The Dead Prince and the Talking Doll is an Indian folktale collected by scholar A. K. Ramanujan in Kannada. It tells the story of a princess destined to marry a seemingly dead man, who is, in reality, under a curse, his body prickled by numerous pins. The princess begins a task of removing the pins to revive the prince, but a servant replaces her and claims the prince's resurrection as her doing. Finally, the princess is given a talking doll she reveals her story to, which alerts the prince of the truth.
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 894, "The Ghoulish Schoolmaster and the Stone of Pity", for the alternate object the heroine may tell her tale to, but, before the 2004 revision, it was indexed as type AaTh 437, "The Needle Prince". Variants of the type are reported in India.
Summary A princess is visited by a beggar man (bava) who comes for alms and predicts she will marry a dead man. One day, the king overhears the beggar man's prophecy and asks his daughter the meaning of the man's words. The princess explains the beggar man has visited her for the past twelve years and has always uttered this prophecy to her, since she was a little girl. The king decides to avert this fate for his daughter and departs from the kingdom with the whole family.
Meanwhile, the story takes a turn to explain how a prince from a neighbouring kingdom fell deathly ill and seemed to die, but his body looked as if it was in a state of sleep. Astrologers divined that he would be that way for twelve years, and the king places his son's body in a bungalow outside his kingdom, only to be accessed by his destined bride. Before the king exits the improvised mausoleum, he writes a warning that only a chaste woman who has made offerings to the gods for her husband can enter the door to the bungalow, only her and nobody else.
The action returns to the first king and his family: they stop by the forest to cook a meal, while the princess goes for a walk and finds the bungalow. She touches the door and it lets her in, locking her inside. The princess wanders through the bungalow's twelve door and discovers the body of the prince. She realizes the beggar man's words have become true, and finds provisions the prince's family have left for twelve years. The princess then decides to stay there and take care of the prince's body. In the forest, the princess's family notices the girl is missing and go to look for her. Her father finds the house and hears his daughter's cries coming from the bungalow, then asks how she entered it. The princess explains the door opened for her, but they locked her in and she cannot leave, then mentions the dead man's body. Her father then concedes that this is the princess's destiny, and leaves her to her fate.
The princess holds a long, 12 year vigil on him, bathing the body and making offerings for the gods. In the tenth year, the princess feels lonely and longs for a female companion, when an acrobat girl appears outside the bungalow. She contorts herself and enters the building. The princess rejoices she has a companionship to endure the end of the vigil. After two more years, the princess hears a bird chirp outside, saying that the time of the vigil is at an end and the girl should take the leaves from a certain tree, make a juice out of it and give it to the prince in a silver cup. The princess follows the bird's instructions and prepares the concoction to awaken the prince, but goes for a bath before she does it. The acrobat girl sees the concoction and asks the princess what it means. The princess tells the acrobat girl what the bird said and goes to take a bath. While she is busy, the acrobat girl takes the potion and pours down the prince's mouth. The prince wakes up uttering Siva's name, and sees the acrobat girl, who introduces herself as his wife.
The princess returns and finds the prince, now revived, and the girl in private conversation, then relents that happiness is not for her. Later, the prince begins to notice differences between the girl who claims to be his wife and the one that acts as their servant, and suspects something is amiss. Later, he decides to go on a hunt, and asks the two girls what he can bring them: the acrobat girl asks for dry bread (which alerts the prince of her true character) and the princess asks for a talking doll. The prince returns with the gifts, and that night the talking doll asks the princess to tell her a story. The princess recounts everything that happened to her, including how the acrobat took the silver cup. The prince overhears the whole story, whips the acrobat girl with a switch to expel her, and goes to meet the princess, his true saviour. Outside, the prince's family, who has waited twelve long years for his revival, finds the couple inside, the prince back to life and with his loving princess. The prince's family sends for the princess's family, who go to their daughter's wedding.Ramanujan, A. K. Folktales from India: a selection of oral tales from twenty-two languages. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. pp. 207-212. .Ramanujan, A. K. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. University of California Press, 1997. pp. 38-43. .
