0060. Secundur's Letter to his Mother

From Oral Tradition from the Indus by J.F.A. McNair and T. L. Barlow, will illustrations by L. Fenn, online at: Hathi Trust.

Notes. Secundur Zulf-Kur-Nain is "Al-Iskandar Dhul-Qarnayn," Alexander the Great, as celebrated in Islamic legend. You can read more about this Islamic branch of the Alexander Romance tradition at Wikipedia. This letter from Secundur to his mother is just part of a series of anecdotes about Secundur which you can read in the book: Secundur Zulf-Kur-Nain. This particular anecdote parallels the story of Kisagotami and the Buddha, with Secundur playing the role of the Buddha.

Summary: Before his death, Secundur composes a letter to help his mother deal with her grief.

Read the story below:

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SECUNDUR'S LETTER TO HIS MOTHER

(Alexander the Great)

Being very sorrowful, Secundur sent one day for two or three of his Ministers and said to them, “My home is yet a long way off, and who can tell whether I shall live to return to it? so I am going to give you a command, and you are to write down what I say; and should I die suddenly, the letter which you shall write at my dictation, and which I will sign, and which you will keep, shall be
at my death sent to my mother and delivered into her
hands. Now write as follows:

From your son Secundur: I am near dying, and have had this letter written to you and have signed it myself. It is the custom of this country that when a person dies in a family, cooked bread is always given away in charity to the poor, for it is supposed to do good to the deceased. Now, I am going to ask you when you hear of my death, only to give cooked bread in charity to those who have never lost a relation. Again, should you ever come to the place of my burial and call out, ‘Secundur, Zulf-kur-Nain,’ I will reply to you from my grave.

Now the first request was so designed because Alexander knew that his mother could not find a family that had not to mourn some loss or other; and she would thus come to see that she was not alone in her grief, and that all human beings were afflicted with the death of relatives.

As the tale goes, said the narrator, Secundur did die, and was buried, and the letter was sent to his mother.