Fairy Tale Flip is a monthly collaboration between @donnaleefields and myself where we choose one fairy tale each month and find its deeper meanings. We are giving audience members the option to help us choose which story of the THREE you would like us to look deeper into. Here are the February options.
This is an abbreviated version of the tale from India. The original story can be found here.
In a certain town, the king had two daughters and a son.
The older daughter was married. In the same town there lived an old woman with her two daughters. She did menial jobs to feed and clothe and bring up her children. When the girls reached puberty, the younger sister said one day, sister, I’ve been thinking of something. It’s hard on mother to work all day for our sakes. I want to help her. I will turn myself into a flowering tree. You can take the flowers from the tree and sell them for good money. First, sweep and wash the entire house. Then take a bath. Go to the well and bring back two full pitchers of water. I will sit under this tree and meditate. I want you to pour water from this pitcher all over my body. I’ll turn into a flowering tree.
And he hid himself in the tall tree in front of the house and watched. He saw how the sisters made the flowers and decided he had to have the younger sister as his bride. He told the king and queen, and a marriage was arranged. The family made ritual designs on the wedding floor as large as the sky, and built a canopied ceremonial tent as large as the earth. All the relatives arrived at an auspicious moment. The girl who knew how to become a flowering tree was given in marriage to the prince. After a nuptial ceremony, the families left the couples together alone in a separate house. You know how to turn into a flowering tree, don’t you? Let me see you do it. We can then sleep on the flowers and cover ourselves with them.
That would be lovely, the prince told his new bride. My lord, I’m not a demon. I’m not a goddess. I’m an ordinary mortal like everyone else. Can a human being become a tree? I don’t like all this lying and cheating. I saw you the other day becoming a beautiful tree. I saw you with my own eyes. If you don’t become a tree for me, who will you do it for? So she agreed. She instructed him on how and when to pour the water while she sat in the middle of the room meditating. So the prince poured one pitcher full of water over her. She turned into a flowering tree. The fragrance of the flowers filled the house. He plucked the flowers he wanted very carefully, and then sprinkled the water from the second pitcher all over the tree. It became his bride again.
She shook her tresses and stood up smiling. They spread the flowers, covered themselves with them, and went to bed. They did this again and again for many days. The prince’s sister, his younger sister, wanted some of the flowers that the prince threw out of his window every day. She discovered the secret of the flowering tree and decided she wanted some fresh flowers of her own. So she convinced her mother, the queen, to let her take the new princess to the orchard with some of her friends from the court. Once in the orchard, she insisted that the younger sister become a flowering tree and give her flowers. Sister in law, you can become a flowering tree. Look, no one here has flowers for her hair. The sister in law replied angrily. Che, you’re awful by coming here. It was a mistake.
But then she agreed to become a tree. She sent for two pitchers of water, uttered chants over them, instructed the girls on how and when to pour the water and then sat down to meditate. The silly girls didn’t listen carefully. They poured the water on her indifferently. Here and there she turned into a tree, but only half of a tree. It was already evening and it began to rain with thunder and lightning. In her greed to get the flowers, the younger sister and the other friends tore up the sprouts and broke the branches. They were in a hurry to get home, so they poured the second pitcher of water at random and ran away. When the princess changed from a tree to a person again, she had no hands and no feet. She had only half a body. She was a wounded carcass.
A farmer found her half body in a ditch and brought her to a nearby town and then left her by the well. Meanwhile, when the king’s daughter went home, the queen asked her, where’s your sister in law? What will your brother say? The girl answered casually, who knows? Didn’t we all find our way home? Who knows where she went? The queen was very upset and her son came to find out where his new wife was. The queen didn’t know. Oh, something terrible has happened to her, thought the prince. He went and lay down in grief. Five days passed, six days passed, 15 days passed. But there was no news of his wife. They couldn’t find her anywhere. Meanwhile, the girl, who was now a thing, somehow reached the town in which her husband’s elder sister had been given in marriage.
And every time the palace servants and maids passed that way to fetch water, they used to see her. They would say to each other, she glows like the king’s daughter. Then one of them couldn’t stand it any longer and decided to tell the queen about this thing by the well. The prince’s older sister brought the half princess to her palace and recognized her. She tried to heal her, but her arms and legs did not grow. Meanwhile, the prince began looking for his wife and he came near his elder sister’s palace. And when he was brought inside, he was like a dead man. He was so consumed with grief because he wanted to find his bride that he would have nothing to do with anyone else. The queen sent maidens to his room, but he did not touch any of them.
Finally, one of the servant maids got together, dressed up the thing and then sat her at the foot of the prince’s bed. That night the thing pressed and massaged the prince’s legs with a stump of her arm and she moaned strangely. The prince got up and looked at it. It was sitting at his feet. He stared at it for a few moments and then realized it really was his long lost wife. Then he asked her what had happened. She, who had no language all these months, suddenly broke into words. She told him whose daughter she was, whose wife? And what had happened. What shall we do now? He asked. Nothing much. We can only try. Bring two pitchers of water without touching them with your fingernails. So that night he brought two pitchers of water without anyone’s knowledge.
The princess uttered chants over them and instructed him, pour the water from this pitcher over me and I’ll become a tree. Wherever there is a broken branch, set it right. Wherever a leaf is torn, put it together. Then pour the water from the second pitcher over me. Then she sat down and meditated. He poured the water upon her. From the first pitcher she became a tree. But the branches had been broken, the leaves had been torn. He carefully set each one right and bound them up and gently poured the water from the second pitcher over the tree. Now she became a whole human again. She stood up, shaking the water from her hair, and fell at her husband’s feet. Then she went and woke up the queen, her sister in law, and touched her feet also. She told the astonished queen the whole story.
The queen wept and embraced her. Then she treated the couple to all kinds of princely food and service and had them sit in the hall like bride and bridegroom for a ritual celebration called Hasei. She kept them in the palace for several weeks and then sent them home to her father’s palace with a cartload of gifts. The king was overjoyed at the return of his long lost son and daughter in law. He met them at the city gates, then took them home on an elephant hauda in a grand ceremonial procession through the city streets. In the palace, they told the king and the queen everything that had happened. The king had seven barrels of burning lime poured into a great pit and threw his youngest daughter into it. All the people who saw it said to themselves, after all, every wrong has its punishment.
So that’s the story of a flowering tree. Please let us know if that’s the one you want us to explore here in the facebook group when we do our poll. Send in any questions you have about it and we will use those questions as part of our discussion, and it’s going to be a live episode. So please find the link below and join us for this celebration of fairy tales and their hidden meanings.
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