Blue dart branches in varanasi

THE MAHABHARATA

THE MAHABHARATA A Modern Rendering

(Volume 1)

Ramesh Menon

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THE MAHABHARATA A Modern Rendering

Copyright © 2006 by Ramesh Menon

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‘Memories of a Hero-Stone’ by S. Nandagopal, 2005

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-40187-1 (pbk) ISBN-13: 978-0-595-84564-4 (ebk)

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In memory of my grandparents.

Foreword

A note on Hindu time and the Mahabharata

‘Three hundred and sixty-five human years make one year of the Devas and the Pitrs, the Gods and the ancestors. Four are the ages in the land of Bharata: the krita, treta, dwapara and kali. The krita yuga lasts for 4800 divine years, the treta for 3600, the dwapara for 2400 and the kali for 1200; and, then, another krita begins. The krita or satya yuga is an age of purity; it is sinless. Dharma, righteousness, is perfect and walks on four feet in the krita. However, from the treta yuga, adharma, evil, comes to the world and the very fabric of time begins to decay. Finally, the kali yuga, the fourth age, is almost entirely corrupt, with dharma barely surviving, hobbling on one foot. A chaturyuga, a cycle of four ages, is 12,000 divine years, or 365 x 12,000 human years long. Seventy-one chaturyugas make a manvantara; fourteen manvantaras, a kalpa. A kalpa of a thousand chaturyugas, 12 million divine years, is one day of Brahma, the Creator. 8,000 Brahma years make one Brahma yuga; 1,000 Brahma yugas make a savana and Brahma’s life is 3,003 savanas long. One day of Mahavishnu is the lifetime of Brahma…’

The Great War, the Mahabharata, is fought at the very end of a dwapara yuga, the third age, just before the sinister kali yuga begins. Once, in time out of mind, the Gods created the kshatriyas to establish dharma, justice, in an anarchic world. Most royal kshatriya bloodlines can be traced back to the Devas themselves: in the most ancient days, the Gods came freely to the earth. But in time, gener- ations, the noble race of warrior kings has grown arrogant and greedy. By the end of the dwapara yuga, they have become tyrants and they are still practically invincible.

Krishna, the Avatara and his cousins, the Pandavas, are born to destroy the power of the kshatriyas of Bharatavarsha (India) forever. This is what the Mahabharata yuddha, the war on the crack of the

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ages, accomplishes; and thus, ushers in the kali yuga, modern times. By the Hindu calender, the Great War was fought some five thousand years ago.

The House of Kuru is one of the oldest and noblest royal houses. It traces its origins to Soma Deva, the Moon God. Timeless Hastinapura, the city of elephants, is the capital of the Kuru king- dom and one great king after another has ruled from here. The legend of the Mahabharata begins with King Shantanu of the Kurus and how a son is born to him. But that prince, Devavrata, will never sit upon his father’s throne. Instead, Shantanu’s blind grandson, Dhritarashtra, will become king.

The main theme of the Mahabharata is the story of Dhritarashtra’s sons, the Kauravas and his brother Pandu’s sons, the Pandavas and the enmity between them. Dhritarashtra’s hundred boys are evil princes, led by the eldest of them: the ruthless Duryodhana, who is a demon. Pandu’s five princes are Devaputras, Devas’ sons, born to fight for dharma in the world.

They are Yudhishtira, Bheema, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva. Almost every king in Bharatavarsha takes one side or the other in the Great War and ten million

kshatriyas are killed. Dharma is established again on earth; but an age has ended and another has begun.

The Maharishi Vyasa, the poet of the Mahabharata, himself wanders in and out of the story. Unearthly beings—Devas, yakshas, gandharvas, nagas and apsaras—find their way into the story, as do demonic ones, asuras and rakshasas. The Mahabharata is set in a pristine and magical time of the earth. Its heroes and villains are all larger than life. The war itself is fought with occult weapons: the astras of the Gods.

