together for another kingdom to try and find a job as ministers somewhere better.
As the four men traveled, they came across the tracks of a camel that had been traveling the other direction. Having nothing better to do, each commented on the tracks, making guesses as to the camel’s condition based on peculiarities they noticed in the hoofprints and other signs along the road. At some point, the four ministers met the rich merchant headed the other way, still looking for his camel. They got to talking and learned that their new acquaintance was looking for missing livestock. One asked if his animal was lame in its back left leg; the second if it was blind in its right eye; the third whether it had an unusually short tail; and the fourth asked if it wasn’t suffering from colic at the moment. The merchant answered all four questions with a confused and surprised yes and became utterly convinced that they must have seen his missing camel. Not an unreasonable leap of logic.
“Where did you see my camel? I’ve been looking for it all day and this is the closest I’ve come to finding it!” The ministers apologized and explained that they had not in fact seen the beast but had seen its trail and made inferences about it based on their observations. The merchant thought this sounded like a big pile of bullshit and figured they must be lying, which must also mean they were the one who had stolen his camel. He went immediately to King Alakesa and demanded that they be arrested for this clear crime.
The king listened to the merchant’s story (which, to his credit, he told exactly the way it had happened). He too felt it most likely that the four strangers had stolen the merchant’s camel. He sent his guards out to round them up and demand that they present themselves before him, threatening his extreme kingly displeasure if they were anything but totally honest. They promptly did so. “Explain to me how you could possibly know such incredibly specific details if you never saw the camel as you claimed.”
The first minister, Bodhaditya, stepped forward. “I noticed in the hoofprints that the back left one was always lighter than the others and slightly askew, so it seemed likely that the leg had been injured.” The second, Bodhachandra, joined him. “I noticed that the leaves on the trees along the left side of the road had been ripped off and chewed on but those on the right side were entirely untouched. That told me that the animal in question couldn’t see the leaves on its right, so that eye must be blind.” The third minister, Bodhavyapaka, stepped up as well. “Well I noticed some drops of blood along the camel’s trail. I’ve seen animals bitten to shit by flies and gnats, and this amount of blood seemed about right for that, which meant the camel’s tail must be too short to shoo them away.” The fourth and final minister, Bodhavibhishana, stepped up with his fellows. “And I observed that the front hoofprints were planted deep and firm but the back prints were faint and shallow. I therefore concluded that the poor camel must be suffering from belly pain and it was hunching over in a vain attempt to make it hurt less.”
The king listened to their explanations and had to admit that these all made perfect sense. Furthermore, he was deeply impressed by their power of observation and skilled deductions. Alakesa ruled in the ministers’ favor, decreeing that they had not in fact stolen the camel. To the merchant, he awarded 500 pagodas (the local currency) for the lost camel and sent him on his way. The four young men, he named his new ministers and bestowed each of them with several villages – that’s right, whole goddamned villages – as a gift for their wisdom and future service.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth, on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod, and on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’re bound south for Australia. You’ll learn how to make a perfect trap, how to use your dreams to spy, and how to capture a chilly breeze. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet a constellation that we’ve met before in a whole new story. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.