The Twelve Sisters

The legend of The Twelve Sisters or The Twelve Ladies, known as Nang Sip Song (นางสิบสอง) or as Phra Rot Meri (พระรถเมรี) in Thai and as Puthisen Neang Kong Rei in Khmer, is a Southeast Asian folktale, and also an apocryphal Jātaka Tale, the Rathasena Jātaka of the Paññāsa Jātaka collection. It is one of the stories of the previous lives of Buddha in which Rathasena, the son of one of the twelve women, is the bodhisattva.

The story of the Twelve Sisters is part of the folk tradition of certain countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and the folktales derived from it come in different versions, often under different titles depending from the country. This legend was also brought to Malaysia by the Malaysian Siamese where it became popular among the Malaysian Chinese community.

It is a long story about the life of twelve sisters abandoned by their parents and adopted by an ogress (Lao Sundara; Khmer: Santhomea; Thai: Santhumala) disguised as a beautiful lady. The conclusion is the sad love story about the only surviving son of the twelve sisters, Rathasena (Thai: Phra Rotthasen พระรถเสน; Khmer: Rithisen or Puthisen; Lao: Putthasen) with Manora (Thai: Meri เมรี; Lao: Kankari; Khmer: Kong Rei), the adopted daughter of ogress Sundara. At the end both died together upon the long and lonely shore of a lake.

A long time ago, there was a rich merchant and his beautiful wife who lived happily in a big house. Despite their good fortune, the couple didn't have any children. One day, they went together to a shrine and made an offering of twelve banana hands to a tree spirit. Not long thereafter the wife became pregnant and the rich man wished with all his might that the child would be a boy, but his wife gave birth to a girl. His wife, however, conceived again and again. She became pregnant twelve times and each time she had a daughter. By that time his business started to go wrong for him since the ships that took his goods to sell in another country were robbed several times. Finally the rich merchant ended up borrowing a lot of money from his friends trying to fix his business problems. Yet, no matter what he did, his family kept getting poorer.

...
Wikipedia