Just before the war begins, the third Pandava, Arjuna, the greatest archer in the world, loses his nerve on the field of Kurukshetra. That perfect warrior cannot bear the thought of killing his cousins. Krishna, who is Arjuna’s charioteer, expounds the eternal dharma to him. This exposition is the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God. The Gita is the heart of the Mahabharata, its real treasure. At one level, all the rest of the restless action of the epic is a quest for the precious Gita and its stillness. The Gita is the Hindu’s New Testament.

Senayor ubhayor madhye…between two immense armies, on the brink of a savage war, the Avatara sings his wisdom. To this day, Kurukshetra is holy ground for the Hindu because it was here that Krishna sang his immortal Gita and here that he revealed his Viswarupa, his Cosmic Form, to Arjuna.

The original Mahabharata in Sankrit is an epic poem of 100,000 couplets: seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. To record his epic for posterity is such a daunting task that Vyasa begs the elephant-headed God, Ganesha, to be his scribe. Ganesha has one stipulation: Vyasa must never keep him waiting, for even a moment, during the narration. The poet agrees and manages to keep ahead of his quicksilver writer, often with long digressions from his main story. Ganesha writes down Vyasa’s legend with a tusk he breaks from his own face.

This is a modern prose version of Vyasa’s timeless epic: the legend of the sons of Pandu.

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Acknowledgements

The late Kamala Subramaniam’s Mahabharata in English was one of my main sources for this version of the epic. Her devotion was exceptional and my debt to her is great.

After finishing my book, I discovered Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s 12 volume translation. I have added some details from his work, which I found interesting and relevant—as footnotes, to the text of my book and in an Appendix.

I must thank Vasantha Menon, Jayashree Kumar, Saugata Mukherjee and Atreyee Gohain, for their wonderful copyediting and my Indian Publisher, Mr. RK Mehra of Rupa Books, for his personal interest and support.

Preface

THE BIRTH OF A POET

Once, in more gracious times, when the kshatriyas of the earth were like gods, there was a devout sov- ereign of Chedi called Uparichara. Indra of the Devas gave him a marvelous vimana, a crystal ship that flew anywhere at his very thought. That king became known as Uparichara Vasu; for like the Vasus, he ranged the sky in his vimana.

Uparichara’s wife was Girika and she bore him five excellent princes. One morning, when she was in her fertile time, queen Girika came to her husband and asked him to make love because she wanted another son. But today he had promised to go into the forest to hunt some meat for a sacrifice to his fathers in heaven. Uparichara set out with his bow in his hand.

Earlier, his queen had come to him wearing the sheerest robe; the king did not realize how much she had aroused him, until he missed two red stags with his arrows. Uparichara came to a lotus-laden pool in the depths of the forest and, with Girika’s lush body before his mind’s eye, ejaculated onto a banyan leaf.

He folded the leaf, chanted a potent mantra over it and called his hunting falcon down from the sky. ‘Fly friend, take this to my queen as swiftly as you can.’

As the falcon sped toward Chedi, a fishing eagle perched in a tree on the banks of the Yamuna saw him. The eagle mistook the banyan leaf for a shred of meat and flew at the falcon. The birds fought briefly in the air and the leaf fell out of the falcon’s beak, down into the river.

Now, a year ago the apsara Adrika had flown down from Devaloka to swim in the Yamuna. It was the twilight hour and when the nymph had been in the water for a while she saw a sage at the river’s

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edge, at his sandhya vandana, his evening worship. The austere one sat motionless, his eyes shut fast. Adrika saw how radiant he was and lusted after him.

She swam close to where the rishi sat and playfully seized his ankles. Adrika thought that when he saw how beautiful she was and quite naked, he would make love to her. She could not have been more mistaken.

The hermit’s eyes flew open and he cursed Adrika, ‘You dare disturb my dhyana? Be a fish from now!’