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type AaTh 437, "The Supplanted Bride (The Needle Prince)":Ramanujan, A. K. Folktales from India: a selection of oral tales from twenty-two languages. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. p. 339. . the heroine is prophesied to marry a dead man, enters a castle and finds a prince on a slab as if he is dead. Alternatively, the heroine must remove the pins from his sleeping body, or hold a long vigil on him for forty days; the heroine tires on the second-to-last day and hires a servant to cover for her, who supplants her as the prince's saviour; next, the prince goes to the market and brings back three objects on the heroine's request, to which the heroine reveals the servant's deceit and through which the prince learns the whole truth.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 149.Cardigos, I. (2006). [Review of Sommeils et Veilles dans le Conte Merveilleux Grec. FF Communications 279, by M. Papachristophorou]. Marvels & Tales, 20(1), 109–117 . http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388781
Similarly, Kannada scholarship abstracted a similar tale type from Karnataka, also indexed as 437 ("೪೩೭", in the original): a princess is prophecised to marry a dead man and finds his corpse inside a palace; she is locked in and holds a vigil for him for a certain period, until a potter girl, who has joined the heroine, tricks the revived dead man into thinking she is his saviour; the heroine is made to be the potter girl's maidservant, until she tells her story to a talking doll or to parrots; the revived dead man learns of the princess's tale and punishes the potter girl.
The tale type is also closely related to AaTh 425G, "False Bride Takes Heroine’s Place". However, the last major revision of the International Folktale Classification Index, published in 2004 by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, subsumed tale type AaTh 437 as new type ATU 894, "".Avard Jivanyan. Anthropomorphic Dolls as Otherworldly Helpers in the International Folk Tale. 8th International Toy Research Association World Conference, International Toy Research Association (ITRA), Jul 2018, Paris, France. ffhal-02114234fCorreia, Paulo. "Notas e Recensões: Hans-Jörg Uther, The types of international folktales. A classification and bibliography, Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004, 3 volumes: FFC 284 (619 pages) + FFC 285 (536 pages) + FFC (284 pages)". In: E.L.O n. 1314 2007. p. 325. Cardigos, I. (2006). [Review of Sommeils et Veilles dans le Conte Merveilleux Grec. FF Communications 279, by M. Papachristophorou]. Marvels & Tales, 20(1), 109–117 . http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388781
Combinations Ramanujan states that the story is combined in India with a local version of the King Lear judgment, indexed as type AT 923B (after 2004, ATU 923B), "The Princess Who Was Responsible for Her Own Fortune".Ramanujan, A. K. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. University of California Press, 1997. p. 218. . In the same vein, according to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437 may borrow as a starting episode sequences from other types, such as from ATU 923, "Love Like Salt".
Motifs The heroine's role According to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437, "The Needle Prince", is thus called for the task the heroine must undertake in Indian, Persian and Tajik variants: remove the pins or needles from the prince's body.
The heroine is also considered to be more active, since the prince is the one who is in a passive state, and discovers the truth by heroine's actions, who asks for the objects she will reveal the tale to.
The heroine's confidante The heroine may tell her sorrows to the stone of patience, which is replaced by a doll or a "patience box" in other tales. The stone of patience serves to reveal the truth, since another person eavesdrops on the heroine's confession. In some tales, the heroine's suffering is so strong, the stone explodes or melts.
Interpretations Ramanujan cited it as an example of "woman-centered folktale",Ramanujan, A. K. "A Flowering Tree: A Women's Tale". In: Syllables of Sky: Studies in South Indian Civilization. Oxford University Press, 1995. pp. 21, 39. . and the Indian tale showcases a wife's devotion and a new bride's loneliness and fear in a new household.Ramanujan, A. K. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. University of California Press, 1997. p. 238. . Similarly, the tale type is said to be primarily part of female tellers' repertoire.
Variants Israeli professor Dov Noy reported that the tale type 894 was "very popular in Oriental literature", with variants found in India, Iran, Egypt and regionally in Europe (southern and eastern).Noy, Dov. Folktales of Israel. University of Chicago Press. 1963. p. 117.
As for type 437, Richard Dorson stated that it appears "sporadically in Europe", but it is "better known in India".Dorson, Richard M. Folktales told around the world. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. 1978. p. 238. . In this regard, according to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437 is reported in Europe (South, Southeastern, Eastern and Northeast), in the Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and India.
India According to Stith Thompson's second revision of the international index, type AaTh 437 was reported with five variants in India.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 149. In turn, Ramanujan stated that variants of tale type 437 exist in Bengali, Hindi, and Marathi.Ramanujan, A. K. Folktales from India: a selection of oral tales from twenty-two languages. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. p. 339. . According to Kannada scholarship, type 437 is "very popular" in South Karnataka.
The King of Pins