There was a raja and a raksasi, a man-eating ogress. When he went hunting, the raksasi fell in love with him; so she changed herself into a beautiful woman and returned with him.

The raja already had a queen, who was pregnant. Every night, when it grew dark, the raksasi-queen transformed into her demonic form, left the palace, and ate horses, elephants, and cattle—one animal each night.

One night, when she ate the royal elephant, the guards saw her. She realised she had been caught and feared the worst. But then she had an idea: she disguised herself to look like the first wife, entered the palace in that form, and slipped into the queen’s room.

When the guards witnessed this, they thought, “Terrible! That raksasi who’s been eating horses and elephants is the queen herself!” Inside the room where the queen lay sleeping, the raksasi smeared blood on the queen’s face and hid away.

When the guards knocked and the queen opened the door, they saw blood all over her face and clothes. “She’s the raksasi!” they cried. “She’s the one who’s been devouring our animals!” They threw her in jail. But that wasn’t all—they plucked out both her eyes, placed them in a box, and sent them to her elder sister.

While imprisoned, the queen gave birth to a son. He grew up in jail and was told the tale of how his mother had eaten the royal elephant. When he protested that no one should speak such things about his mother, they exiled him to the forest.

“Somehow,” he thought, “I must discover the truth.” And when he learned that the raksasi had taken on his mother’s form, he made a vow that she would suffer no longer.

Determined, he wandered through the land and eventually arrived at the home of his mother’s sister. She, too, was a raksasi, but she took the boy in and raised him in a cave. She also kept a girl there—a girl who fell in love with the boy and confided in him:

“I’m not a raksasi. I’m a princess whom this ogress kidnapped. She’s keeping me here, fattening me up so she can eat me. Be very careful what you say and where you go.”

“All right,” the boy replied, “but you must find out where she keeps her life-index.”

That night, the girl went to the raksasi and began to cry.

“Why are you crying?” asked the sister.
“You’re hiding something from me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re raising me—but what if you die? Then who will look after me?”
“Ah! No one can kill me! My soul—and my younger sister’s soul—are safe, hidden in the form of bees inside a banyan tree beyond the seventh sea. The tree is guarded by bhutas. So don’t worry, my girl.”

She had spoken the truth. The next day, once the raksasi had left, the girl told the boy everything.

He set off at once, swimming across the seven seas and fighting off snakes and all manner of dangers, until at last he reached the banyan tree. He climbed it, caught the two bees, and—though his arm swelled painfully—he held on tight and placed them in a box. Then, using magic, he flew back to the girl.

There, he took the form of a bee and battled one of the raksasi-bees—locking legs with its legs, arms with its arms—and finally crushed it. He then transformed into a horse and fled with the girl to the prison where his mother—still blind—was being held.

At that very moment, she was about to be hanged. But the boy opened the box and crushed the final bee. Instantly, it turned into the raksasi-queen.

“Raja!” he cried. “Look—here is the true raksasi!”

He removed the noose from his mother’s neck, restored her eyes, and they all lived happily ever after.

A folk story from Tamil Nadu, sourced from ‘Moral Fictions: Tamil Folktale from the Oral Tradition‘ collected by Stuart Blackburn.

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