At once the apsara had golden scales and a fish’s body. The rishi rose and stalked away. Neither of them realized that fate had a deep purpose to fulfil by their encounter. Adrika stayed in the river, devouring smaller fish when she felt hungry. She grew bigger and bigger. Soon she forgot she was an apsara and thought of herself as just a fish.

When the eagle set on Uparichara’s falcon the banyan leaf plunged down into the midnight-blue Yamuna. Adrika swam lazily in the river. She saw the leaf strike the water and the king’s seed being washed off. As it sank, shimmering, with a flick of her tail the fish darted forward and swallowed that seed. At once she became pregnant.

In ten months she was so big she could hardly swim and only lay on the bed of the river. One day she was snared by a fisherman in his net. He drew her from the water and she lay heaving in his boat. The fisherman cut the golden fish open with his knife. There was a flash of light and he saw the spirit of a nymph fly into the sky.

The man was blinded for a moment. But when he looked into the fish’s belly, he saw two human infants: a boy and a girl lay there and gazed serenely back at him. The next day the fisherman arrived in the king’s palace and told Uparichara Vasu how he had discovered the children. The man begged to keep one of them.

The king guessed how those twins had been conceived and his queen still wanted another son. Uparichara Vasu kept the little boy and allowed the fisherman to take the girl. That prince born from a fish’s belly was named Matsyaraja; in time, he would rule his father’s kingdom as ably as Uparichara had. The fisherman raised the little girl in the wilderness as his daughter. A fortune-teller who read the lines on her palm said that, one day, she would become the queen of a great kingdom. The fisher- man lived with that prophecy clasped close to his heart.

That dusky child’s body always smelled of fish and her father called her Matsyagandhi.

Some years later, the celibate Parashara, another immortal rishi on his pilgrimage, arrived on the banks of the Yamuna. It was a crisp winter morning. The sun shone pale and ethereal and the river sparkled as if a million jewels had been strewn across her water. The fisherman in his hut sat at his morning meal of last night’s fish and rice, when the austere figure loomed suddenly in his door.

“Take me across the river, I am in a hurry!” said Parashara ungraciously.

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It was not the first time the profound one had passed this way and the fisherman recognized him. He called out to his daughter.

“Matsyagandhi, take our Muni Parashara across.” She appeared at the corner of the hut, sixteen and bright as a bit of winter sun. Breast buds

strained like young lotuses against her green blouse; eyes like saucers set wide in her lean dark face gazed frankly at Parashara. Without a word, Matsyagandhi led the illustrious one to the wooden boat tethered to the riverbank.

As he followed the girl, the smell of her body invaded him: the raw smell of fish with which she was born; but instead of being repulsed, Parashara lost his heart to her. He who had felt no twinge of desire in the company of fawning apsaras in Devaloka, was overcome by the earthy whiff of the fisher-girl.

When she helped him into the boat, he held her hand longer than he needed to. She freed herself quietly and cast off. But he would not be so easily denied. As they moved out Parashara reached for her hand again and clasped it on the oar at which she rowed. She smiled at him, her huge eyes twin- kling. She stopped rowing, though they were in midstream and drifting. But she did not withdraw her hand.

Parashara’s presence and his dignity, which now suffered not a little for his visible excitement, attracted her. His hand quivered on hers. He leant forward awkwardly to try to kiss her. She smiled, dazzling him and stroked his gnarled hand without inhibition.

In her husky voice she said, “Holy one, why do you want to do this? You a lofty brahmana descended from Brahma and I the daughter of a nishada: between us, this isn’t proper.”

Then she trembled, remembering—suppose he cursed her! At that moment her father hailed them faintly from the bank. He stood washing his hands outside the hut and wanted to know why they had stopped. Parashara released the girl’s hand. She rowed again while the rishi kept a watch on the fisher- man, who stood staring after them, his eyes shaded. Again, the sage took Matsyagandhi’s hand.

