2025-03-04

[public] 73.5K views, 10.2K likes, dislikes audio only

TED-Ed

Dig into the Bengali tale of brothers Neelkamal and Lalkamal, two princes seeking to end the reign of demons in their kingdom.

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Achinpur was on the precipice of demonic takeover. A mysterious woman beguiled the king and infiltrated the royal family. But she wasn’t human; under her beautiful façade lurked an insatiable appetite for flesh. One night, the demon queen devoured the king's sons — but the princes managed to evade death. Malay Bera shares the tale of their quest to free the kingdom from the scourge of demons.

Lesson by Malay Bera, directed by Ahmad Thabit, Samaka Studio.

Although this folktale exists in multiple oral variants across the Bengali-speaking world, this video is based on a variant akin to the better-known literary version, "Neelkamal and Lalkamal", from Thakurmar Jhuli (1907), an anthology of Bengali folktales collected by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar in the early 20th century.

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View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-tale-of-the-brothers-who-outwitted-the-demon-queen-malay-bera

Dig deeper with additional resources: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-tale-of-the-brothers-who-outwitted-the-demon-queen-malay-bera/digdeeper

Animator's website: https://www.samaka.tv

Music: https://www.campstudio.co

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