"The very instant it saw the Prince, it went down on its knees," by John Lockwood Kipling

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The very instant it saw the Prince, it went down on its knees

John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911)

1894

Illustration for "The Two Brothers" in Tales of the Punjab: Told by the People, facing p.133.

Despite being parted by fate, the two bothers retain their boyhood affection. As they had envisaged, the elder one (being saluted here by the sacred elephant) becomes King and the younger one his Prime Minister, both of them making happy marriages. [Commentary continues below.]

Scanned image and text by Jacqueline Banerjee.

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Clay features in this tale, and there is a pleasant passage in which the younger prince tries his hand at modelling with it, and makes a clay model from memory of his father's palace (this is what makes his future wife fall in love with him):

[T]he Prince, to amuse himself, began, with the clay on the shore beside him, to make a model from memory of his father's palace. Growing interested in his work, he worked away till he had made the most beautiful thing imaginable. There was the garden full of flowers, the King on his throne, the courtiers sitting round, even the Princes learning in school, and the pigeons fluttering about the tower. When it was quite finished, the poor young Prince could not help the tears coming into his eyes, as he looked at it, and he sighed to think of past days. [139]

One can imagine that Kipling, with his love of Indian crafts, particularly enjoyed this part!

Bibliography

Steel, Flora Annie Webster. Tales of the Punjab: Told by the People. London: Macmillan, 1917. Internet Archive. Contributed by the New York Public Library. Web. 20 January 2017.

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Created 23 January 2017