She said, “Brahmana, aren’t you repelled by my smell? Muni, don’t you know the Vedas say one should never have sexual intercourse during the day? And besides, my father can see us.”

When Parashara was near enough to kiss her, she was reminded sharply of his great age and both excited and dismayed by it. But he waved a slender arm over his head, his hand curled in an occult mudra. Instantly they were shrouded in mist and the fisherman could not see them any more. Then it began to snow!

It was dark on the boat on the river. “Is that night enough?” Little Matsyagandhi gave a cry of wonder. But being a virgin and still afraid, she said, “Yogin, you

will enjoy me and go your way, but I will become pregnant. I will be ruined, the laughing stock of the world. And whatever will I tell my father?”

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He cried hoarsely, “Give me your love and you will be famous forever among Devas and rishis. You will be known as Satyavati in heaven. Look.”

Again a wizardly mudra from him and she saw her body glow with a new beauty. Her limbs were lambent, her features finer and the smell of her transformed so now she smelt of wild jasmine, lotus and other unearthly fragrances. In a moment they spread from her for a yojana. Her original, fishy musk had not vanished either; it became a sublimely erotic perfume, which fuelled his ardor!

Still, she hesitated. She restrained his wandering hand, so he cried, “Say whatever you want and it shall be yours. Quickly, you are driving me mad!”

After a moment’s thought, she said, “If neither my father nor anyone else comes to know of this, if my virginity is not broken, if the son born of our love is a magician like you and if I always smell as sweetly as I do now, then take me O Rishi and gladly!”

Parashara, famed across the three worlds, laughed aloud. He said, “This is God’s will, Satyavati. All your conditions will be fulfilled and your son shall be the greatest poet the world has ever known.”

He took her in his arms in that boat rocking softly on the Yamuna, while his magical snowstorm held up its opaque curtain around them. Impatient for him now that her fears had been allayed, she rowed to an island in the stream and moored there. And they lay together, unlikeliest lovers, heating the pale sand dry.

At last, after he drank deeply of her youth and she of his age, Parashara rose to bathe in the Yamuna. With a last kiss on top of her head, he walked upon the water and out of her life.

And in the mystic dimension, no sooner had she conceived than she was in labor. Her delivery was miraculous and quite painless. As soon as he was born, her lustrous boy, as hand-

some as Kamadeva, became a full-grown rishi, with a kamandalu in one hand, a smooth staff in the other and his matted, tawny hair lit in a halo. That newborn and exceptional hermit said to his mother, “We must go our separate ways. But if you ever want to see me, just think of me and I will appear before you.” And he also walked away from her.

Since he was born on the dwipa in the Yamuna, Satyavati’s son was called Dwaipayana. But later, he was to divide the holy Veda and to compose the sacred Puranas from ancient revelations. He was to become renowned as Veda Vyasa.

Vyasa composed the immortal Mahabharata and his disciple Vaisampayana narrated the epic to King Janamejaya of the Kurus, during his sarpa yagna, his snake sacrifice.1

1. See Appendix.

BOOK ONE

Adi Parva1

AUM, I bow down to Narayana, the most exalted Nara and to the Devi Saraswathi and say Jaya!

1. See Appendix for a note on the beginning of the original text.

ONE

On the banks of the Ganga

Shantanu, fourteenth king of the Kurus in the august line of Manu and Bharata, was a keen hunter. Since his earliest years, the monarch of the race of the Moon was a solitary; and he hunted alone as well. He did not like to share the passion of careful tracking, the breathless chase, or the humming arrow. He did not care to diffuse the excitement and danger of the hunt by surrounding himself with courtiers or trackers. Hunting was rather like worship to him, a thing just between himself and the wilderness.

