# The Dead Prince and the Talking Doll

The Dead Prince and the Talking Doll is an Indian folktale collected by scholar A. K. Ramanujan in Kannada. It tells the story of a princess destined to marry a seemingly dead man, who is, in reality, under a curse, his body prickled by numerous pins. The princess begins a task of removing the pins to revive the prince, but a servant replaces her and claims the prince's resurrection as her doing. Finally, the princess is given a talking doll she reveals her story to, which alerts the prince of the truth.
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 894, "The Ghoulish Schoolmaster and the Stone of Pity", for the alternate object the heroine may tell her tale to, but, before the 2004 revision, it was indexed as type AaTh 437, "The Needle Prince". Variants of the type are reported in India.

## Summary

A princess is visited by a beggar man (bava) who comes for alms and predicts she will marry a dead man. One day, the king overhears the beggar man's prophecy and asks his daughter the meaning of the man's words. The princess explains the beggar man has visited her for the past twelve years and has always uttered this prophecy to her, since she was a little girl. The king decides to avert this fate for his daughter and departs from the kingdom with the whole family.
Meanwhile, the story takes a turn to explain how a prince from a neighbouring kingdom fell deathly ill and seemed to die, but his body looked as if it was in a state of sleep. Astrologers divined that he would be that way for twelve years, and the king places his son's body in a bungalow outside his kingdom, only to be accessed by his destined bride. Before the king exits the improvised mausoleum, he writes a warning that only a chaste woman who has made offerings to the gods for her husband can enter the door to the bungalow, only her and nobody else.
The action returns to the first king and his family: they stop by the forest to cook a meal, while the princess goes for a walk and finds the bungalow. She touches the door and it lets her in, locking her inside. The princess wanders through the bungalow's twelve door and discovers the body of the prince. She realizes the beggar man's words have become true, and finds provisions the prince's family have left for twelve years. The princess then decides to stay there and take care of the prince's body. In the forest, the princess's family notices the girl is missing and go to look for her. Her father finds the house and hears his daughter's cries coming from the bungalow, then asks how she entered it. The princess explains the door opened for her, but they locked her in and she cannot leave, then mentions the dead man's body. Her father then concedes that this is the princess's destiny, and leaves her to her fate.
The princess holds a long, 12 year vigil on him, bathing the body and making offerings for the gods. In the tenth year, the princess feels lonely and longs for a female companion, when an acrobat girl appears outside the bungalow. She contorts herself and enters the building. The princess rejoices she has a companionship to endure the end of the vigil. After two more years, the princess hears a bird chirp outside, saying that the time of the vigil is at an end and the girl should take the leaves from a certain tree, make a juice out of it and give it to the prince in a silver cup. The princess follows the bird's instructions and prepares the concoction to awaken the prince, but goes for a bath before she does it. The acrobat girl sees the concoction and asks the princess what it means. The princess tells the acrobat girl what the bird said and goes to take a bath. While she is busy, the acrobat girl takes the potion and pours down the prince's mouth. The prince wakes up uttering Siva's name, and sees the acrobat girl, who introduces herself as his wife.
The princess returns and finds the prince, now revived, and the girl in private conversation, then relents that happiness is not for her. Later, the prince begins to notice differences between the girl who claims to be his wife and the one that acts as their servant, and suspects something is amiss. Later, he decides to go on a hunt, and asks the two girls what he can bring them: the acrobat girl asks for dry bread (which alerts the prince of her true character) and the princess asks for a talking doll. The prince returns with the gifts, and that night the talking doll asks the princess to tell her a story. The princess recounts everything that happened to her, including how the acrobat took the silver cup. The prince overhears the whole story, whips the acrobat girl with a switch to expel her, and goes to meet the princess, his true saviour. Outside, the prince's family, who has waited twelve long years for his revival, finds the couple inside, the prince back to life and with his loving princess. The prince's family sends for the princess's family, who go to their daughter's wedding.

## Analysis
### Tale type

The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type AaTh 437, "The Supplanted Bride (The Needle Prince)": the heroine is prophecized to marry a dead man, enters a castle and finds a prince on a slab as if he is dead. Alternatively, the heroine must remove the pins from his sleeping body, or hold a long vigil on him for forty days; the heroine tires on the second-to-last day and hires a servant to cover for her, who supplants her as the prince's saviour; next, the prince goes to the market and brings back three objects on the heroine's request, to which the heroine reveals the servant's deceit and through which the prince learns the whole truth.
The tale type is also closely related to AaTh 425G, "False Bride Takes Heroine’s Place". However, the last major revision of the International Folktale Classification Index, published in 2004 by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, subsumed tale type AaTh 437 as new type ATU 894, "The Ogre Schoolmaster and the Stone of Pity [fr]".

#### Combinations

Ramanujan states that the story is combined in India with a local version of the King Lear judgment, indexed as type AT 923B, "The Princess Who Was Responsible for Her Own Fortune". In the same vein, according to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437 may borrow as a starting episode sequences from other types, such as from ATU 923, "Love Like Salt".

