Folklore of the Santal Parganas

by Cecil Henry Bompas

Then she took off her cloth and showed it to him through the crack of the door and at the sight of this he was convinced; then he reflected on the advice of his teacher and repented, because he had nearly killed his sister through not restraining his wrath.

XV. The Monkey Boy.

There was once a man who had six sons and two daughters and he died leaving his wife pregnant of a ninth child.

And when the child was born it proved to be a monkey.

The villagers and relations advised the mother to make away with it, but she refused saying “Chando knows why he has given me such a child, but as he has done so I will rear it.”

All her relations said that if she chose to rear a monkey they would turn her out of the family. However she persisted that she would do so at all costs. So they sent her to live with her child in a hut outside the village, and the monkey boy grew up and learned to talk like a human being.

One day his elder brothers began to clear the jungle for cultivation and the monkey boy took a hatchet and went with them; he asked where he could clear land for himself and in fun they showed him the place where the jungle was thickest. So he went there and drove his hatchet into the trunk of a tree and then returned and watched his brothers working hard clearing the scrub, and when they had finished their work he went and fetched his hatchet and returned home with them. Every day he did the same—and one day his brothers asked why he spent all his time with them, but he said that he only came to them when he was tired of cutting down trees; they laughed at this and said that they would like to see his clearing, so he took them to the place and to their astonishment they saw a large clearing, bigger than they had been able to make for themselves. Then the brothers burnt the jungle they had cut down and began to plough the land.

But the monkey boy’s mother had no plough or cattle nor any seed rice; the only thing in the house was a pumpkin, so he took the seed out of the pumpkin and sowed it in his clearing. His brothers asked what he had sown and he told them—Rice.

The brothers ploughed and sowed and used to go daily to watch the growing crop, and one day they went to have a look at the monkey boy’s crop and they saw that it was pumpkins and not rice and they laughed at him. When their crop was ripe the brothers prepared to offer the first fruits and the monkey boy watched them that he might observe the same ceremonies as they. One day they brought home the first fruits and offered them to the bongas, and they invited the monkey boy and his mother to come to the feast which followed the offering.