Shantanu was a young king at the time of which we speak. But he had not married and the king- dom did not have an heir. It seemed he would never take a wife, for he had refused the most beauti- ful, most gifted princesses in all Bharatavarsha. Shantanu had always known that one day he would indeed marry and the Kurus would have their crown prince. Only when the woman for whom he was waiting, the one who appeared so clearly to him in his dreams, came into his waking life.

Twilight and the blue sky was dying in dark crimson and turquoise when Shantanu rode to the banks of the sacred Ganga. His horse frothed at the mouth, its flanks steamed. Shantanu had almost ridden him into the ground today, as if the king was possessed by a demon. He had come much far- ther than he had intended and though he had set out at dawn he had killed nothing yet. Once a leop- ard had eluded him and twice a fine stag. The last arrow missed its mark by a hand’s width. An archer

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like him should have turned home in disgust, on this luckless day when the gods of the hunt mocked him.

But Shantanu did not turn back. He pressed on, more determined than ever that he would not return empty-handed, not if he had to sleep out under the stars. He did not know it yet, but fate drew him on.

The sun was sinking at the crest of the western hills, when he arrived exhausted on the banks of the shimmering river.

“Ganga!” breathed Shantanu when he saw her: she who had fallen from the sky in pristine times. She was as wide as a sea and he could hardly make out her far bank. He dismounted and led his horse to the susurrant water’s edge, where the river lapped at banks of green moss.

He knelt beside his beast and, bending down to the crystal flow, drank deeply, splashing his arms and face with the sweet water. Suddenly, the king became aware that he was not alone.

He turned and saw her: a vision swathed in the last rays of the saffron sun, her skin like soft gold. She appeared perfect of face and body. Her eyes were luminous, her black hair fell to her waist in a cascade, as she stood staring at him and made his blood quicken as no other woman ever had. And she was no stranger: she had visited his dreams since he was a boy.

They stood transfixed for an interminable moment, before Shantanu went softly toward her. Words failed him, but he held out his hands, wanting to say everything with that gesture.

She stood there, playing nervously with her black tresses. Her face mirrored the river uncannily; it seemed the water flowed across her sculpted features, as if the Ganga and she were one being, their rhythms the same, their souls.

Next moment, he drew her to him in the deepening darkness. He whispered, “I am Shantanu, king in Hastinapura. I cannot live without you, I want you to be my queen.”

Her eyes wild, she said, “Oh I love you, my lord! But I must bind you with a condition, if I am to be your wife.”

“Anything, anything at all; my life if you want it.” “You must never ask me who I am, nor question what I do, however terrible it may seem.” His hands parted the flowing garment she wore, which seemed made of river-moss and he knelt

before her to slake all the thirst of his young manhood, for the king was still a virgin. She breathed, “I will be your wife until you question me. But the day you do, I will leave you for ever.”

“Never. I swear I will never question you, whatever you do.” Now her hands were peeling off his clothes and the river swelled around them in a tide of flames.

It seemed their bodies turned to water and fire and they were lost in an ancient dream of love.

Shantanu brought her home to Hastinapura, the city of elephants and she became his queen. For where he had found her, he called her Ganga. She was peerless: a perfect companion who knew his every whim, wise and just, modest and charming and knowing how to keep her own counsel. Most of

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all, she was his love; and when they were alone together, Shantanu and Ganga slipped beyond time’s confines and became other, magical beings.

A year passed and one summer’s evening Ganga told Shantanu that she was pregnant. There was celebration in Hastinapura, which lasted a month: that an heir would be born in the royal House of the Moon. It seemed to the king that he was hardly mortal any more. In his joy Shantanu chose to ignore the strange anxiety that gripped his wife during her pregnancy. He attributed her moody silences and her refusal to see anyone for days, to just the fact that a woman is subject to many changes at such a time.

Winter was near its end and there was spring in the air, when on a fine morning a messenger arrived breathless in his king’s court. He came with the news that a fine son had been born to queen Ganga. Shantanu sprang up from his throne and ran to his wife’s apartment. Ignoring the guards, who were trying to convey something urgently to him, he burst into the room of labor, only to find it deserted.

