Little Surya Bai is an Indian folktale collected by author Mary Frere. It is about a girl abandoned by her human parents in the fields, when a pair of birds fly down to rescue her. She is raised by the birds and, later, goes to borrow some fire source from a demon neighbour that trails after the girl, intent to devour her, but, failing that, the demon neighbour plants a fingernail on the door of the girl's house. The fingernail prickles her skin and she falls into a swoon, until she is revived by a prince who removes the fingernail. Variants of the tale are known in Sri Lanka and in India.
The second part of the tale, classified as ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", deals with the heroine who is replaced by a false bride and goes through a cycle of incarnations until she regains physical form again. Variants of the tale are known in Sri Lanka and in India, either with the heroine emerging from a fruit or not, but still going through a cycle of transformations.
Source Mary Frere collected the tale from her Indian maid Anna Liberata de Souza, and published it originally in 1868. Scholars Stith Thompson and Jonas Balys, in their joint work The Oral Tales of India, sourced the tale from Mysore.Thompson, S., Balys, J. (1958). The oral tales of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 8 (distribution areas), 11 (bibliography and sources).
Publication The tale was republished as The Sun Lady (Surya Bai). Illustrator Katherine Pyle adapted the story as Little Surya Bai, in her work Fairy tales from Far and Near.
Summary A poor milkwoman is going to sell milk, taking her baby daughter with her along with some cans of milk. She stops to rest and places the baby girl on the ground, when a pair of eagles swoop in and take the baby with them to their nest atop a tree. On the nest, made of iron and wood, they raise the girl, whom they call Surya Bai. The eagles bring her dresses and ornaments. When she is twelve years old, the eagles promise to bring her a diamond princess ring and depart, leaving her to take care of the nest, feed a cat and a dog and keep the hearth burning.
One day after the eagles' departure, Surya Bai admonishes the cat, which puts out the fire. The girl then looks for any sign of smoke, so she can borrow a fire. She spots some blue smoke in the distance and climbs down the nest to walk over there, unaware that she is entering Rakshas' country. Surya Bai finds the source of the smoke, a house that belongs to a female Rakshas and her son, and asks if she can borrow some fire. The Rakshas woman agrees to lend some coals, in exchange for helping her in some chores (sweep the house, and draw water from the well), in hopes of holding her long enough for the Rakshas son to return. Failing that, she gives Surya Bai some coals and bids her scatter the parched corn on the path.
The Rakshas woman's son returns and learns the human girl was there in their hut, so he follows the trail of corn to the eagles' nest, climbs the tree and pretends to be the eagle parents to trick Surya Bai into opening the door, but, since she is asleep, he fails. Furious, he breaks down the door and leaves one of his poisoned nails there. The following day, Surya Bai awakes and checks every door of the eagles' house, even the seventh one, where the Rakshas left his poisoned nail. She touches the poisoned nail and falls down dead.
The eagle parents return from their journey and find their dead daughter. They place the diamond ring on her finger and fly away screaming. Meanwhile, a prince is on a hunting expedition when they stop to rest under the eagles' tree. They spot the iron house atop the tree and the king sends an emissary to investigate; the emissary reports his findings to the king: a girl, a dog and a cat. The monarch orders all three to be brought down the tree. He cradles Surya Bai's body, notices the nail on her hand and removes it, reviving her. Surya Bai awakes and realizes the Eagles are gone. The king proposes to the girl and makes her his new queen.
Back at the king's realm, the king's first wife, a Ranee, begins to feel jealous of the newcomer and wishes to get rid of her rival. An old woman warns Surya Bai not to trust the old queen. Still, one day, they walk by a tank of clear water, and the old queen convinces Surya Bai to trade her clothes and jewels with her, then to see their reflections in water. The Ranee shoves Surya Bai into the water, where she becomes a golden suflower, then pins the blame for Surya Bai's disappearance on the old woman servant.
