Devi Purana: Krishna’s Death and Sati by the Pandavas

The Mahabharata stories of the death of Krishna and the end of the Pandavas are well known. Krishna dies when he is shot by a hunter while he was lying in yoga in the jungle wishing to end his life. Some while after this, the Pandavas undertake a long pilgrimage which eventually leads them to the Himalayas and beyond, where they meet with their ends – Draupadi and the four younger Pandavas fall down on the way and die, and Yudhishthira is taken to heaven while he is still in his body after he passes a test by Dharma to encounter yet another test in the other world.

The end of Krishna, the Pandava brothers and Draupadi in the Devi Purana is very different from this.

Before we go into how the Devi Purana tells this story, a few words about the Purana itself. Devi Purana, also known as Mahabhagavata Purana, occupies a place of importance among the eighteen Upapuranas. It is called Devi Purana because its central theme is the glory of the Goddess. The Purana describes the transformation of the Primal Goddess into all the other gods and goddesses and explains the whole universe as her sport – śaktikrīdā jagat sarvam. Everything comes into being from her, everything exists in her and everything goes back unto her. The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of Brahman as that from which everything comes into being, in which everything exists and unto which everything goes back – yato vā imāni bhutāni jāyante, yena jātāni jivanti, yat prayantyabhisamviśanti. The Goddess puts this in the Devi Purana as: “All this is me Me alone and nothing exists other than Me.” It is with the grace of the Goddess that Brahma creates the universe, Vishnu protects it and Shiva annihilates it in each circle of creation.

The comparatively small Purana consists of around four thousand five hundred verses divided into eighty-one chapters.

To the Devi Purana, Krishna is Kali incarnated as a male; and Radha, Shiva incarnated as a woman.

The Purana tells us that one day Shiva was sporting with his wife Parvati in the solitude of the Himalayas. The Lord of Lords was drinking in the amazing beauty of Parvati’s body with his eyes when a curious idea enters his mind. Birth as a woman is indeed wonderful, he thinks: nārījanma atiśobhanam.

With great tenderness he touches the face of his beloved. Then, addressing her with great love and reverence, he tells her: “Supreme Goddess, with your kindness, all my desires have been fulfilled. There are no more desires in my heart – except this one desire. Please fulfil this desire of mine too, Parameshani, if you are really pleased with me.”

Devi asks Shiva to tell her what his desire is and promises she will fulfil it. And Shiva tells her that she should take birth as a male somewhere on earth and he shall be born in a female body. She should become his husband and he, her wife; and they would love each other as they love now.

The Goddess promises to do so. She will take birth as a man in the house of Vasudeva in order to please him – she will be born as Krishna, she tells him.

Shiva is pleased. He tells Devi that he will take birth as Radha, the daughter of Vrishabhanu, and becoming as dear to her as her very life, he shall sport with her. He also tells her that his eight murtis shall be born as eight other women – Rukmini, Satyabhama and so on – and become his wives.

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Unlike in the Mahabharata, Krishna is not killed by Jara in the Devi Purana. Instead when he completes his missions on earth, one of which is to reduce the burden of wicked men on Earth, Brahma appears before him and asks him to reassume his original form and protect the gods. Krishna tells him that is precisely what he intends to do.

Krishna is the king of Dwaraka in the Devi Purana, unlike in the Mahabharata where he never becomes king. Following his conversation with Brahma, King Krishna tells his ministers that he does not intend to live on earth any more but will soon go to heaven. He asks them to send messengers to Hastinapura. They should go there and inform the Pandavas about his decision to ascend to heaven as suggested by Brahma.

When the Pandavas receive the message, they grieve over the news and decide to end their lives too to accompany Krishna to heaven through anumarana. Anumarana is a common Sanskrit word, which means wilful self-killing following another’s death. It is the ritual death we now call sati. Having made up their minds to follow Krishna in death, the Pandavas and Draupadi, and several other women, reach Dwaraka. Large quantities of other people too reach Krishna’s capital with the desire to do anumarana hearing of his decision to ascend to heaven.

When Krishna sees the Pandavas, his eyes fill up with tears. He entrusts the people of Dwaraka to them, telling them that since he is going to heaven, they should look after his people. Tears well up in the eyes of the Pandavas too at these words of Krishna. One after the other, beginning with Yudhishthira, they all inform Krishna that they too are going to give up their bodies and do his anugamana – follow him on his path.

In the Devi Purana, Draupadi is born of a part of Krishna-Kali – she is his/her amśaja. When the Pandava brothers express their desire to leave the earth and go with Krishna into the other world, Krishna turns to Draupadi and smilingly asks her if she would stay back on earth or would prefer to go to heaven with him.

“I am born of a part of you,” Draupadi tells Krishna, “and you are the supreme Kalika, the Primal One. I’ll follow you [merging back into you] as water merges back into water.”

aham tavāmśa-sambutā tvamādyā kālikā parā
aham tvām anuyāsyāmi jale jalamiva kṣaṇāt. – Devi Purana 58.28

A weeping Balarama tells Krishna to take all the Vrishni kings too with him since none of them would live on the earth without Krishna.

Krishna distributes his wealth among Brahmins and goes out of Dwaraka. The entire Vrishni clan follows him and as do the Pandavas along with their women and ministers. By the time they reach the sea, people from numerous other kingdoms too reach there. Nandi appears before them in a bejewelled chariot driven by lions. Brahma too appears in the skies along with the gods, bringing along thousands of chariots. At the sight of Krishna, the gods sing and dance in the skies, playing celestial drums and other musical instruments, creating a spirit of festivity and celebration all around.

In the middle of this great celebration, right before the eyes of Brahma and the gods, as the Pandavas and other people watch, Krishna changes into Kali. Kali boards the chariot drawn by lions and the next instant the chariot starts to move in the direction of Kailasa.

Draupadi touches the water of the sea before her and the next instant she merges back into Kali.

Yudhishthira boards a chariot which takes him to heaven.

Arjuna is an incarnation of Vishnu in the Devi Purana. Like Draupadi, he touches the seawater before him and abandons his body. Balarama too does the same. They are transformed back into the four-armed Vishnu bearing a conch, the discus, a mace and a lotus in his hands – for, like Arjuna, Balarama too is the incarnation of a part of Vishnu. Vishnu mounts his vehicle Garuda and is taken to Vaikuntha. Bhima and the other men there too abandon their bodies and are taken to heaven. Following this, Rukmini and the other seven queens of Krishna change themselves into Bhairava Shiva.

The Purana does not say anything special about Radha, so we will have to assume that she too changes back to Shiva as Krishna’s other wives do.

There is an interesting verse at the end of the chapter that narrates these incidents, a verse that is like a footnote. The verse says that in a later kalpa, Vishnu, with the blessings of Shiva, will be born as Krishna in his poornamsha [completeness] and he will reduce the burden of the earth like this through his sports [lila]. Which suggests that this is the story of an earlier kalpa.

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The most interesting change in the Devi Purana rendering of the Mahabharata and Bhagavata story is that both Krishna and Draupadi are incarnations of Kali and that Radha and Krishna’s eight other wives are incarnations of Shiva and the gender switch this involves.

The tantric tradition too tells the same story about the birth of Radha and Krishna, the central difference being that the idea of gender switch and incarnation occurs to both Kali and Shiva simultaneously. Here it is in the moments of sexual climax that the thought occurs to them. United with Kali, Shiva wonders what the orgasmic experience he is undergoing is like for Kali, the feminine; and Kali wonders what the experience she is undergoing at the moment is like for Shiva, the masculine. Each one desires to know through personal experience what an orgasm is like to the other gender. It is this curiosity that suggests to both of them the idea of transgender incarnations.

Among the numerous other changes the Devi Purana telling of the story introduces is in the nature of Krishna’s end. In the Mahabharata, Krishna dies a lonely death. The epic tells us how disappointed he became with the Yadavas and their infights. At one stage, Krishna is so frustrated that he seeks the advice of Narada in dealing with the Yadavas. He tells the celestial sage that their cruel speech torments his heart every day. It is as though he is like an arani which is rubbed against another to produce fire. Speaking of Ahuka and Akrura and their inability to get along with each other, for instance, Krishna rhetorically asks Narada, “What can be more painful than having both Ahuka and Akrura on your side? And what can be more painful than not having both Ahuka and Ajrura on your side.”

syātām yasyāhukākrurau kim nu duhkhataram tatah
yasya chāpi na tau syātām kim nu duhkhataram tatah.

Calling himself totally helpless, Krishna compares himself to the mother of two brothers who are gambling against each other. She cannot pray for the victory of either one of them, because that would be the loss of the other, so she prays for both. When Gandhari curses Krishna and says that his people would soon come to an end, Krishna accepts the curse and says that he in fact is endeavouring to bring about their end – meaning, they deserve to be finished off, so evil have they become. And that is precisely what he does. The Mausala Parva paints graphically Krishna’s dejection with the Yadavas and his loneliness in the last moments of his life. For a long time he wanders about in the jungle all alone before he enters yoga and is killed by Jara the hunter who mistakes him for a deer.