He turned back to the guards and the somber women of the harem. “Where is she?” he cried. “Where is my son?” The captain of the guards said, “My lord, the queen had hardly given birth when she snatched up

the child in her arms and ran out. She said she was going to the river and forbade any of us to follow her, on pain of death.”

Shantanu ordered his swiftest horse saddled. She had an hour’s start, but she had gone by chariot. It was twilight again when the Kuru king came flying to the river’s bank, to the very place where his love had first appeared.

The sun was sinking over the western hills. In that last light, he saw her standing at the candescent water’s edge, her infant in her arms. She was speaking earnestly to the river in an old and fluid tongue. He couldn’t understand a word she said, but suddenly he remembered some other words she had once said to him: “You must never question me, whatever I do, or I will leave you for ever.”

Even as he leapt off his horse, she chanted a resonant mantra, lifted their baby high above her head and cast him into the swirling flow. Her cry echoed there as if she had torn her heart from her body and flung it from her.

She turned in the golden ghost-light and, as long as he lived, Shantanu would never forget the look on her face. Before he could roar the searing protest that rose in him, she ran to him and flung her arms around his neck. Her eyes raged at him, ‘Remember your oath!’

She pulled him down onto the emerald moss and enfolded him in her currents. She made him for- get everything in the velvet tide to her sea.

TWO

A tale of two curses

Never once did Shantanu ask his queen why she had drowned their child, not even in their most inti- mate moments together.

In a year, she was pregnant again. Once more there was expectation and rejoicing in the kingdom and once again, when she was delivered of a beautiful infant, she took the child to the river and threw him to the foaming currents. Again Shantanu followed her and found her at the water’s edge. Once more she made him dumb with a look, smothering him with her loving so he dared not ask her why she had killed their baby.

Seven times in as many years, Ganga became pregnant: because her husband did not stop loving her. But living with his terrible secret, his heart died within him, day by day. They told the world their sons were born diseased from an old curse and had been given into the care of some rishis in the forest. This was near enough the truth, but Shantanu did not know that yet.

Like a serpent in its hole, his anguish coiled itself round his life. His hair turned grey and his face was lined. He tried to stay away from Ganga, but this he could not do; she was closer to him than his very breath and he could not live without making love to her. He bore his ordeal in silence, through the murder of seven sons.

But slowly Shantanu arrived at a crisis. What tormented him most, whenever he thought of it, was his queen’s nonchalance at what she did, which was so monstrous. He often wondered whether she

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was not a rakshasi, a demoness. After all, her past was cloaked in mystery. Even on that first day they met, he recalled now in dark suspicion, she had made him swear he would never question her: on pain of losing her forever.

Yet, he also knew how gentle she was, even to the smallest living thing. How was he to reconcile these two Gangas? Shantanu was close to losing his mind, when his queen conceived for the eighth time.

The time of her delivery drew near and this time Shantanu waited night and day outside his wife’s apartment. He listened, as he could not have done in the past, to her cries of labor as their child pushed his way out from her delicate body. It was the night’s final yaama, the hour before dawn. Shantanu heard her order her chariot to the door and he knew where she would go.

That night Shantanu rode to the river before her. For an hour he waited by the murmuring water, until dawn caressed the eastern sky. It was the

longest hour of his life; then he heard her arrive. By the first rays of the sun, he saw her alight from the chariot with their child in her arms. He stood hidden by a tree and she did not notice him in her urgency. She ran straight to the edge of the water and as she lifted the baby to cast it into the lighten- ing flow, all the sorrow of seven agonized years burst from him.

“Stop!” howled Shantanu, his voice echoing against the dawn. “You won’t kill my son!” It was as if he had struck her with an arrow. She turned in shock, a moan on her lips and stood fro-

zen as he ran up to her. