Champavati (Champawati or Campāvatī[1]) is an Assamese folk tale. It was first collected in the compilation of Assamese folklore titled Burhi Aair Sadhu, by poet Lakshminath Bezbaroa. According to scholar Praphulladatta Goswami, the tale is "current in North Lakhimpur".[2]
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, wherein a heroine marries a husband in animal form who reveals he is man underneath. In this case, the heroine marries a husband in animal shape that becomes human, while another girl marries a real animal and dies. Variants of the narrative are located in India and Southeast Asia, with few registered in the Brazilian and Arab/Middle Eastern folktale catalogues.
According to Praphulladatta Goswami, there are at least three published versions of Champavati.[3]
A man has two wives, one older (the man's favourite - Laagee) and one young (Aelaagee), and one daughter by each wife. The younger wife's daughter is named Champavati. One day, she goes to the rice fields and sings a song to shoo away the birds, but a voice answers her his desire to marry her. After she tells her mother about the event, Champavati's father agrees to marry her to whoever appears to them; so a snake comes to take the girl as his bride.
The snake and Champavati spend the night together, and the next morning she appears to her family decorated with jewels and golden ornaments. Her father and her step-mother, jealous of the girl's good luck, arrange a marriage between his other daughter and a snake he captures in the jungle. When the snake is placed with the girl, she complains to her mother - who is listening behind the door - that parts of her body are tickling, which the mother takes to mean that her snake husband is decorating her with bridal garments and jewels.
The next morning, they discover that the girl is dead. Their grief and rage are so great that they conspire to kill the Aelaagee (the younger wife) and Champavati, but the python devours both before they can do any harm to both women. The python then grabs his wife Champavati and her mother and takes them to a palace in the forest. They begin to live together. After her mother dies, Champavati is visited by a beggar woman who tells the girl her husband is a god underneath the snakeskin and urges her to burn the snakeskin, while he is away. Champavati heeds the beggar woman's words and does as she said, turning her husband into human definitively.
The same beggar woman returns another day and suggests Champavati to eat from her husband's plate. She decides to follow the suggestion and eats from his plate; she sees some villages inside his mouth and asks her husband to show her the world. He goes to the river and asks her if she wants him to show her the world in his mouth. She agrees. He goes to the middle of the river and opens up his mouth to show her the world. He tells her he will go away for six years, and gives her a ring to protect from any other demon that may want to devour her. He explains that his mother is a cannibal, and that he disobeyed his mother's wishes to see him married to a bride of her choice.
It happens as he predicts, but his ring protects Champavati. She seeks her husband after 6 years and finds him in his mother's house. Her mother-in-law gives her a letter to take to another demoness, with an order to kill Champavati. Her husband intercepts Champavati, takes the letter and kills his own mother to protect his human wife.[4] [5] [6]
Praphulladatta Goswami collected an homonymous tale from an informant named Srimati Jnanadasundari Barua, in North Lakhimpur.[7] In this tale, also titled Champavati, a man has two wives, the elder his favourite, and a daughter by each wife, the younger one's named Champavati. One day, Champavati is sent to the rice fields to drive the quails away from the paddy. She sings a song, saying that she will give fried rice to the quails, when a voice replies to her song that they will marry Champavati. The girl comments about it to her mother and father, and is convinced to reply to the mysterious voice. She does and discovers the voice's owner: a serpent. Wanting to see her stepdaughter killed, her father's first wife says she must honor the promise, and locks the girl in her room with the snake.
The girl cries aloud she is feeling something on her body, and the stepmother thinks the girl is being devoured. However, Champavati exits the room with a smile and decorated with jewels on her body. Jealous of Champavati's luck, the elder wife orders her husband to find another serpent husband to her own daughter, hoping the girl can experience the same fate as her half-sister. After Champavati leaves with her husband, a serpent is brought and married to the girl, then it is locked in the same room with her. The serpent begins to swallow the girl piece by piece (feet, waist, breast and neck) and the girl complains about it, but her mother dismisses it as her son-in-law decorating her body. The next morning, the elder wife goes to check on her daughter and, finding only a bloated serpent, lets out an anguished cry.
Back to Champavati, she lives her days in happiness in the forest, but wishes her husband was not a serpent. One day, a beggar woman pays her a visit and explains the serpent is a god in disguise who takes off his snakeskin at night and goes out, so she can pretend to be asleep and burn it the next time he takes it off. Following the beggar woman's suggestion, Champavati does as instructed, takes the snakeskin and tosses it in the fire. The human snake husband rushes in and writhes in pain, feeling a burning sensation. Champavati quickly rubs oil and water on his body, then fans it, and he becomes a handsome man permanently.[8] [9] [10]
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as AaTh 433C, "The Serpent Husband and The Jealous Girl",[11] a subtype of type AaTh 433, "The Prince as Serpent".[12] [13] In this tale type, a girl marries a snake who gives her jewels and ornaments and becomes human after the burning of his snakeskin; another girl tries to imitate with a real snake, with disastrous and fatal results.[14] [15]
However, in his own revision of the folk type index, published in 2004, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther subsumed types AaTh 433 ("The Prince as Serpent"), AaTh 433A ("A Serpent Carries a Princess to Its Castle") and AaTh 433C under a new type: ATU 433B, "King Lindworm".[16]
Professor Stuart Blackburn stated that some Southeast Asian variants contain the motif of the fruit tree owned by the snake, whose fruits either the sisters or their mother want.[17] More specifically, it is found in central Arunachal Pradesh, and among the Kucong and Nusu people of Yunnan.[18]
Type 433C also contains the motif J2415.7, "A snake for the real daughter. Stepdaughter, married to a snake, appears decorated with jewels. Stepmother desires a snake be procured for her daughter. She is swallowed instead".[19] [20]
Although P. Goswami recognized some similarities of the tale with the Cinderella cycle (e.g., stepsisters, stepmother's persecution of heroine), the end of the tale links it to "the class of 'Beauty and the Beast'."[21]
In his 1961 revision of the tale type index, American folklorist Stith Thompson indicated 5 variants of the type, found only in India.[22] Praphulladata Goswami also located "variants" among the Garos and the Angami Nagas.[23] Hence, Thompson and Warren Roberts's work Types of Indic Oral Tales links this tale type "exclusively" to South Asia.[24]
In addition, according to professor Stuart Blackburn, this is the "Asian" version of the snake-husband story, and variants of the narrative (girl marries snake and is fortunate; jealous girl marries another snake and dies) are reported in India (in Nagaland and Assam), Southeast Asia, China, and among Tibeto-Burman speakers in central Arunachal Pradesh and the extended eastern Himalayas (e.g., the Apatani, Nyishi people, Tagin people, Garo people and Lisu people).[25] [26] Taiwanese scholarship also locates variants of subtype 433C in Cambodia and Indonesia.[27]
In a tale collected by Sunity Devi, Maharani of Coochbehar, with the title The Snake Prince, a Maharajah is married to two Maharanis, an older one who is kind and gentle, and a younger one, of a striking appearance and who the Maharajah loves dearly. The younger Maharani becomes jealous of the older one, which worsens after the latter gives birth to a girl. The younger Maharani orders her husband to build a hut and to expel the older queen there. The older Maharani's daughter grows up in poverty. Years later, the girl goes to the jungle to gather firewood for fuel and hears a voice proposing to her. She pays no heed to the voice, but talks to her mother about it. The Maharani convinces her daughter to accept the voice's proposal the next morning. She goes to the jungle and consents to be the voice's bride, who answers he will come in five days' time to marry her. She consults with a pandit, who assures her that the fixed date is most auspicious for a wedding. The elder Maharani and her daughter invite the king, the younger Maharani and other to see the mysterious bridegroom. At midnight, two palki-bearers bring the bridegroom: a huge python. The python marries the Maharani's daughter and they enter the hut for their wedding night. The elder Maharani stays outside and hears her daughter complaining about her body aching. The Maharani thinks her daughter is being eaten by the snake, but the hut doors open and there she is, safe and sound. The girl explains that the python was decorating her body with heavy jewelry, that is why her body was aching. She also reveals that the python is no python, but a handsome youth who will return the next night to live with her. The younger Maharani, fuming at the older one's luck, orders her servants to find a python in the jungle so she can marry it to her own daughter. The younger Maharani locks her own daughter into the chambers with the python. Her daughter screams to be let out and that her body is aching, but the Maharani thinks the python is simply decorating her daughter's body. The next day, she finds that the python devoured her daughter, and the Maharajah expels her from the kingdom. Back to the older Maharani, she talks her daughter to burn the python prince's snakeskin, so he can be human at all times. The python prince's wife burns his snakeskin in a fire. He complains about it at first, but he eventually accepts it, and explains that he was cursed as a python until he married a princess.[28]
In a Bengali tale published by Francis Bradley Bradley-Birt with the title Humility rewarded and Pride punished (alternatively, Sukhu and Dukhu),[29] [30] a weaver is married to two wives, each with a daughter. The elder wife and her daughter, named Shookhu, are idle, while the younger wife and her daughter, named Dukhu, work hard to maintain the house. After the weaver dies, the elder wife takes charge of the house and finances. Dukhu and her mother work by spinning cotton thread and selling coarse clothes at the bazaar. One day, while Dukhu is putting some cotton to dry out in the sun, a gust of wind blows it all over. The wind bids her to follow him. She goes and reaches a cowshed where a cow asks to be fed; further along, a plantain tree that asks to be relieved of it bushes; a horse that also asks to be fed. She fulfills their wishes and reaches the house of the moon's mother, who welcomes her and tells her to refresh herself at a nearby pool. Dukhu dips her head in the water and becomes even more beautiful. She enters the moon's mother's house and is told to choose one of the boxes full of cotton, but chooses only a small box. On her return, the horse, the plantain tree and the cow gift her a winged colt, a baskets of gold mohurs and a necklace, and a calf that produces milk. Dukhu returns with the small box and Shookhu's mother, seeing the step-daughter's fortune, orders her own daughter to make the same journey, hoping she will also be rewarded. That night, after Dukhu and her mother fall asleep, the small box opens up and a prince-like youth comes out of it. Shookhu's journey is unlike her step-sister's: she refuses to help the animals and the tree and mistreats the moon's mother. When she goes to the river to bathe, she dives three times and her body becomes covered with warts and boils. She goes home with the largest chest and the cow, the horse and the tree humiliate her. Shookhu's mother is frightened at the sight, but expects a better outcome with the large chest her daughter brought. That night, Shookhu cries out to her mother that her body is aching all over, but her mother dismisses her complaints, thinking it is another bridegroom that emerged from the chest that is decorating her body. The next morning, the mother enters Shookhu's room and sees only a pile of bones and a cast-off snakeskin beside it.[31]
In an Indian tale titled The Python, a king has two wives, queen Shobha, the elder and kind one, and queen Rupa, the younger and wicked one. He also has two daughters, one from each wife: Devi and Tara. The younger queen convinces the king to relocate the elder and her daughter to a small house outside the palace. Now in a humble situation, Shobha asks Devi to take their cows to graze. Devi does as asked, taking the cows to the jungle in the morning and coming back at night. This goes on for some time, until one evening a voice proposes to her. Afraid of what to say, she returns home. The next day, she tells her mother about it, and Shobha tells her to accept the voice's proposal, since they have nothing else to lose. At the end of the third day, Devi agrees to the proposal and asks the owner of the voice to come to her house the next morning. It happens thus, and a python appears at queen Shobha's door to marry Devi. A servant reports the incident to the other queen, Rupa, who comes to her co-queen's abode to insist her step-daughter goes through with the marriage with the python. Devi marries the python and both retire to their chambers, and Shobha prays no harm befalls her daughter. The next morning, however, a handsome prince opens Devi's door, and explains he was the python, cursed into that form by a jungle-god until a princess married him. Relieved with this development, queen Shobha takes her daughter and son-in-law to introduce him to the king. Queen Rupa, however, envying the other queen's success, orders her own daughter Tara to do the same actions her half-sister did: graze the cows in the jungle and agree to marriage with the first one that she hears in the jungle. Despite her redoing Devi's steps, no one talks to her in the jungle, so queen Rupa resorts to finding a python for her daughter. Tara and the python are married and brought to their room. The next morning, Rupa goes to check on her daughter, and find only the python with a swollen belly, the princess inside it. The cook comes with a large knife, kills the snake and releases Tara from the python's belly, still alive.[32]
In a tale from the Angami Nagas of Assam, a girl is going to work in the field, when a snake appears and blocks her path. The girl tells the snake to not bite her, and she agrees to marry it. The snake bites the girl in her bosom and ornaments spring on her, then on her leg and leggings appear. Another girl sees the scene and tries to repeat with a snake, agreeing to marry it, but the snake bites her in the arm and she dies.[33] The tale was republished by anthropologist John Henry Hutton, who also sourced it from the Angami Nagas.[34] Goswami recognized it as a "parallel" to Champavati, but he suggested the Angami Naga tale was a borrowing.[35]
Professor Stuart Blackburn reported a tale from the Apatani people of Arunachal Pradesh with the title Bunyi-Bunye or Two Sisters. In this tale, two sisters go to pluck fruits from a tree, but a snake appears and offers them the fruits, since the tree is his, in exchange for marrying the animal. One of the girls marries the snake, eventually burns its skin and turns him to a human youth. As for her sister, jealous of her success, she finds another snake to marry (or her brother-in-law) and dies of a snakebite.[36] [37]
Author Dewan Sing Rongmuthu collected a tale from a Garo teller named Dingban Marak Raksam, in Garo Hills. In this tale, titled Jereno, The Orphan (although the correct form is Jereng), an orphan named Jereng (also spelled Jerang) goes to the forest to fetch wild fruits from a tree, when two tigermen named Matchadus spot him up the tree. The Matchadus capture Jereng and bring him home to be devoured. The next day, the tigermen notice that they are "dark-skinned" while the boy is fair-skinned. Jereng dupes the Matchadus into bathing in boiling water, essentially killing themselves. He tricks the remaining Matchadus into crossing a river in earthen jars to chase him and they promptly drown. After this adventure, he takes refuge in a cave, kills a python dwelling inside it and wraps its skin around himself to sleep, along with his jewels and money. Some time later, he spies on two sisters shooing away the birds from their father's jhum plantation, and he falls in love with the younger sister. The younger sister passes by the cave and sees Jereng emerging from the python skin. She also falls in love with him, and is told that, if she wants to marry him, she is to hide out someplace else and, when her parents find her, she is to say she wants to marry a python. It happens thus: she hides in a granary, but is eventually found out, and explains she wishes to marry a python she found in a cave. Despite her parents' protests, she stays true to her decision and moves out to another house to wait for her husband. Some servants enter the snake's cave and carry the python bridegroom (inside of which is Jereng, but they are not aware of the fact) to the younger sister's marital house. At midnight, the girl utters a loud cry, and the servants rush to investigate: they see the girl, alive and well, sitting beside a handsome youth, Jereng, and the house is filled with jewels, money and precious cloth. The girl's father is relieved and content with his daughter's fortune. Meanwhile, the elder sister, wanting to have the same fortune of her cadette, repeats her actions (hiding in a certain spot and declaring her wishes to marry a python), and moves out to her own marital house. The servants find her a real live python and marry them off. At midnight, however, the girl utters a cry, and, the next morning, the servants find the python devoured the girl. Back to Jereng and his wife, their children become kings and queens, chieftains and warriors.[38] P. Goswami also compared Jereng to the Assamese tale Champavati.[39]
Anthropologist Verrier Elwin collected a tale from the Sherdukpen people, in Rupa, Kameng. In this tale, an old woman lives with her two daughters, the elder beautiful and somewhat skilled in weaving, and the younger more skilled, since she weaves more beautiful patterns. The former weaves only plain clothes. One night she goes to bathe in the river. A large snake appears in the water and frightens the girl back to the margin, but it turns into a handsome youth and assures the girl he means no harm. They fall in love with each other and see each other every night by the riverbank. One day, the girl complains that she wishes she could improve her weaving skills and the snake lover gives her a solution: she can copy on the loom the scaly patterns of his body. Inspired by her snake lover's body patterns, she weaves beautiful pieces of cloth. One day, the snake lover wants to marry her so they can live in his watery home. The girl seems reluctant at first, but eventually her lover calms her fears. Her mother asks her about her weaving skills, and she confesses about the snake lover. The mother warns her of a possible danger, since he is a snake. At any rate, the snake lover's procession comes to take his bride, their appearing as snakes to the whole village, but normal humans to her. She says goodbye to her mother, but tells she can call her by the river bank if she needs anything, then departs with her husband. Meanwhile, the younger sister wants to experience the same luck as the elder, and goes to river to find a snake to marry. She finds a black snake hole and, hoping it will become a handsome youth, she is killed by the black snake. Time passes, and their mother, now older, calls for her elder daughter by the riverbank. Her daughter appears and takes her to her husband's river palace, where she meets her grandchildren. Her son-in-law gives her a bundle with a rope, sand, wood and grain. She takes the bundle with her and its contents become food for her to eat.[40]
According to scholar, in a Orissan tale titled Princess and Python, a princess is forced by her stepmother to marry a python. Luckily, the python reveals himself to be a handsome prince. Jealous of her stepdaughter's successful marriage, the queen asks her husband to fetch a python for her own daughter. The second python, being a real animal, devours the girl during the night.[41]
Author Henry Parker collected a tale from the North central Province of Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka), titled The Ash-Pumpkin Fruit Prince. In this tale, in a village, a husband and a wife bring home an Ash-pumpkin and put it in a pot under seven earthen pots. Some time later, a snake appears in place of the gourd. The couple prepare seven beds, so large is the snake, and arrange an assistant (a wife) for the snake. They contact seven sisters who live in the village and one by one, they enter the snake's hut. Frightened at the large snake, they refuse to marry it, for fear for their lives. Only the youngest and seventh sister decides to marry it: she enters the hut, but complains that there is not enough space for her, so the snake spares one of the seven beds for her. This goes on for the next seven nights: on each night, the girl complains about lack of space to sleep, and the snake retreats from one bed on each night, until, after seven days, it comes to the veranda. The girl's mother-in-law teaches the girl to prepare food for her snake husband: "lower a little paddy from the corn store, and having winnowed, boil it". The girl prepares the food a certain way that displeases the snake husband, who teaches her the correct way to do it. Some time later, there will be a bana (reading of Buddhist scripture) at the of the village. The snake husband convinces his human wife to go. She tells him that other women are going with their husbands, so he suggests she goes with her in-laws, while he stays home. After the human wife and his parents go to the, the snake husband takes off his python jacket, places it on the clothes-line and goes to the as a prince. The human wife sees the prince, goes back home and burns the python jacket in the hearth. Some time later, the now human snake prince goes with his wife to visit his parents-in-law. His six sisters-in-law admire him and claim he is their co-husband, but the human wife reproaches her sisters. The eldest daughter, then, asks her father to find a python for her to marry, so he goes to the jungle, captures a python and gives it to his daughter. That night, the python - an animal, in fact - coils around the girl and begins to eat her. The next morning, the father notices his daughter's death and shoos away the python.[42] The tale was also translated into Russian as "Сын из тыквы" ("Son in a Pumpkin") and classified by its compilers as tale type AaTh 433C.[43]
Portuguese scholars Isabel Cárdigos and Paulo Jorge Correia locate 12 Brazilian variants in the Portuguese Folktale Catalogue: the heroine marries a snake that becomes a human prince, her sister marries a snake and dies.[44] [45]
Folklore scholar Hasan M. El-Shamy registers two variants of type AaTh 433C in the Middle East and Northern Africa, which he located in Egypt.[46]