In contrast, Krishna’s death in the Devi Purana is a glorious affair. When the time comes, Brahma, the Creator, comes to him to tell him that he has completed his missions on earth and time has come for him to get back to his world and assume his original form, as Kali. He announces his decision to end his life to his ministers and has them send ministers to Hastinapura. All the Pandavas decide to do anumarana with him, as do an endless mass of other men and women from his own kingdom and from other kingdoms. When the time is ready, he goes to the seacoast and there a celestial chariot drawn by lions – Kali’s chariot – arrives to take him to his world. Right before the eyes of the hordes of celestials and humans, he transforms himself into Kali and boards the chariot that speeds away towards Kailasa. And the mass of people assembled there accompany him into the other world – including Draupadi, his wives and the five Pandavas.

The Uttara Kanda of the Ramayana tells us of the death of Rama, which too is a very public affair, attended to by masses of people from Ayodhya who all enter the waters of the Sarayu following Rama and accompany him in his final journey into the other world. The story that Devi Purana tells us about Krishna’s death is akin to this.

Yet another major change the Devi Purana makes is in the death of the Pandavas. Yudhishthira’s ascend to heaven is not sasharira – with his earthly body – nor is it a lonely affair in a desert beyond the Himalayas, but a glorious one in the sight of a huge assembly of men and women, including his brothers and all the gods in heaven, on the banks of the sea in Dwaraka. Nor do the other Pandavas die lonely deaths. Arjuna is transformed into Vishnu and ascends to heaven on the back of Garuda. Draupadi merges back into Kali, whose partial incarnation she is.

Part of the differences could be explained by the devotional nature of the Devi Purana compared to the dialectical nature of the Mahabharata. Devi Purana is about bhakti and salvation through the grace of the Goddess. Whereas the Mahabharata is about living life in tune with dharma, as Vyasa himself states in his Bharata Savitri. The only life worth living, according the Mahabharata, is life lived in harmony with dharma. The only society that is worth living in is the one in which dharma reigns supreme. The purpose of Krishna’s birth in the Mahabharata is establishment of dharma and teaching the world the path of dharma which they can follow. As the Gita verses put it beautifully, he creates himself whenever dharma declines and adharma prospers and his mission is the destruction of adharma and reestablishment of dharma:

yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānirbhavati bhārata
abhyutthānam adharmasya tadātmānam sṛjāmyaham
paritrāṇāya sādhunām vināśāya ca dushkṛtām
dharmasamsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge.

Whenever dharma declines and adharma prospers, Oh Bharata, then I create myself. In order to protect the good and destroy the evil, and to establish dharma, I am born age after age.

In the Devi Bhagavata too, that definitely is one of the missions of the Goddess who incarnates as Krishna. But there are also other missions to her Krishna incarnation. One of them is showing the world her glory so that man turns to her – salvation comes not exactly through dharmic living, though that too is essential, but through devotion. Yet another purpose of the incarnation is pure sport – lila, krida – sport for the sake of sporting, for the sake of pleasure. The best word to describe that is rāsa. The model of life set before man is not struggling to achieve goals, or even virtuous living, but the celebration of life, life in tune with the divine, which, when lived rightly becomes a long rāsa. In lila, in krida, there are no goals to be achieved – there is only one thing to be done: celebrating life, living life as a sport, which is achieved when man gives up his individual will and individual goals, and surrenders to the will and goals of the divine. Kali takes birth as Krishna and Shiva as Radha and eight other women to sport and celebrate life in yet another form.

The Pandavas end their life at the ascent of Krishna-Kali because it is his/her presence in their lives that makes their lives meaningful and without him/her, their lives are empty.

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Soma: Scandalous Sex Life of the Founding Father

Vyasabharata 3

In the Adi Parva of the Mahabharata, responding to a question from Janamejaya, Vaishampayana tells him stories of his royal ancestors, the lunar dynasty of kings. In some texts of the epic, this happens before the story of Shakuntala and in others, following her story.

The lunar dynasty produced numerous magnificent kings who for all times to come became beacon lights for India. They carved out paths which all coming generations of rulers aspired to follow. In spite of this, lust remained a running theme in the tale of the dynasty from the beginning till the end. Here is the story of the moon god [known variously as Soma, Chandra, Chandrama, Shashi, Indu and so on] from whom the lunar dynasty gets its name.

Soma’s story too is a story of lust. Besides, we probably have here the world’s first tales of adultery.

The Mahabharata does not tell us much about Soma, the founding father of the lunar dynasty to which the Bharatas belong. For this reason, we have to combine what it says with what other texts have to say about him.

The myth about the birth of the moon god, Soma, is perhaps the most beautiful birth story in world mythology. And the story is uniquely Indian – no other culture in the world could have produced a story like this.

The story tells us of Sage Atri being asked by Brahma to engage in creation. Atri wanted to acquire the power needed for this and with that intention, started a powerful form of tapas called anuttara.

The name means the highest tapas, beyond which there is no other tapas.

Sage Atri was purity itself and such was his commitment to the tapas that he soon reached the highest peaks of spirituality, and the Ultimate Reality, the Brahman, appeared reflected in the still lake of his mind. As the pure ecstasy of the experience possessed him, tears of supreme joy started flowing from his eyes: the bliss that passes understanding, born of self-realization. And, as those tears began flowing down his cheeks, the story tells us, the guardians of the eight directions transformed themselves into exquisite women and drank up those tears. They were in love with those tears and wanted to conceive children out of Atri’s ecstasy.

The women became pregnant but found themselves incapable of enduring the powerful fetuses in their wombs and pushed them out of their wombs. Brahma, the Creator, gathered the fetuses and joined them to form a single magnificent child who instantly grew into a youth. This was Soma, the moon god. The Creator endowed him with every imaginable weapon and thus empowering him, took him to his world, the Brahmaloka, where the brahmarshis requested him to make the youth their lord. The luster of the youth grew steadily as sages, gods, gandharvas and apsaras sang the Sama hymns in his praise.

Prajapati Daksha gave twenty-seven of his daughters in marriage to Soma.

Later Soma, himself born of tapas, entered a long period of tapas. His chosen deity was Vishnu. Vishnu was pleased with the tapas and appeared before him and asked him to seek a boon from him. “I want to perform a Rajasuya sacrifice in the heavens,” said Soma. “When I do that bless me that all the great Gods like Brahma should be present in the sacrifice. And I want the trident-wielding Shiva to stand guard at the gate of the sacrificial place.”

The moon god had acquired so much power that at his desire the great Gods had to be at his beck and call.

The Rajasuya began. Every celestial attended the sacrifice: the gods, Vasus, Maruts, Brahma, Vishnu, Arti, Bhrigu, all. As desired by Soma, Shiva himself stood guard to the sacrifice. And when the Rajasuya ended, Soma gave the three worlds as dakshina to the priests who officiated in the sacrifice.

The sacrifice ended with the avabhrita ritual bath. As Soma stood up, glowing in indescribable glory after the ritual bath, the goddesses present there could not contain themselves. Nine of them fell in love with him instantly. Not only did they fall in love with him, great passion for him raged in their hearts. Blazing lust screamed out from every part of the goddesses’ body, seeking immediate fulfillment. While the gods, the sages and other guests stood watching aghast, these nine goddesses threw themselves at him openly: Vishnu’s wife Lakshmi, Kardama’s wife Sinivali, Vibhavasu’s wife Dyuti, Dhata’s wife Pushti, the sun god’s wife Prabha, Havishman’s wife Kuku, Jayanta’s wife Kirti, Kashyapa’s wife Anshumali, and Nanda’s wife Dhriti. These goddesses abandoned their husbands and openly sought pleasure from Soma. And he pleasured them all as no one else could pleasure a woman. The god’s were infuriated and wanted to curse Soma for this audacious sin, but found themselves powerless to do anything against him. The Rajasuya had made him all powerful and rendered everyone else powerless before him.

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Some say it was when Tara saw Soma as he stood in all his glory after the ritual bath that concluded the Rajasuya that she became infatuated with him, like the nine goddesses. The Devi Bhagavata Purana, which tells us this story in detail, has a different story to say.

Before we go into that story, the word ‘tara’ means a star, and in mythology all over the world the moon and the stars are closely linked together. In our own mythology, the moon god is wedded to the twenty-seven daughters of Daksha, who are all stars: the twenty-sever stars of astrology – Ashwati, Bharani, Kartika, Rohini and so on. Tara’s infatuation with the moon god is thus supported by the logic of mythology. Tara’s husband Brihaspati is the planet Jupiter, who pales in comparison with the lustrous glory of the moon in the night sky.

