Kiranmala (Bengali: কিরণমালা) is a Bengali folktale collected by author Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder and published in the compilation Thakurmar Jhuli (; Grandmother's Bag [of tales]), a collection of Bengali folk tales and fairy tales.
The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", a cycle of stories a woman promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother.
Translations
The tale has been published as Kirunmala, or the Wreath of Light, by author Francis Bradley Bradley-Birt; as The Story of Kiranmala by Geeta Majumdar; and as Kiranmala by Sayantani DasGupta.
Summary
The king wanders the streets at night to listen to his subjects' opinion of him, and stops by a house where three sisters are talking to one another: the first wanting to marry the feeder of the king's horses, the second to the royal cook, and the third to the king himself. The king brings them all to his presence the next day and marries the youngest.
Time passes, and the young queen is ready to give birth, but asks to be nursed by her elder sisters, instead of stranger. Unbeknownst to her, her sisters have begun to nurture envy at their cadette's fortunate marriage, and seize the opportunity to bring harm to her. The first time, the queen gives birth to a young boy, whom the elder sister replacewith a cur and throw him in the river in an earthen pot. The second time, the queen gives birth to another boy, who is replaced by a kitten, and in the following year, a girl is born, but a doll is put in her place. Thinking his wife is an evil woman, the king banishes her from the palace to sit astride a donkey.
As for the children, the two siblings share the fate of their elder, and are abandoned in the river in a earthen pot. However, each time a Brahmin, who was making his devotions near the river, finds each pot and rescues them, then raises them as their own. The Brahmin names the boys Arun and Barun (Varun) and the girl Kirunmala. After he dies, the siblings meet the king after a heavy storm on the road, and decide to build a palace. One day, a fakir passes by their palace, compliments their fine abode, but suggests the girl to send her brothers for "a silver tree with flowers of gold, a tree of diamonds with birds of gold perched on it; and a canopy of a net made of pearls". In this tale, the water is only used to disenchant Kirunmala's petrified brothers, and one of the birds of gold convinces them to invite the king to a banquet.
Analysis
Tale type
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
According to Stith Thompson' and Jonas Balys's index of Indian tales, the tale type ATU 707 shows 44 variants across Indian sources. In addition, researcher Noriko Mayeda and Indologist W. Norman Brown divided Indian variants of type 707 in five groups: (1) quest for wonderful items; (2) reincarnation into flowers; (3) use of wooden horses; (4) children sing a song; (5) miscellaneous.
Motifs
According to Giuseppe Flora, Kiran means 'ray, beam (of light)'. As for her brothers' names, Arun derives from Aruṇa, a Hindu deity associated with the sunrise and whose name means 'the reddish one'. Also, in the original, the silver tree is called rūpār gācha, the diamond tree is hīrār gācha, and the bird of gold is sonār pākhī.