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Updated: May 29, 2025
"I can easily see," said Ramchundra, when she had ended the tale, "that my uncles must have met a Rakshas somewhere in the forest and have been enchanted. Tell me exactly where the tree was the tree where you lived and what kind it was?" The Ranee told him. "And in which direction did your brothers go when they left you?" This also his mother told him.
Ramchundra, looking back and perceiving that she was gaining upon him, waved the enchanted wand and created a great river, which suddenly rolled its tumultuous waves between them; but, quick as thought, the Rakshas swam the river. Then he turned, and waving the wand again, caused a high mountain to rise between them; but the Rakshas climbed the mountain.
The Rajah consented, and Ramchundra set off riding toward the jungle; but as soon as he got there, he sent his horse back by the groom with a message to his parents and proceeded alone, on foot. After wandering about for some time he came upon a small hut, in which lay an ugly old woman fast asleep. She had long claws instead of hands, and her hair hung down all around her in a thick black tangle.
Nearer and nearer she came, and then the Prince turned and waved the crooked stick. At once a river rolled between him and the Rakshas. Without pause the Rakshas plunged into the river and struck out boldly, and soon she reached the other side. On she came again close after Ramchundra. Again he turned and waved the staff. At once a thick screen of trees sprang up between him and the hag.
She had a number of trees planted outside her windows so that her brothers might rest there close to her. She cooked rice for them herself and fed them with her own hands, and often she sat under the trees and stroked them and talked to them while her tears fell upon their glossy feathers. After a while the young Ranee had a son, and he was called Ramchundra.
Ramchundra, however, only allowed the groom to go with him as far as the edge of the jungle, and then he sent him back home again with both the horses. The Prince went on and on through the forest for a long distance until at last he came to a tree that he felt sure was the one his mother had told him of. From there he set forth in the same direction she told him his uncles had taken.
But one day, when Ramchundra was about fourteen years old, it happened that Draupadi Bai did not go to fetch him home from school as she was wont; and on his return he found her sitting under the trees in front of her palace, stroking the glossy black crows that flocked around her, and weeping.
When she arrived, her daughter, Draupadi Bai, and her hundred sons, with Draupadi Bai's husband and the young Ramchundra, went out to the gate to meet her, and conducted her into the palace with all honour.
"Why do you ask me these questions, my son?" she asked. "I wish to know," said Ramchundra, "for sometime I intend to set out and find that Rakshas and force her to free my uncles from her enchantment and change them back to their natural shapes again."
"Alas, no, my son," she said; "you are too young to help me; and as for my grief, I have never told it to any one. I cannot tell it to you now." But Ramchundra continued begging and praying her to tell him, until at last she did; relating to him all her own and his uncles' sad history; and lastly, how they had been changed by a Rakshas into the black crows he saw around him.
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