A Kuruk story from Karikot on the Indrawati River, Bastar State

An old man and his wife lived in a village. They had seven sons, of whom six were married, the youngest remaining unmarried. When the old parents died, the seven brothers lived together. The six elder brothers worked hard in their fields, but the youngest spent his time playing with traps.

One day the six brothers said to one another, ‘We all do the work, and this mailotia does nothing but lives on us. Let us therefore kill him.’ So saying, they dug a very deep pit at one side of their field.

That night they said to the youngest boy, ‘Tomorrow you are to bring our pej to the field; if you don’t we’ll beat you.’ Next day, before the boy arrived, the eldest brother threw his axe into the pit. When the boy came with the pej, his eldest brother said to him, ‘Brother, my axe has fallen into the pit; do go and bring it out for me.’

When the boy went down into the pit, the brothers threw earth and stones on top of him and buried him. Then they went home weeping loudly.

Now in that pit was a karandia rat: it had burrowed a great hole from the bottom out into the jungle above. Through this the boy escaped and set out for home.

When he arrived home, he found his brothers arranging his death ceremonies. When they saw him, they were afraid, and the boy told everyone there what had happened, saying, ‘I will never live with them again.’

So saying he went to the jungle and made himself a house out of cow dung. Soon Mahapurub sent a young fisher-girl to him; he married her and they lived together in their house of dung.

A folktale sourced from Folk Tales Of Mahakoshal, by Verrier Elwin.
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