According to the Devi Bhagavata, one day Tara went to the house of Soma. Tara was beautiful beyond words, a lusty woman at the peak of her youth, intoxicated with youthful passions. Soma saw the irresistible Tara and instantly desired her. And Tara too took one look at Soma and straight away fell in love with him. Carried away by the stormy passion they felt, they neither could, nor wanted to, resist the fiery longing they felt for each other and had sex. Following which, Tara decided to stay on in Soma’s house, rather than go back to her husband Brihaspati.

Soma is a god and Brihaspati is the guru of the gods. According to Indian culture, the relation between Soma and Tara is that of a disciple and his gurupatni – his guru’s wife. Indian culture speaks of an erotic relation between the two as the worst possible sin, a mahapataka. And it is this dreaded sin that the two were indulging in without any compunctions.

Brihaspati waited for a few days for Tara to come back. When she did not, he sent one of his disciples to Soma’s house. But drunk with the love of Soma, Tara refused to go back to Brihaspati. Days passed and Brihaspati once again sent a disciple, asking Tara to go back to him and Tara did exactly what she had done earlier – she again refused to go back to Brihaspati. This happened again and again and eventually Brihaspati decided to go on his own and take Tara back.

Brihaspati was in a fury when he reached Soma’s residence. Addressing the moon god, he said angrily: “What have you done, you fool? I am your guru and Tara is your gurupatni. You can protect her, revere her, but you cannot have any other relationship with her. What have you been doing keeping her in your house? Were you protecting her or were you having sex with her? Don’t you know that for you to have sex with her is to commit one of the gravest sins in the world? You are not fit to live among the gods. Give my wife back to me and let me take her back to where she belongs – my home. Do as I say before I lay a curse upon you.”

Soma laughed haughtily at the enraged words of the guru. He began by attacking Brihaspati for losing his self mastery. “It is only those brahmanas who have full mastery over their emotions that deserve honour. You seem to have no mastery over yourself and for that reason you cannot curse me either. The curse of a man without mastery over himself will have no effect.”

“As for Tara,” Soma continued, “she is here on her own. I haven’t kept her a prisoner here. And she is enjoying herself. When she has had enough of enjoyment, she will come back to you and you can have her back. Let her stay here so long as she wants to. What harm can it do? ”

Soma reminded Brihaspati quoting the scriptures that a woman never becomes impure from adultery. She is purified month after month when she has her period.

Brihaspati saw he had no options but to go back. But at home he was tormented by longing [smara-aaturah] for Tara. Soon he was back at Soma’s place. This time, however, the watchmen who stood guard at the gate did not even let Brihaspati go in.

Brihaspati waited long, but Soma did not appear. The furious guru could no more contain his anger and shouted aloud from the gate: “You wretch! You vilest of gods! No one is more depraved than you are. Tara is your gurupatni. She is like your mother! You have forcibly kept her a prisoner in your house and you have been living in sin with her! Give her back to me this instant or I shall reduce you to ashes.”

Soma now came out and spoke to Brihaspati with a smile on his face. He said, “Why do you talk such nonsense! Your beautiful wife is here because you cannot give her the satisfaction she seeks. And in any case, she is too beautiful for you. She is endowed with every imaginable feminine perfection. Such a jewel of a woman is not fit for a beggar like you. Why don’t you take some ugly woman for a wife – she would be fit for you. It has been ordained that exquisite women should have handsome husbands. And the kamashastras [books on the erotic science] too say that beautiful women should have for their husbands men who are equal to them in beauty, youth and prowess. You seem to be totally ignorant of the Kamashastra! Now go away. I have no intension of giving her back to you. And let me tell you, your curse will have no effect on me, for you are in the grips of lust.”

Insulted, humiliated, furious, Brihaspati went straight to Indra, his chief disciple and the lord of the gods and told him what happened. Indra took matters into his own hands and sent a messenger to Soma explaining to him the evil nature of his relationship with Tara and asking him to give her back to Brihaspati. Indra reminded him of the twenty-eight wives he already had [according to some counts Daksha had given twenty seven of his daughters to the moon god as his wives, and according to some others, twenty-eight.]. He reminded him of the celestial courtesans like Urvashi and Menaka. He could have them for his pleasure if he so wished, said Indra – but this relationship with his gurupatni was certainly a shame for any man, and particularly so for a man whose father was a sage like Atri.

Soma told him that the whole notion that a man can own a woman is wrong. Tara had gone to him on her own and she was happy with him, just as he was happy with her. Tara hated Brihaspati and she wouldn’t go back to him on her own. No power in the world was going to separate her from him against her will.

The moon god did not forget to remind Indra of his own adultery and the adultery of Brihaspati, which he stated as one of the reasons why Tara hated her husband.

This was a challenge to the power of Indra and the gods in general. Soma, who was so haughty about his power, had to be taught a lesson through power. There was only one solution now: a war against Soma. With all the gods on one side and Soma on the other.

Acharya Shukra, the guru of the asuras, heard of the problem in the celestial world. He took Soma’s side and offered him assistance if there was a war – his own and that of the asuras.

The armies gathered, ready for war.

Brahma, however, decided to interfere at the last moment. Brahma was Sage Atri’s father and hence Soma’s grandfather. Soma finally listened to Brahma and agreed to send Tara back to Brihaspati. Tara was given no choice in the matter. She certainly was not happy about this, but she had no alternative and reluctantly went back to her husband. Brihaspati was delighted that he got his wife back. Taking her with him, he went home.

The story does not end here.

Tara was pregnant when she went back. When the child was born, Brihaspati became very happy and made arrangements to celebrate the birth and perform the rituals. But Soma would have none of it. He laid claim to the child, telling it was born of him. This time it was Brihaspati’s turn to refuse, saying the child was his and it resembled him.

Once again the celestial world was hot with anger and the gods and asuras assembled ready for war. This time too, it was Brahma who interfered. He asked Tara to tell the truth: Whose son was it? And Tara coyly whispered that it was Soma’s and, embarrassed, hurried back to her inner apartments.

The war was avoided once again.

Soma named his son Budha and it is with Soma that the child grew up.

Soma is the first king of the lunar dynasty and Budha, the second. Budha’s son Pururava is one of the greatest legends in the lunar dynasty filled with legendary kings. His life with the apsara Urvashi has fascinated our culture for ages and inspired numerous works of literature, from the most ancient times right up to our own times.

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One of the puzzling things in the stories of the moon god is his strong association with sexual desire. It is not puzzling in the sense that this is a rare connection found only in Indian mythology – on the contrary, this is a near-universal connection and hence, in that sense, not puzzling at all. It is puzzling because he is born of the tears of a sage’s ecstasy of self-realization.

But then, Indian culture has associated sexuality with sacredness right from the beginning. We have looked upon [sexual] desire, kama, as the very source of life. The Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda, the Sacred Hymn of Creation, speaks of kama as the first born and the origin of everything born subsequently: “There arose Primal Desire in the beginning, the seed of the mind, the first born.” [Kamastadagre samavartadhi manaso retah prathamam yad aseet.] Krishna too speaks of kama as sacred – as himself, as God – so long as it is not against dharma. [dharmaviruddho bhuteshu kamo’smi bharatarshabha. Gita 7.11] But when that sexuality takes you over, possesses your mind, enslaves you, then it is bad.

In the case of the moon god, what we find is his becoming a slave to his sexuality and because of this sexual slavery, practicing precisely the opposite of the kind of kama that Krishna calls sacred. In spite of all the arguments he gives, in both the stories above we find him a slave to his sexuality. In the first case, there is only one reason why he would respond to the open, public demand of the nine goddesses – his own sexual desire for them, originating as much from his maleness as from his sense of power and sense of arrogant superiority over the other gods. In the second case again, we find him not a master, but a slave to not just sex, but to one of the worst forms of sexuality that Indian culture speaks of: his sexual partner is a woman he should look upon as his own mother. He not only has sex with her, but has an ongoing sexual relationship that lasts for quite some time. And there is no attempt on his part to hide that relationship– he openly declares it, flouts all sexual morality when he says any woman can choose any man she likes as her sexual partner and contemptuously tells Brihaspati that the reason why his wife left him is because he, Brihaspati, is not an adept in the sexual arts and cannot give satisfaction to his wife.

Perhaps what we find here is the mind at play. The moon is the deity of the mind in both Vedic literature and subsequent Indian philosophy. And the mind is a slave to passions. The reasons Some gives, when he chooses to give reasons, are not the true reasons, but the ‘good’ reasons. At least in the case of the affair with Tara, the Devi Bhagavata makes the true reason very clear: the first thing that the Devi Bhagavata tells us of this affair is that at the first sight of the beautiful Tara, Soma became kamaaturah – tormented by lust for her.

Perhaps the contradiction in Soma’s obsession with sex and the story of his birth from the tears of a sage’s spiritual ecstasy could be resolved if we remember that when Atri attained self-realization, he was doing tapas to empower himself for creation.

