Archives: The Story of the Chilhra and the Sambhar

A Folktale

The Korwas (a tribal ethnic group) are very fond of hunting and before going out to hunt they relate the story of Chilhra which runs as follows: 

Once upon a time seven brothers went out for hunting. The name of the youngest was Chilhra. A deer came that way, and Chilhra shot an arrow at him, but missed. This made the other brothers angry, for they had been wandering about hungry the whole day, and when the chance for getting some game arose they could not get it. The brothers took some mahul fibre and twisted it to form a rope. From the rope they wore a bag and forcing Chilhra into it they tied up the mouth and threw it into the river, a whirlpool sucked it in, but while the bag was going round in the whirlpool a sambhar came to the river near the place to drink water. Chilhra cried out to the sambhar to save him, and the stag, taking pity on him, caught the bag with his teeth and pulled it out of the water. He bit through the rope which had bound the mouth of the bag and Chilhra escaped. After he had got out, Chilhra asked the sambhar to get into the bag in order to see if it could contain him. But as soon as the sambhar got into it, Chilhra quickly tied up the mouth of the bag and went home. The brothers were surprised to see the sambhar in the bag and asked Chilhra how he had managed to get it. When Chilhra has told them, they killed the poor sambhar and ate him up. The brothers then said to Chilhra ‘Pray tie us up also into bags so that we may also get a sambhar each.’ Chilhra tied them up into bags and threw threw them all into the river. Having got rid of them all, he went home and lived happily ever after. 

Thus did Chilhra revenge himself on his brothers but he was callous enough to kill the poor sambhar who had saved his life.