### Motifs
#### The heroine's role

According to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437, "The Needle Prince", is thus called for the task the heroine must undertake in Indian, Persian and Tajik variants: remove the pins or needles from the prince's body.
The heroine is also considered to be more active, since the prince is the one who is in a passive state, and discovers the truth by heroine's actions, who asks for the objects she will reveal the tale to.

#### The heroine's confidante

The heroine may tell her sorrows to the stone of patience, which is replaced by a doll or a "patience box" in other tales. The stone of patience serves to reveal the truth, since another person eavesdrops on the heroine's confession. In some tales, the heroine's suffering is so strong, the stone explodes or melts.

### Interpretations

Ramanujan cited it as an example of "woman-centered folktale", and the Indian tale showcases a wife's devotion and a new bride's loneliness and fear in a new household. Similarly, the tale type is said to be primarily part of female tellers' repertoire.

## Variants

Israeli professor Dov Noy reported that the tale type 894 was "very popular in Oriental literature", with variants found in India, Iran, Egypt and regionally in Europe (southern and eastern).
As for type 437, Richard Dorson stated that it appears "sporadically in Europe", but it is "better known in India". In this regard, according to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437 is reported in Europe (South, Southeastern, Eastern and Northeast), in the Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and India.

### India

According to Stith Thompson's second revision of the international index, type AaTh 437 was reported with five variants in India. In turn, Ramanujan stated that variants of tale type 437 exist in Bengali, Hindi, and Marathi.
In a tale from New Goa, collected in the Konkani language, The King of Pins, a princess gives alms to a beggar lady. In return, the lady prays that the maiden will marry the "King of Pins". Her interest piqued, the princess asks around the location of this prince. She meets a fairy who turns her to stone, but the fairy's son restores the princess and gives her a black hen with chicks and a spinning wheel. When she reaches her destination, she enters a fabulous palace and enter a room. Inside, there is a prince in a coma-like state, his body prickled by pins from head to toe. The princess then begins to take out the pins. Unfortunately, she falls asleep, and a "wicked black woman" appears to finish her job. When all pins are taken out of his body, he awakens and sees the black woman instead of princess, thinking her to be his saviour. The prince places the black woman in better apartments and the princess in the quarters below. The princess then takes out the spinning wheel which she trades with the black woman for one night in the prince's chambers. The black woman allows it, but gives a sleeping drink to the prince, so the princess cannot talk to him. The next day, the princess trades the hen with chicks for another night with the prince, and manages to talk to him, for he avoided drinking the potion. He discovers the whole truth, hangs the black woman and marries the princess.
India-born author Maive Stokes collected and published the Indian tale The Princess who Loved her Father like Salt. In the first part of the tale, three princesses are asked a question about how much they love their father. After the princess is banished by her father to the jungle, she finds a palace deep within the jungle. Inside lies a prince in a deep sleep, his body prickled by needles. She begins the task of carefully taking each needle, one by one, until one day she purchases a slave girl to keep her company. Maive Stokes compared this tale to a Sicilian variant collected by folklorist Laura Gonzenbach, with the name Der böse Schulmeister und die wandernde Königstochter ("The Evil Schoolmaster and the Wandering Princess").
In a Central Indian tale collected from a Bharia source in Mandla and titled The Sister, a princess with seven brothers receives a prophecy by an astrologer: she will marry a corpse. Their father, the king, dismisses the words and forgets about it. Years later, she and her brothers go on a hunt. They soon become thirst and find a house in the jungle, furnished and filled with provisions. They drink water and spend the night there. The next morning, the brothers take their servants with them and exit the house, when its doors lock the princess in. The princess wanders about the house and finds it full of utensils, food and clothes, and finds the body of a man with innumerable pins on it. Her brothers realize her fate is coming true and leave her be. The princess then begins to remove the pins on the man one by one. Meanwhile, the princes return home and report to his parents the occurrence. Their mother fashions a doll of rag and sends it with a maidservant to her daughter in the jungle. When the maidservant arrives, the princess has removed almost every pin, save from those on his face, when she welcomes the maidservant with some water to drink, and leaves to take a bath. While she is busy, the maidservant removes the last pins and revives the prince, who mistakes her for his saviour. The princess comes back from the bath and finds the prince awakened, and the maidservant lies she is a lowly servant. The princess takes the doll of rag to the bunyan tree, which comes alive at night to provide food the princess and to bathe her. The princess confide in the doll, which tells her her sorrow will end in four days. In the morning, the doll returns to an immomile state; the princess returns to the prince's house and is beaten by the maidservant. The next night, the Lamans follow the princess to the riverside, see women coming out to bathe the princess, and report to the prince. On the third night, the prince himself follows the princess and witness the same scene. By the fourth day, the prince confronts the princess about her true identity, and she reveals everything. The prince marries the true princess at once, and she requests the prince to fill the maidservant's nose and mouth with marking nuts and cowry shells and bury her alive. It happens thus, and the prince takes his wife into his house.