In any case, a legacy of the moon god thus is one of powerful sexual longing – amoral or immoral – and this becomes the legacy of a vast number of kings in the lunar dynasty. King after king falls because he becomes a victim to unbridled sexuality.

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A third story we have about Soma is about his obsessive passion for one of his wives, which makes him neglect his other wives. According to this story, which the Mahabharata itself tells us, Daksha gave twenty-seven of his daughters in marriage to Soma. They were all beautiful, but the most beautiful of them all was Rohini. Soma is besotted with her and in his obsession with her, totally ignores his remaining wives. They go to their father and complain to him about it. Daksha instructs Soma to mend his ways and behave equally towards all his wives, but his infatuation with Rohini is such that he continues to ignore them. His wives once again go to their father and Daksha again reminds Soma of the need to be with his other wives. This time too Soma ignores the advice. It is after Daksha’s daughters went to their father a third time that Daksha curses Soma. The story tells us how Daksha’s curse brought the dreaded disease rajayakshma [tuberculosis, the wasting disease] upon him. A repentant Soma was later asked to go and bathe in the sacred waters of Prabhasa and this bath changed his yakshma into the current monthly waxing and waning we see the moon passing through.

Indian literature tells human stories in the name of the gods. What we read here are some such stories. It is also possible that the episodes are speaking of cosmic astronomical events which the Puranas narrate in human/celestial terms. Tara and Soma as well as Tara and Rohini are astrologically linked; and Soma and the goddesses could also be so linked.

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Nalayani: The Past Life of Draupadi

[Translated from the original Sanskrit]

[The Kumbhakonam Edition of the Mahabharata gives us several details that are not available in the KM Ganguli translation of the epic or in the Gita Press edition. The following is one such instance. I believe there is no other English translation of this available at the moment. The passage below constitutes Chapter 212 and 213 of the Adi Parva of the epic in the Kumbhakonam Edition, 1906. In the narrative sequence, these chapters come after Arjuna has won Draupadi, and immediately before all the five Pandava brothers wed her.]

Vyasa Said: Oh king, do not grieve over your daughter becoming wife to all five Pandavas. Her mother had earlier prayed that Draupadi should become the wife of five men. Yaja and Upayaja, constantly engaged in dharma, made it possible through their tapas that she should have five husbands and that is how Draupadi was attained by the five Pandavas as their wife.

It is now time for your whole family to celebrate. For in the whole world there is no one superior to you and you are now invincible – no one in the whole world has the power to defeat you. Let me explain further how she attained five husbands. Listen to me, your heart free from sorrow.

In another lifetime, your daughter was called Nalayani, a woman of impeccable virtue. She served her husband Maudgalya, an old leper, with great devotion. The man was mere bones and skin, bitter by nature, lustful, jealous and prone to quick rages. He stank terribly – his body emitted every foul smell. Advanced in age, his skin was wrinkled, his whole body crooked. His head had grown bald and his skin and nails had begun to wear off. Nalayani served her husband who practiced severe penances; she lived by eating his left over food.

Then one day, while he was eating, his thumb fell off into the food. Without the least hesitation, Nalayani removed it from the food and ate the leftover food. The man, who had the power to do as he wished, was pleased with this. He asked her to ask for a boon.

“I am not old or evil-tempered, nor jealous or hot tempered,” he told her. “My body does not smell, nor am I short in height or lust-filled. My blessings on you, beloved. Now tell me how I can delight you and where you wish to live and enjoy. I shall do all that you wish, tell me whatever is in your mind.”
When he repeatedly asked her to ask for a boon, she asked for one.

Maudgalya was a man of pure actions and he was now pleased with her. He had the power to give boons and he gave all one wished. So Nalayani of blameless beauty told her husband: “O lord, unthinkable are your powers. May you attain great fame in the world by dividing yourself into five and pleasuring me in all those five forms! And after that I want you to become one again and continue to pleasure me.”

“Let it be so!” the great seer Maudgalya of surpassing spiritual power told Nalayani of beautiful hair and alluring smile. He then turned himself into five and pleasured her in those five forms in every imaginable way.

He then spent time in the ashrams of sages worshipped by them, moving from one ashram to the other, assuming any form he desired. He went to the world of the gods and there moved among the celestial sages taking her with him. He lived as a guest in the palace of Indra, worshipped by Shachi, his food the ambrosia of the gods.

Desiring to enjoy pleasures with Nalayani, also known as Mahendrasena, he, the great lord, boarded the divine chariot of the sun god and moved around with her. He then went to Mt Meru and started living on the mountain. He dived into the celestial Ganga with her. He lived in the rays of the moon as the never-ceasing wind does.

When the great sage took on the shape of a mountain range, because of his ascetic power she became a great river in the middle of the mountains. When the sage transformed himself into a sal tree full of flowers, she attained the form of a creeper and wound herself around him. Every time he assumed a body, she traveled with her husband assuming a similar body. And so living, her love for him and his love for her increased in equal measure. The great sage continuously reveled with her using his yogic powers and she, as Divine Will would have it, gave him pleasures in turn.

All this time, she remained the sage’s single wife, like Arundhati to Vasishtha and Sita to Rama, and like them entirely devoted to her husband. In this respect, she became nobler than Damayanti’s mother. Her mind became totally engrossed in the great brahmana Maudgalya, as though her soul itself had merged with him, and it never wavered from him.

This, oh great king, is the truth and for that reason, never think of it in other ways. It is this Nalayani who is born as your daughter Krishnaa from the sacrificial pit, as some divine plan would have it.

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Drupada said: Great brahmana, best knower of all scriptures, tell me the reason why the auspicious Nalayani took birth in my sacrifice.

Vyasa said: Listen to me, King, of how Lord Rudra gave her a boon and why the glorious one was born in your house. Let me tell you more of Krishnaa’s former life story.

Famous by the name Indrasena, the noble Nalayani travelled around with her husband Maudgalya, no worries in her mind. For Maudgalya, those years of reveling with her passed like moments. And then one day, after years of enjoying them, the sage lost interest in pleasures. Desiring the highest dharma, his mind was now turned towards brahma-yoga. The great sage, now keen on austerities, abandoned her.

Abandoned by him, oh great king, Nalayani fell to the earth. As she fell, addressing Maudgalya, she said: “Do not abandon me, great sage. I have been enjoying pleasures as my heart desired, and I am still not satisfied with the enjoyment.”

And Maudgalya told her: “You speak to me without any compunction about things that should not be spoken of. And you are causing obstacles on my path of tapas. So listen to what I say. You shall be born on the earth as a princess and will attain great repute. You shall be the daughter of the noble-hearted king of Panchala. You shall then have five renowned men for your husbands. With those handsome men, you shall long enjoy the pleasures of sex.

Vaishampayana said: Cursed thus, the glorious Nalayani became miserable and went to a forest. Still discontented with the enjoyment of pleasures, she worshipped the Lord of the Gods through tapas. She gave up hopes and expectations, fasted with only the air as her food, and following the diurnal course of the sun, began practicing the tapas of the five fires – with the burning sun above her and four burning fires surrounding her. Rudra, the Lord of Beasts, the Great Monarch of all the worlds, the Great God, was pleased with her severe penance and gave her a boon. “You will be reborn again and in that birth you shall be a lustrous woman; and you shall have five renowned men for your husbands. They will all have bodies like that of Indra and in valour too they shall be like Indra. And there you shall achieve for the gods their great work.”

Hearing this, the woman said: “I requested you for one husband. Why have you given me these five husbands? A woman shall have one man. How can a woman belong to many men?”

And the Great Lord said: “You told me five times, repeatedly, to give you a husband. Noble woman, you shall have five husbands and you shall find happiness with all of them.”

The woman replied: “It has been decided long ago that it is the dharma of a woman to have only one husband, whereas it is the dharma of a man, as practiced by many, to have several wives. This is the dharma for women that the sages decided in the past. And it has also been said that a single woman would be the partner of man in religious rituals. And we also see in the world that a woman has a single husband, just as she has a single virginhood – once ended, it never comes back. The smritis allow a second husband to a woman for the purpose of conceiving through niyoga in an exigency. If she goes to a third woman, that is considered a sin and when she has a fourth man, she falls and becomes a prostitute. This is the path of dharma and for that reason I cannot accept many husbands. That is something not seen practiced in the world and how could I be absolved from the sin of corruption if that happens?”

The Great Lord said: “In the past women lived a free life sexually and were considered pure after their monthly periods. It was not just once that you asked me [for a husband]. But having many husbands shall not be against dharma for you.”

The woman replied: “If I am to have many husbands, and if I desire sex [rati] with them all, I request you to grant me that I shall remain a virgin after my unions with each of my husbands. In the past I attained spiritual merit [siddhi] through service to my husband. I also attained desire for sexual pleasures through that service. Grant me that I attain both in my coming birth too.”

The Great Lord said: “Listen to me, auspicious woman. Rati [sexual pleasure/the goddess of sexual pleasure] and Siddhi [spiritual progress/the goddess of spiritual progress] do not enjoy each other’s company. In your next birth too, endowed with great beauty and good fortune, enjoying with your five husbands after regaining your virginity repeatedly, you shall attain great glory. Go now and you will see a man standing in the waters of the Ganga. Woman of beautiful smile, bring him, the lord of the gods, to me.”

When the Great Lord, Rudra, the lord that has become everything, spoke thus, she went round him in reverence and walked towards the Ganga, the river of great merit that flows in the three worlds.

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Translation by Satya Chaitanya

2. Shakuntala: Flaming Indian Womanhood

Vyasabharata 2

Shakuntala stands for all that is beautiful in Indian womanhood. She would risk her honour as a woman for the love of a man, and yet she would not take one harsh word that goes against her dignity from that man. She has the softness of the softest flower and yet she is as fierce as fire itself. She is strength that knows how to bend. She is the courage to trust. She is silence that knows how to be eloquent when the need arises.

In the Mahabharata her story is told by Vaishampayana in response to a question by King Janamejaya about his remote ancestors.

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When we first meet Shakuntala in the epic, she is the gracious ashram hostess who receives the honoured visitor Dushyanta who has just entered Sage Kanva’s ashram. The king was on a hunting trip and had reached the banks of the Malini where numerous ashrams were situated. The most famous among them was that of Sage Kanva and it was to pay his respects to Kanva that Dushyanta had gone to the ashram.

Dushyanta is surprised to see the beautiful young maiden in the ashram. Her beauty takes his breath away. Desire for her is instantly born in him. And he tells the young woman in front of him it is not the habit of his heart to desire for the undesirable and had she been a daughter of Kanva and hence a brahmana maiden, he would not have desired her. He introduces himself and asks her to tell him who she is.

Shakuntala informs him that she is the sage’s adopted daughter and he is the only father she has known all her life. She was born to the sage Vishwamitra and the apsara Menaka. The sage was doing tapas when Indra asked the celestial dancer to go and tempt him and she was the result. She was abandoned at birth by both her parents and found by Sage Kanva. She was given the name Shakuntala because the sage had found her lovingly cared for by peacocks.

Shakunta in Sanskrit means a peacock. Shakuntala is short for shakunta-laalitaa, lovingly-cared-for-by-peacocks.

By the time she finishes her story, his desire for her breaks all bounds. He wants her, and he wants her now.

“So it is the royal blood of Vishwamitra that flows through you and for that reason you are a princess and a kshatriya woman. Marry me, be my queen and live in royal comforts in my palace. You will have all the ornaments you desire, all the diamonds and jewels, finest clothes and anything else you wish for. I give you my kingdom itself.”

The king presses hard. Passion for her has destroyed all his sense.

Shakuntala asks the king to wait until her father comes back. He has gone out to the jungle to collect fruits and should be back in a short while.

But Dushyanta wouldn’t wait. Desire for her is tormenting him. He asks her to marry him by the gandharva rites, in which a man and a woman in love give themselves to each other, without waiting for the approval of parents and elders, without mantras, without priests, without rituals.

Again Shakuntala says they should wait. It is only a short while, until the sage is back, which would be any time now. But the king persists and succeeds in overcoming her objections. He grants her the one thing she desires – that her son should inherit his kingdom.

The wedding is consummated immediately.

Rather than wait for Kanva to come back, to see whom was why he had originally come to the ashram, Dushyanta decides to depart immediately, telling Shakuntala his men would soon come to escort her to his palace.

The king does not keep his promise. Shakuntala waits for Dushyanta’s people to come and take her to his palace. They do not come. She gives birth to her child in the ashram and names him Sarvadamana, All-Subduer. Still no one comes from Dushyanta. Eventually, when her son is twelve years old, Kanva, her father, reminds her it is time for her to hand over her son to his father and to let him grow up in the palace where he belongs, learning the ways of kings. Shakuntala takes her son with her and reaches Dushyanta’s court.

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Dushyanta refuses to acknowledge that he had ever met Shakuntala or had any relations with her. He refuses to acknowledge the adolescent she has brought along as his son. He calls Shakuntala a whore and the mother of a bastard child born of shameless lust.

He shows no respect even for the ashram clothes she is wearing.

At his words, Shakuntala becomes an enraged snake. This is the man she had chosen for herself thirteen years ago. This is the man to whom she had surrendered her heart and her body. This is the man who had begotten a child in her and left, promising to send his people to fetch her and then forgotten all about it. And now he is insulting her in the middle of an assembly, in the presence of his ministers and noblemen – insulting her in such crude, merciless words.

The young woman who grew up in an ashram does not know what fear is. She does not know what treachery is, what weakness is. She has received the best possible upbringing: in an atmosphere of love, kindness, truth and fearlessness. She does not care she is standing in the court of an all-powerful monarch. She does not care his ministers and nobles are listening to her. A moment ago she was embarrassed about coming to him like this and shy. But now she lashes out at him, in the only language she knows: the language of truth. “You know me well, great king,” she tells him, “and yet you shamelessly say you do not, showing total lack of culture.”

She reminds him that culture demands that a wife who comes to her husband’s place for the first time needs to be honoured, she needs to be offered worship. “You err by not worshipping me as I stand here,” asserts Shakuntala, demanding from her man the obeisance that is every woman’s right by Indian culture. “I deserve to be worshipped. And you do not offer me worship that is my due.”

Shakuntala’s power comes from her knowledge of her position, her rights. Our ancient culture held women at the highest level. Our women did not grow up internalizing a self image that told her that she was the creation of a lesser God. She was the creation of the same God, maybe even a greater God. She was not a source of sin for man, but of dharma, virtue.

It is thrilling to see this powerful self-image in woman after epic Indian woman. Practically all our epic women, be it Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi, or Sita share the same self-image: that of an equal to her man. There is no feeling in her that she is the ‘second sex’. If anything, she is the first sex. Gandhari never once in her life cringes before her husband Dhritarashtra. Kunti never once feels she is inferior to Pandu. Draupadi knows she is in every way equal to her husbands. And Sita says she will walk not in Rama’s footsteps, but ahead of him, so that she can crush the thorns on his path with her feet and make his journey easier for him – agratah te gamishyaami, mRdnantii kuzakaNTakaan.

This amazing self-perception of power is not born of arrogance or haughtiness, but of her culturally given status.

We see this same status of women in their husband’s home spoken of by the Vedas too. The standard Vedic blessing for a new bride was:

samraajnii zvazure bhava
samraajnii zvazvraam bhava
nanandari samraajnii bhava
samraajnii adhi devRSu.
[RV 10.85.46] [AV 14.144]

Be thou an empress to your father-in-law.
An empress be thou to your mother-in-law.
Be thou an empress to your husband’s sister.
An empress be thou to his younger brother.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that he needs to worship her for she is his wife come home for the first time.

Perhaps the position of Indian women was at its best in the Vedic times. Since those ancient days, it has been a more or less steady decline for women. Today the respect given to a new bride is mostly ritualistic. She is still worshipped as she enters her husband’s home, though not by her husband but by his family, but her actual position in a traditional Indian home is far from what it was in the Vedic days.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that a wife is not a man’s plaything – she is an equal half of his being, his best friend in the journey of life, the root of his dharma, artha and kama [virtue, wealth and pleasures]. And for a man who wants to cross the ocean of samsara and reach moksha, she is his most powerful ship.

She reminds him that woman is the eternal sacred ground where man is reborn as his own son.

aatmano janmanah kSetram
punyam raamaah sanaatanam.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that she has not come to him for his charity – she does not need any of it. What she demands is justice – what is hers by right. In fact, she herself does not need even that. She is perfectly willing to go back to the ashram from where she has come – she will always be welcome there. She does not care for the comforts of the palace – such things do not tempt her. She needs just one thing: that his child be acknowledged as his. And she warns him of dire consequences if he ignored her.

Still Dushyanta does not acknowledge her or her son. Instead, he insults her father, the sage Vishwamitra, calling him wanton; and insults her mother, the apsara Menaka, calling her a whore. And she herself is speaking like a common whore, he tells her: pumscaliiva prabhaaSase.

He does not stop there. He calls all women liars.

Before answering him this time she apologizes, for she says what she is going to say is going to hurt him. And then she tells him the difference between a fool and a wise man is that the fool chooses evil where the wise man chooses the good.

“Truth,” she tells him, “is superior to a thousand ashwamedha sacrifices; the study of all the Vedas, bathing in every sacred teertha in the world – nay, even these are not equal to the sixteenth part of the truth.”

It is that truth that Dushyanta was rejecting in rejecting her and her son.

Shakuntala shows her culture by apologizing for calling him a fool in spite of Dushyanta’s use of such unpardonable words as a whore for her and her mother, and a wanton for her father.

As she turns around to leave, she tells Dushyanta her son does not need his kingdom. She did not bring him to Dushyanta in the hope of her son inheriting his kingdom. No, he does not require it. For, her son will rule over all the earth bounded by the oceans even without his help.

Rte’pi tvayi duSyanta zailaraaja-avatamsikaam
caturantaam imaam urviim putro me paalayiSyati.

Gods and celestial sages interfere here on Shakuntala’s behalf. They appear and testify that she is indeed Dushyanta’s wife and Sarvadamana is his son and suggest that he should now be renamed Bharata.

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When the gods and celestial sages declare that Sarvadamana is indeed Dushyanta’s son, the king accepts him and says that he has never for a moment doubted it, nor had he ever forgotten Shakuntala. Had he accepted Shakuntala and her son straight away, the royal officers and common people would have had doubts about the legitimacy of his relationship with them – there would always have remained an amount of suspicion in their minds. For his marriage to Shakuntala was known only to the two of them. Now that the gods and celestial sages have declared her his wife and Sarvadamana his son, he is the happiest man.

Is Dushyanta speaking the truth? Or is it that he has no choice but to accept them since the gods and sages have made their declaration?

The answer lies not in Dushyanta’s words but in his acts since meeting Shakuntala for the first time in the ashram.

The moment Dushyanta sees her, he is smitten by her and desires her. After asking her who she is and finding that she is of royal blood, he straight away expresses his desire for her and asks her to marry him. He offers her everything that comes to his mind that might interest a woman according to his understanding of women – precious ornaments, beautiful clothes, jewels, and even his own kingdom.

Shakuntala tells him to wait a short while since her father would be back any moment – it is only to gather fruits that he has gone, he should wait until he comes back and ask for her from him.

Shakuntala was a woman any man could fall in love with instantly. She was desirable in every imaginable way as far as a man is concerned. But I want to make a distinction here between love and lust. If it was love for her that Dushyanta felt, he could have, and would have, waited until Kanva came back in a few minutes or at the latest in an hour or so. But no, he wouldn’t wait, in spite of being repeatedly requested by Shakuntala. Eventually she agrees to his proposal, after making him promise that the son born to them would inherit his kingdom. They enter into a gandharva marriage and the marriage is immediately consummated.

Dushyanta leaves the ashram straight away. He does not wait until Kanva comes back. Had he been an honorable man, had his intentions been honorable, he should have waited for him to come back at least now, told the sage what had happened and then left. Instead, he chooses to leave the ashram in a desperate hurry, promising to Shakuntala that his people would soon come to the ashram to fetch her to her new home, his palace.

There is no pressing business waiting for him, no emergency. He is on a vacation – on a leisurely hunting trip, accompanied by his ministers and a huge army. He has received no message informing him he is needed at the capital.

His ministers are just outside the ashram. He does not tell any of them what happened in the ashram. He does not tell them he has married a beautiful maiden he met in the ashram. They do not know a thing about what happened until the gods and celestial sages reveal it to them in Dushyanta’s court thirteen years later.

Let’s assume Dushyanta did not have other wives. But there must have been lots of other relatives living with him in the palace. The rest of his family. His mother Rathantari is certainly there, to whom he later introduces her, after the gods have spoken. His four younger brothers are in all probability living there with him – Shoora, Bheema, Prapoorva and Vasu. He does not speak a word about Shakuntala to any of them.

And he does not send anyone to fetch Shakuntala as he promises. There would have been no ill fame in sending for her. The beautiful daughter of Sage Vishwamitra – a former king – and the apsara Menaka, brought up in the ashram of Sage Kanva, would have been more than acceptable to people as their queen.

Shakuntala will have to come to the court on her own when her son is twelve years old.

Please remember that there is no curse involved here that makes the king forget her. That is a later addition by Kalidasa to make the king’s behavior acceptable.

I believe that the king accepted her because he had no other choice after the gods and the celestial sages made their declaration. And but for that, he would not have accepted them.

He says that he made her wait for twelve years, made her suffer all those years, humiliated her so brutally in the court in the presence of the nobles and ministers present there, in front of her own twelve-year-old son, all because she could honorably be accepted as his queen.

I find it hard to believe.

And even if it were so, did he have the right to make her suffer so much?

Krishna says in the Gita: yad yad aacarati zreSThah, tat tad eva itaro janah; sa yat pramaaNam kurute, lokah tad anuvartate – Whatever a great man does, other people also do; whatever he considers the ideal, the rest of the world follows.

Wasn’t Dushyanta setting up a very dark precedence when he left it to the gods and celestial sages to come and speak on behalf of Shakuntala? What would have happened if they had not? What happens when a mere mortal woman, an ordinary woman, is thus accused by her man?

In Valmiki Ramayana, Rama too makes Sita suffer agonies before he accepts her back at the end of the war with Ravana. He insults her, humiliates her publicly and rejects her. And there too the god of fire appears and vouches for her purity and then Rama says he did what he did so that she could be accepted back as his wife without dishonor.

Indian women are still asked to enter burning fire and dip their hands in boiling oil to prove their purity.

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The women who people our epics are shaktis: each one of them is endowed with power, sure of herself, sure of the choices she makes, sure in her speech, protective, passionate, loving, giving, hungry for life, filled with adventurousness, a fearless wanderer in life’s vast fields.

She inherits her soul from our Vedic women: Independent, assertive, strong winners, who took responsibility for themselves. Authentic women who participated in all fields of life as men’s equals. They debated on the meaning of life with the best of philosophers. They explored the mysteries of existence just as the men of their times did. They composed poems, sacred and mundane, poems of the soul and of the flesh, singing of spiritual ecstasy and sexual longing, that survive to this day.

The changes Kalidasa makes in Shakuntala tells us much about the changes that took place in women’s status, her role in a man’s life and societal and familial expectations from her by the time we leave behind epic times and reach what modern historians call the golden period of Indian history. Vyasa’s Shakuntala is strong. She is shakti, bold and fearless. In the case of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, her strength lies in her weakness, in her helplessness. She is an abala: an infantilized woman whose strength is her capacity to invoke protectiveness in us.

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One last thing. I puzzled long over why Shakuntala gave herself to Dushyanta without waiting for her father to do that honour as her culture expected her to. My answer is – a foundling’s insecurity. She was abandoned at birth and, though a royal child, had to grow up in an ashram. True, she was loved by her foster father, adored by all in the ashram, but when she would give birth to a son, she wanted him grow up in the palace, as the son of a princess should.

Dushyanta was the answer to this deeply felt need. The man she fell in love with at first sight. And she responded to that need.

And when she comes to Dushyanta thirteen years later, it is for the sake of her son. The Mahabharata makes it very clear that she wanted nothing for herself.

Our insecurities make us do strange things.

Sita displays the same insecurity of the foundling several times in her life.

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1. A King’s Lust and the Birth of Vyasa’s Mother

Vyasabharata 1
naaraayaNam namaskRtya naram caiva narottamam
deviim sarasvatiim vyaasam tato jayam udiirayet

A verse in the first chapter of the Adi Parva of the Mahabharata speaks of three ancient traditions of reading the epic: one beginning at the beginning of the text as it exists today with the prayer narayanam namaskritya, another beginning with the Astika Parva and a third one, beginning with the story of King Uparichara Vasu, Vyasa’s grandfather.

When we begin at the beginning of the text as it exists today, we begin with how Ugrashrava Sauti, son of Lomaharshana, narrated the epic to the ascetics present at Shaunaka’s twelve-year long sacrifice at Naimisharanya. And when we begin with Astika Parva, we begin twelve chapters later, with the story of the ascetic Jaratkaru and the birth of Astika who stops the snake sacrifice of King Janamejaya at Hastinapura.

But when we begin with the story of Uparichara Vasu, we begin at the sixtieth chapter of the Adi Parva of the epic text as it exists today and the epic then starts with the family saga of its author, Sage Vyasa.

And what a story we get to begin with then! A story of lust that man fails to control, and the actions that uncontrolled lust leads man to and their consequences.

Which is actually the theme of the epic.

The Mahabharata is a tale of uncontrolled lusts – lust for land, lust for wealth, lust for power, lust for honour, lust for fame, lust for acceptance, lust for vengeance, lust for pleasure, and, above all, plain sexual lust. It is the story of lust in every imaginable form and the terrible consequences that uncontrolled lust leads to.

The Sanskrit word for lust is kama.

The Mahabharata does not criticize kama per se. Nor does Indian culture do so. What is criticized is uncontrolled kama, kama that controls us, kama that becomes our master, that makes us its slaves. The Vedic culture sees kama as the beginning of the universe. The brilliant Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda, the Hymn of Creation, speaks of Kama as the first being to emerge, or the first essence to come into being and then becomes the cause of everything else coming into existence. The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of the spark of desire entering the heart of the Unmanifest Being, which then creates out of itself everything else, abstract and concrete, real and illusory, moving and unmoving, all.

The Mahabharata itself speaks of Kama as the son of Dharma. Accordingly Kama, the son, should follow Dharma, should be guided by it. So long Kama follows Dharma, life is beautiful. And when Kama ignores Dharma, goes contrary to Dharma, violates Dharma, tragedy results. What is born of Dharma and hence noble, becomes dark and evil and destroys life.

It is for this reason that Krishna both praises Kama in the Gita and warns us against it. In one place he says Kama is himself – is God – so long as it does not violate Dharma. When it violates dharma, what is divine becomes demoniac: dharmaaviruddhe bhooteshu kamo’smi bharatarshabha – “I am kama that is not against dharma in beings.” In another place he takes its name as man’s worst enemy.

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Here is the story of king Uparichara Vasu, Sage Vyasa’s maternal grandfather, the first story told by Vyasa if we read the epic following the third tradition.

Vasu was a great king renowned for his competencies as a leader and for his royal virtues – generosity, charity, empathy, understanding, people skills, self-mastery, commitment to values, integrity, all. After ruling his kingdom for years, he decided to tread the path his ancestors had followed by going to the jungle and devoting the rest of his life to spirituality. He began performing tapas, powerful austerities. Such was his tapas that Indra, the lord of the heavens, became shaky. For anyone who climbed certain heights in ascetic practices became qualified to take over Indra’s throne.

The word Indra means the lord of the senses – indriyaaNaam raajaa. That is, the mind. Asceticism is a way of conquering the mind, mastering it, making it one’s slave, rather than living as its slave. And the mind resists this, sometimes directly, at other times through devious means. It does not want to be conquered, but loves to remain as the master. As hundreds of stories in Indian literature tell us, as innumerable stories from the life of ascetics from across the world and from all cultures tell us, the mind throws temptations on the path of the ascetic to waylay him, to distract him and to destroy him. Indian literature abounds in such stories: the Buddha is tempted by Mara, Sage Vishwamitra by Menaka, Sage Kandu by Pramlocha and so on.

In the case of Uparichara Vasu, it is not a woman, the most common temptation for a male ascetic, that Indra uses. This former king had in all probability had women aplenty in his inner apartments. Nor does he use power as a temptation – the bait thrown to Jesus by the Devil, another name for the mind. He takes a much more refined approach with Uparichara Vasu, sage Vyasa’s grandfather-to-be.

Indra comes down to meet him in the ashram where he is living a life of asceticism. He speaks to the rajarshi, the royal sage, of the nobility of his duty to the world.

Let there be no doubts. The Mahabharata is very specific about this: What Indra was concerned with is not the good of the world. What he wanted was for the royal sage to stop his austerities and go back to the world to live his life there. For, if he continued his austerities, the king would be a threat to his position as the lord of the gods.

Temptations could be of different kinds and at different levels. A man may be tempted from his higher goals by something as simple as sexuality. But some people require more than sex to distract them from their path. For some, it is power that tempts them; in the case of some others, it could be fame; it could even be something as refined and beautiful as kindness and compassion.

The Bhagavad Gita tells us that it is not only tamas and rajas that bind us, but even sattva binds us.

Indian tradition holds that even concern for the good of the world could be binding when it makes you forget the ultimate human goal, the parama-purushartha, which is spiritual freedom. It tells us through the story of Jada Bharata who devoted his life to look after a baby deer that even kindness and compassion could be bondages.

The Prashna Upanishad tells us there are two dimensions to spirituality – the higher and the lower, called Dakshinayana and Uttarayana, the southern and the northern paths.

Dakshinayana, or the lower dimension, consists of acts that are classified as ishta and poorta. Ishta consists of acts for the common good – like founding schools, hospitals, orphanages, charity homes and so on. In ancient India, it included planting trees on the wayside, digging wells for drinking water, digging ponds and lakes, establishing wayside inns where travelers could rest and spend the night free of charge, and so on. Poorta consists of acts of service to the individual – like giving a meal to the hungry, water to the thirsty, taking care of a sick or old man, adopting an orphaned child and so on. These are great in themselves, but should lead man to higher spirituality, to Uttarayana.

Uttarayana, the higher spirituality, consists of tapas, dhyana, samadhi etc – austerities, the practice of meditation, experiencing self-transcendence and so on. It is through these that man reaches spiritual awakening, bodhi.

What Indra did was to appeal to the innate nobility of Vasu to tempt him away from his spiritual path. As a king, Vasu was a great lover of dharma, the common good. He was totally committed to it. Now Indra uses this very commitment to dharma, one of the noblest qualities in any leader, to tempt Vasu from his spiritual goals.

Indra appears before Vasu accompanied by several other gods. He convinces Vasu that his highest duty is to the good of the world. The absence of someone like him as king is causing corruption in the world and he should go back to his life as king to uphold dharma and stop all corruptions. It is dharma that upholds the world and it is kings like him that uphold dharma.

Indra assures Vasu that there are no eternal worlds that he cannot attain by protecting dharma in the world. He also declares Vasu as his eternal friend, his sakha.

The lord of the gods calling you a sakha is indeed a great honour.

Indra has called others his friends too in the past. And usually this has lead to tragedy to the men whose friend Indra pretended to be. Indra declared himself a friend of his greatest enemy ever, Vritra, and it is with the help of that friendship that Indra betrayed and killed Vritra.

As we saw, Indra is the symbol of the mind. Several spiritual traditions hold that there is no good mind and bad mind – mind itself is bad. That in fact, there is nothing bad, other than the mind. What is good is the state of no-mind, the state in which you go beyond the mind. Zen is one such spiritual tradition that expressly speaks of the need to transcend the mind and reach the state of no-mind. Mind is ignorance, says Zen. Mind is bondage, says Zen. And no-mind is freedom, wisdom.

Indra has by now offered two temptations to the king: eternal worlds of pleasure in the future as a result of upholding dharma in the world as king and friendship with the lord of the gods. Now he offers Vasu more. He tells him to take the best part of the earth as his kingdom.

What is recommended is the land of Chedi. Indra describes Chedi as delightful, sacred, rich, abounding in animal wealth and crops, filled with precious stones and mineral wealth. He tells Vasu that the land of Chedi has an agreeable climate; is very fertile; the cities and towns devoted to virtue; the people are honest, contented, law abiding, truthful, kind even to animals so that if a bullock becomes weak they do not anymore yoke it to the plough or to the cart but is instead looked after until it becomes fat again; sons are devoted to their parents, all people follow their dharma.

Indra hasn’t finished his offerings. He promises him the power to know all that happens everywhere in the world. He gives him a garland of unfading lotuses which would make him invincible in battle, an airplane that can take him through the skies to anywhere he wants to go, or even help him remain in one place if he wished so.

Besides all this, Indra also gives Vasu a sacred bamboo pole, a yashti that could be used for religious rituals.

Vasu falls for the temptations. He accepts these gifts from Indra and chooses to go to Chedi to become its king. He looks after Chedi as a virtuous king, protecting dharma in the hope of attaining glory as a leader of men on earth and eternal worlds of pleasure after his death. In gratitude to Indra for the kindness showered on him, Vasu begins a celebration known as Indrotsava, the festival of Indra, in which planting the bamboo pole given by Indra marks the beginning of the festival.

Indra is worshipped in this festival as a divine swan, a hamsa. Which reminds us of the Greek Indra, Zeus, who is tempted by Leda and assumes the form of a swan to seduce her, an image repeatedly painted by European painters and sculpted by leading western sculptures.

It is this Indrotsava that celebrates on earth the glory of Indra that Krishna later stops and asks the men and women of Vrindavan instead to worship Mt Govardhan that protects them and offers food to their cattle.

Vasu now becomes attached to his airplane and spends much time in it, thus acquiring the name by which he will be known to all subsequent generations: Uparichara Vasu, Vasu-who-moves-in-the-skies.

That is the past history of Vasu. Let’s now move on to the day that most concerns us, the day on which he begets Sage Vyasa’s mother in an act that the Mahabharata describes as dhoomra – a word the dictionary explains as vice, wickedness, sin.

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Everything about the remaining part of Uparichara Vasu’s story is strange and mysterious. Perhaps because the things mentioned are so unacceptable, it is possible that the original story has altogether disappeared and we have to infer it from the hazy and puzzling details that are now available to us in the Sanskrit epic.

The first thing we are told is that a mountain once raped a river and two human children are born to the river. The name of the mountain is Kolahala and the name of the river is Shuktimati. We are also told that the mountain blocked the river and Uparichara Vasu kicked it with his foot, splitting the mountain and releasing the river.

Vasu’s act of releasing the river from the power of the mountain reminds us of Indra’s act of releasing the waters from the captivity of Vritra in still more ancient times.

Of the two children born to the river Shuktimati, one is male and the other female. The river offers the two children to Vasu and Vasu makes the male child, when the children grow up, his commander-in-chief and the female child his wife. Her name is Girikaa, meaning the child of a mountain.

