Knecht and Turu's father-son relationship

The father-son relationship between Knecht and Turu is also a succession: Knecht prepares his son to inherit the Rainmaker’s office, then gives his life in a communal rite so that Turu can take it up. Their bond links personal inheritance to the village’s ritual order, and turns a father’s final instructions into his son’s first public duties.

Inheritance and Training

Knecht’s understanding of fatherhood is shaped by his own apprenticeship under the older Rainmaker, Turu. That master brought him from the youth house into his hut, making him an apprentice and marking him before the village as the likely next Rainmaker. The craft was transmitted less through formal explanation than through tested observation and the senses: its central knowledge concerned the moon’s phases and effects, and the cycle through which the dead were believed to return in new births.

The office joined this inherited knowledge to practical service. Each spring, the Rainmaker used the moon’s condition, inherited rules, and experience to determine when different plants should be sown. In times of drought or prolonged wet and cold, he led the measures intended to protect the fields, including sacrifices, exorcisms, and processions. The village’s tradition also held that when every other remedy failed, the Rainmaker himself might be sacrificed. Knecht’s later decision to offer himself therefore arose within an established custom, not outside the responsibilities he had inherited.

A Father’s Instructions

As the drought worsened, Knecht spoke to his son about what might happen. He warned that the crisis could cost him his life and instructed Turu to assume the office immediately if he were sacrificed. He also specified what should follow: his body was to be burned, his ashes scattered on the fields, and the community’s seed grain protected through the winter, even under threat of death for anyone who touched it. Knecht expected hunger, but believed the sacrifice would break the evil spells and that the next year would be better.

These instructions make Turu more than a passive heir. Before the sacrifice, Knecht gives him responsibility for the village’s survival and for the interpretation of what has happened: the new Rainmaker must preserve the seed and lead the community into the next season. The father’s confidence in succession is expressed in practical commands, while the predicted recovery offers a future beyond the immediate famine.

The Sacrifice and Succession

When the village’s remedies failed and Maro stirred the people against Knecht, Knecht acted to secure both his son’s position and his own honor. He dressed Turu in ceremonial robes, brought him to the tribal mother, proposed him as successor, and offered himself as the sacrifice. She assented. At the appointed clearing, Knecht publicly declared that Turu would be the new Rainmaker and told the villagers to obey his son after his death.

The transfer was tested when Maro, whom Knecht had named as executioner, refused to act. The tribal mother then called forward an elderly villager, who carried out the sacrifice. Turu could not speak; he gave the necessary orders through gestures. His first official act was to oversee the fire made with two consecrated sticks. Thus the succession was completed not by a simple announcement but through a sequence of ritual acts: investiture, public designation, the father’s death, and the son’s direction of the funeral rite.

Continuity and Cost

The relationship binds private kinship to collective need. Knecht’s offer is a final act of care for his son, but it also leaves Turu with the burden of governing a community facing hunger and fear. The father’s orders preserve the seed for a future harvest, while the son’s first work as Rainmaker begins amid the consequences of the failed season.

The story also places this father-son succession within a wider pattern of inherited spiritual roles. In the embedded Indian life, Dasa is introduced as the son of Prince Ravana, whose new wife seeks to displace him in favor of her own son Nala. That parallel makes inheritance a recurring concern, though the circumstances differ: Knecht deliberately prepares Turu to succeed him, while Dasa’s place as heir is threatened. In Knecht’s story, the transfer is secured through sacrifice, and father and son are joined by the office and obligations that survive the father’s death.