The Brahman’s Wife and the Mungoose

This story is from Tales of the Sun or Folklore of Southern India by Georgiana Kingscote and Natesa Sastri (1890); online text.

Note: This story is found all over the world, most famous in the Welsh tale of Beth Gelert. Dan Ashliman has collected many variants, including the Indian story of the mongoose, here: Llewellyn and His Dog Gellert and other folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 178A.

Story of the Brahman’s Wife and the Mungoose

On the banks of the Ganges, which also flows by the most holy city of Banaras, there is a town named Mithila, where dwelt a very poor Brahman called Vidyadhara. He had no children, and to compensate for this want, he and his wife tenderly nourished in their house a mungoose—a species of weasel. It was their all in all—their younger son, their elder daughter—their elder son, their younger daughter, so fondly did they regard that little creature.

(mongoose)

The god Visvesvara and his spouse Visalakshi observed this and had pity for the unhappy pair; so, by their divine power they blessed them with a son. This most welcome addition to their family did not alienate the affections of the Brahman and his wife from the mungoose; on the contrary, their attachment increased, for they believed that it was because of their having adopted the pet that a son had been born to them. So the child and the mungoose were brought up together, as twin brothers, in the same cradle.

It happened one day, when the Brahman had gone out to beg alms of the pious and charitable, that his wife went into the garden to cull some pot-herbs, leaving the child asleep in his cradle, and by his side the mungoose kept guard. An old serpent, which was living in the well in the garden, crept into the house and under the cradle, and was beginning to climb into it to bite the child when the mungoose fiercely attacked it and tore it into several pieces, thus saving the life of the Brahman’s little son, and the venomous snake, that came to slay, itself lay dead beneath the cradle.

Pleased at having performed such an exploit, the mungoose ran into the garden to show the Brahman’s wife its blood-smeared mouth, but she rashly mistook the deliverer of her child for his destroyer, and with one stroke of the knife in her hand with which she was cutting herbs she killed the faithful creature, and then hastened into the house to see her dead son.

But there she found the child in his cradle alive and well, only crying at the absence of his little companion, the mungoose, and under the cradle lay the great serpent cut to pieces. The real state of affairs was now evident, and the Brahman presently returning home, his wife told him of her rash act and then put an end to her life. The Brahman, in his turn, disconsolate at the death of the mungoose and his wife, first slew his child and then killed himself.