It is possible that the king went to the mountain to release waters that were blocked by it, found there two abandoned children, twins, a male and a female and brought them home and when the children grew up, he made the girl his wife, and the male his commander-in chief. It is also possible that the children were born of a rape committed on a woman by someone on the mountain or the river bank.

Sexuality in ancient India was different in its gender implications than in the contemporary world. Within marriage, sex was considered a woman’s right, her privilege, something that she was entitled to from her man and not something the man ‘took’ from the woman. It was a man’s duty to go to his wife when she was in her ritu – the first sixteen days after her ritual bath following her monthly period – on prescribed days, avoiding proscribed days.

Girikaa had entered her ritu and sent a message to her husband, informing him she was ready and waiting, and asking him to go to her. Precisely at that time, says the epic, he received an order from his dead ancestors, his manes, that he should go on a hunting trip to the jungle.

Now, this is very strange! Because generally speaking the main interest of the dead ancestors is in continuing the family line – frequently their only interest. They should thus have prevented him from going on the hunting trip precisely at such a time. Instead, they order him to forget his wife who is ready and waiting, who has just sent him a message that she is ready and waiting, and go to the jungle to kill wild animals.

One way of looking at it is that the king faced an inner conflict. It is possible that the temptation to hunt and kill overpowered the king’s desire to go to his wife – at least for the time being. In the clash between the thrill of killing and the thrill of sex, the king chose the thrill of killing and ignored, suppressed, his desire for his wife.

He had taken a very wrong decision if we go by what follows!

It was spring, the season when the whole nature celebrates life. What Vasu found was a jungle in the festivity of spring. Trees and plants – ashokas, champas, mango trees, bakulas, punnagas, madhavis, sandalwoods, arjunas, all – were at their best, filled with flowers whose intoxicating fragrance filled the jungle. The mating calls of the cuckoo bird and honey-inebriated hums of the bumble bee added to the intoxication of the environment.

What the whole world was celebrating was what he had rejected to come to the jungle, and that too in spite of being requested by his wife.

Apart from being tempted by nature, it is possible that he also felt guilty about what he had done.

Ancient India said that a woman’s request for sex should never be ignored: arthinii strii anupekshaniiyaa.

The king’s mind went back to the beautiful mountain girl Girikaa who was pining for him at home in the palace.

His head was already light with nature’s intoxication. The visions of Girikaa whom he had rejected in spite of her express desire complicated matters further for the king. Losing mastery over himself, he sat down under an ashoka tree, the scent of fresh honey and the flowers going straight to his head.

According to the Mahabharata, it was now that he was tempted by vice and felt compelled to do a wicked deed, to commit a sin - dhoomra. Sex per se is not a sin in Indian culture. So it is some kind of ‘wrong’ sex that happened, which could be called wicked or sinful.

I would skip some details of what the Mahabharata tells us here and proceed to the end of this episode. In any case, what the Mahabharata tells us is so preposterous, so fantastic, that our minds will not accept it. It is possible that storytellers over thousands of years have given the present form to whatever was the original story.

The end of the episode is that a female fish in the Yamuna swallows the king’s seeds and becomes pregnant.

The fish, the story tells us, is a fallen apsara, a celestial dancer of incredible beauty, called Adrikaa. Due to a curse she received from Brahma, she had turned into a fish and was living in the river. Her curse was to last until she gave birth to two human children.

It is interesting that the apsara who has turned into a fish is called Adrikaa. Because Adrikaa means precisely what Girikaa means – a daughter of the hills.

The fish becomes pregnant. The pregnancy grows to maturity and reaches the tenth month. The fish is then caught by fishermen and cut open. Inside the fish, the fishermen find two children, a male and a female.

When the fish is cut open, it dies and the aprasa is released from her curse. She rises up into the skies and travelling on the path of the siddhas and charanas, reaches back her home, the land of the gods.

What exactly are we to make of this story?

One way to understand it is that the king, unable to keep in check his passion, had sex with a fisher girl called Adrikaa on the banks of the Yamuna and the children were the result of that brief encounter.

We have no clue as to whether Vasu took her by force or she voluntarily surrendered to his desire. From the way Vyasa’s mother, Adrikaa’s daughter growing up as the daughter of a fisherman, surrenders herself to the desire of Sage Parashara later, it is possible to assume that in those ancient days it was perhaps fairly common for men of the upper strata of society to have their way with women of the lower strata of society.

The chief of the fishermen takes the two children thus mysteriously found inside the fish to the king – to Uparichara Vasu himself. Customs in those days said that anything precious or unusual found or grown inside the kingdom should be offered to the king. The king keeps the male child and returns the female child to the chief of the fishermen, Dasharaja.

This is the second time that almost identical incidents are happening to Vasu. The first time he had found two children on the banks of the Shuktimati, a male and a female. He had made the male child the chief of his armies and the female child his wife, when they grew up. Now once again fishermen bring two children to him, who are, unknown to him, his own children. This time he keeps the male child and returns the female child to the fishermen.

The first set of children, we are clearly told, were born of a rape. From the circumstances the epic mentions, combined with the use of the word dhoomra, it is possible that these children too were born of a rape.

The male child, whom the king keeps, grows up to become the king of the Matsya country, also known as the land of the Viratas. It is here that the Pandavas would eventually spend their one year in hiding as per the conditions of the second dice game they lose. Following which, the Virata princess Uttara would marry Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu. King Janamejaya who listens to the Mahabharata story from Vaishampayana is the grandson of Uttara. The kingdom of the Bharatas thus ends up in the hands of an heir of Uparichara Vasu. Of course, Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura are all have his blood in them – they are Vyasa’s sons and Vasu’s great grandsons.

But all that is later.

The female child returned by Vasu to Dasharaja with the instruction to bring her up as his daughter is named Kaali and Krishnaa for her complexion. Both Kaali and Krishnaa mean a dark girl. She gets the nick name Matsyagandhaa for the strong foul smell that emanated from her. Matsyagandhaa means a fish-smelling girl.

Krishnaa turns out to be a ravishing beauty. The epic tells us that she was so beautiful that she tempted even great siddhas. She begins to help her father in his work by taking people across the Yamuna in their ferry.

Children mature early among the poor and begin to work before they are out of their childhood.

One day her passenger in the ferry is the legendary sage Parashara. He sees her and is allured by her. He confesses to her his desire for her. She objects by saying other people are watching them on both sides of the river. The sage with his powers creates thick mist all around them and then, unable to keep his lust for her in check, takes her with her permission.

The child born was given the name Krishna Dwaipayana at birth. Krishna means dark or black. He was dark like his mother. Dwaipayana means born on an island. He was born on a small island in the Yamuna.

This Krishna Dwaipayana, later to be known as Vyasa, is the author of the Mahabharata.

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What we have here thus is a tale of lust. Sage Vyasa’s great grandmother Girikaa is the result of a rape, whose story is presented to us in the impossible form of the rape of a river by a mountain. Vyasa’s mother Satyavati is born when his grandfather, Uparichara Vasu fails to control his sexual lust and commits a heinous act. And Vyasa himself is born because a seer fails to control his passion for a beautiful fisher girl.

That is three successive generations. As we go into the story of the Mahabharata, we shall see that this theme of naked lust and the failure to control it runs through the generations to follow. Vyasa himself becomes subject to it once in his life and thus is born his son Shuka. Satyavati’s son, Vyasa’s half brother Vichitraveerya, would die because of his overindulgence in sex. Vyasa’s own son Pandu would die of his inability to master his sexual drive. And in the next generation several powerful men would lust for Draupadi, the most hauntingly beautiful woman in Indian lore, leading to disastrous consequences. Her own past life stories tell us of a lifetime as Nalayani in which she receives a curse from her husband because of her insatiable sexuality.

Did Indra foresee these things when he turned Uparichara Vasu away from tapas into the world? Did he foresee the Mahabharata war and the destruction of India that followed as a consequence?

The Mahabharata says the four ages are born as a consequence of man’s actions, particularly because of the actions of men in positions of power. It also says that towards the end of the Mahabharata story, the Age of Kali, the Dark Age, began.

Was Indra’s fear of Vasu’s asceticism the cause of the beginning of the Age of Kali?

Indian Wisdom considers personal leadership expressed in terms of self mastery as the foundation of all leadership – in fact, of all that is good. When Bhishma begins to teach Yudhishthira from his bed of arrows in the Shanti Parva, one of the first lessons he teaches is in self-mastery. What we find here is leaders of men failing in self mastery generation after generation, right up to the days of the Mahabharata war. Is it any more than a natural consequence then that the Age of Kali begins immediately after the Mahabharata war?

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Jaya

naaraayaNam namaskRtya naram caiva narottamam
deviim sarasvatiim vyaasam tato jayam udiirayet.

After bowing down to Narayana and Nara, the most exalted of human beings, and to Goddess Saraswati and Vyasa, read Jaya, the epic.