The king suffers for Surya Bai's vanishing, when he finds the sunflower near the tank, which bends down towards him. The king spends his days near the tank. The Ranee learns of this and orders some servants to dig up the sunflower, take it to the jungle and burn it. On the place of its burning, a mango tree sprouts, yielding a large mango. Surya Bai's mother, the poor milkmaid, passes by the mango tree with her milk cans and the fruit falls into one of them. The woman makes a vow to keep the fruit hidden, and returns home with it.
The milkwoman brings the fruit to share with her husband and six or seven children, but find no fruit, only a tiny maiden clad in red and gold. They take care of the tiny maiden, called Surya Bai, until she resumes human size. One day, the rajah passes by the milkwoman's house and sees Surya Bai. He then confronts the milkwoman's family and demands to have his wife back, but the milkwoman's husband throws the rajah out the door. The rajah then releases the old woman servant from prison in hopes she can lead him to Surya Bai's whereabouts.
The old woman servant befriends the milkwoman and learns of the mango tree in the jungle, then suspects the maiden living with the milkwoman's family of being her former queen. The old woman servant presses the milkwoman further, and finally Surya Bai tells her lifestory to both old woman: how the eagles captured and raised her, how the Rakshas poisoned her, how she met the king and how the first Ranee threw her in the water tank.
The milkwoman recognizes Surya Bai as her lost daughter, and the old servant as her former queen, then goes to report to the rajah the good news. The milkwoman tells Surya Bai the rajah was looking for her, when the king's carriage horses are heard. The rajah enters the milkwoman's hut and reunites with his wife. He takes his wife's family to the palace with him, rewards his in-laws with noble titles and the old servant with the position of palace housekeeper, and casts the old Ranee in prison.Parker, Henry. Village folk-tales of Ceylon. Volume 1. London: Luzac & Co., 1910. p. 128.
Analysis Tale type ATU 709A: The Sister of Nine Brothers The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type AaTh 709A, "The Stork's Daughter": a girl is abandoned in the forest by her poor parents, but a flock of storks (or crows, or eagles) find her and raise her in a nest; the heroine, who has been living with her brothers, has to find a source of fire with a neighbour, since her fire has been put out, and finds a ghoul (or ogress) that gives her one; later, the ghoul or ogress comes after her, and, although it is killed, one of its nails (or tooth) pierces the heroine's skin and she falls in a death-like state; her body is preserved in a glass case by the storks, until she is eventually brought back to life by a prince, who marries her.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. 246. Alternatively, the birds themselves revive their daughter by removing the nail.
However, German scholar Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the international index, revised the tale type "The Stork's Daughter" and renamed it "The Sister of Nine Brothers". In the revised typing, the heroine is either adopted by the birds, or goes in search of her human nine brothers; both openings lead into the episode of borrowing fire from the ogre.
ATU 408: The Love For Three Oranges
The second part of the story follows another tale type, ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", but in a form that exists locally in South Asia and in India. In some of these tales, despite the heroine not being born from a fruit, a rival tosses her in water, causing her to follow a cycle of reincarnations until she gains human form again.
Variants In his 1961 revision of the tale type index, American folklorist Stith Thompson indicated 9 variants of the type, found only 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. 246. Hence, Thompson and Warren Roberts's work Types of Indic Oral Tales links this tale type "exclusively" to South Asia.Islam, Mazharul. Folklore, the Pulse of the People: In the Context of Indic Folklore. Concept Publishing Company, 1985. pp. 165-166. In addition, according to A. K. Ramanujan, variants of type 709A ("abandoned girl raised by a bird") exist in Kannada, Konkani, Tamil and Telugu.
According to Christine Shojaei-Kawan, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, the revised tale type is attested in Bulgaria, Turkey and among the Arabs, besides South Asia, and may be preceded by the episode of the birds kidnapping the heroine and raising her.Kawan, Christine Shojaei. "Schneewittchen (AaTh/ATU 709)" [Snow White (ATU 709)]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 12: Schinden, Schinder – Sublimierung. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Daniel Drascek; Helge Gerndt; Ines Köhler-Zülch; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 133. .
India The Eagles' Child