The Brahman Boy Who Gave His Life

A boy of seven, adorned for his own killing, laughs in the instant the sword is raised. Why would a child laugh at his own death?

To save his kingdom, a king must give a demon a willing boy as a victim. A poor brahman's seven-year-old son offers himself, reasoning that the body perishes anyway. At the moment of the killing, with the sword lifted over him, the boy laughs, and everyone present is struck silent. Why did he laugh? You judge first, then the king does.

The Burning Ground

Back in its tree the corpse waited. The king climbed, freed it, and settled it on his shoulder. Close behind his ear, the Vetala began a tale of a child braver than kings.

The Boy Who Was Not Afraid

King Chandravaloka of Chitrakuta, out hunting, took as his bride a hermit's daughter named Indivaraprabha, and rested with her beneath a great ashvattha tree. At dawn a demon named Jvalamukha appeared, enraged that they had trespassed on his ground, and he named a price. Either the king's own heart, or else a rare and terrible victim: a brahman boy of seven, wise and noble beyond his years, willing to offer himself, and held for the killing by his own parents' hands. Seven days, said the demon, or your kingdom is destroyed.

The king's minister rode through the land with a proclamation. To the boy who would give himself, and to his family, an image of gold and jewels and a hundred villages. In a poor brahman's house, a seven-year-old heard it. And it was the child who went to his frightened parents and reasoned with them. This body will perish soon enough, he said, whatever we do with it. The one lasting thing in a passing world is the good that is won through it. Let mine buy your rescue from want, and the king's rescue from death.

His parents, in grief and in need, at last consented. The boy saw the gold and the villages delivered into their hands, and then he walked to the king.

They adorned him, and set him on an elephant, and brought him to the ashvattha tree, his parents beside him. The rites were spoken. The demon appeared, terrible to see. And as the king raised his sword to strike, the boy, in that last instant, laughed. He laughed so freely and so loud that every person there, the king, the parents, the priests, even the demon, stopped where they stood, and pressed their palms together, and stared at his face.