In a tale collected by Sunity Devi, Maharani of Coochbehar, with the title The Needle Prince, seven princesses who are sisters talk among themselves about leaving or not leaving their parents' home: the six elder princesses would rather stay with their parents, while the youngest, although reluctant to express her opinions at first, tells them she would like to marry one day and live with her husband always. The other princess show their concern with her answer, since their parents might expel her for those words, and threaten to tell their mother about it. Afraid, the princess flees in fear into the forest, and stumbles upon an abandoned house. She walks to the house, which is in fact a richly furnished palace, takes a bath in a swimming pool filled with rosewater, eats some food, and finds the body of a handsome young man lying as if dead, pierced with thousand of needles. The princess decides to remove the needles one by one, and, fourteen days later, all but two have been removed. Suddenly, the princess notices one of her maidservants from her parents' palace, an ugly, dark and fat woman, has found her in the forest palace. The princess lets her in and places her to watch over the body, while she herself goes to rest and take a bath. The maidservant disregards the princess's warning not to touch anything on the man's body, and removes the last two needles from his eyelids, reviving him. The man thinks that the maidservant was the one that did the whole task. As for the princess, she puts on a beautiful sari and goes to the dead man's room, when she finds the man is awake. Her maidservant lies to the man that the beautiful princess is but her maidservant. The man silently notices the princess's beauty, but believes the lie that is a maidservant, then reveals he is a prince under the needles curse, and only a princess could have saved him. However, while he is set on marrying his saviour, he must postpone the wedding until he hears music again, for his kingdom is silent and abandoned. As time passes, the maidservant humiliates and beats the princess, and she cries for her fate. One day, she cries in the garden and faires come to comfort her, saying that the prince will eventually know the truth. More time passes, and the maidservant, passing herself off as a princess, threatens the prince into marrying her, but he goes for a walk in the garden and sees a light in the distance: it is the true princess, conversing with the fairies, to whom she tells how everything transpired, from her removing the needles to her replacement by her own maidservant. The prince overhears the story and approaches the girl, proposing to marry her in the garden, surrounded by the fairies and blessed by two Brahmins. The pair then confront the maidservant about her trickery.
In a tale from Himachal Pradesh with the title The Clever Princess, a king's daughter and a minister's daughter are friends and playmates. A guru teaches the girls and is paid with gold coins by the princess and with silver coins by the minister's daughter. He also predicts that the princess will marry a corpse and her friend a prince. The king worries for his daughter's fate, since the Guru's predictions have been true in the past, and takes her to the forest to do charity to beggars and mendicants. While in the forest, they get thirsty and find a small house, where they believe they can drink water. The princess enters the house and the door locks behind her, keeping her in. She realizes she is trapped inside, cries, then decides to explore the place, when she discovers the whole house is furnished. She opens every room and discovers a man's body covered with dub grass - the man she realizes is her intended husband. The princess has a dream that, if she prays to the Sun God and remove a blade of dub grass every day, he would awake, thus she begins her task the next day. In time, she begins to feel lonely, when an oil merchant passes by the house to rest. The princess notices he has a daughter, and insists that she stays and becomes her companion. After the merchant oil leaves, his daughter learns from the princess how to revive the dead man, and goes to finish the task the next day, since there is only a blade of dub grass left. On doing this, the man revives and sees the oil merchant's daughter, promising to marry her. The princess enters the man's room and finds the dead man has been revived, but the merchant's daughter lies that she is but a maidservant. Some time later, the man goes to town to buy gifts for his wife (red bangles and other accessories) and the maidservant (a Mina bird). The man brings the bird to the maidservant (the princess), who teaches the bird her whole story. The oil merchant's daughter wants to have the bird gone, and the man takes the cage to his room. The mina bird begins to repeat the princess's whole story, and he learns of the whole truth. The oil merchant's daughter confirms the bird's words and the man wants to have her killed, but the princess begs him to spare her. Thus, the princess marries the man from the house, makes the oil merchant's daughter their servant, and returns to her father.
In a tale from Uttar Pradesh published by author Krishna Prakash Bahadur with the title The Lucky Princess, a king summons his seven daughters to ask them by whose good fortune do they have food to eat. The six elder princesses answer that it is their father's good fortune, while the youngest says it is herself. The king, enraged, promises to find a dead man for her to marry: he marries his six elder daughters to princes, and takes his cadette with him to the forest to fulfil his threat. While in the forest, they get thirsty, and the king orders his daughter to enter a nearby house in search of water. As soon as she enters, the door closes on her, and the king leaves her there. As for the princess, she notices she is inside a palace; she opens every room and finds a dead prince's body in the attic, all prickled with needles. The princess decides to remove the needles, one by one. One day, a merchant passes by the palace and offers a maidservant, whom the princess takes for herself. While the maidservant does the chores around the palace, the princess dedicates to the task of removing the needles. Thus, the time comes when there are only three remaining needles on his eyelid, and the princess asks the maidservant to cover for her, while she goes to take a bath. Seizing the opportunity, the maidservant removes the last needles and revives the prince, lying to him she is a princess and the real princess is a mere servant. Some time later, the prince buys from the market an emerald and a pigtail for the false princess and a doll on the true's one request. The real princess tells her sorrows to the doll every night, which sparks the prince's curiosity to hear it. The prince asks the maidservant about her taletelling to the doll, and the real princess reveals the deceit. The prince then turns the maidservant inside out, and marries the real princess.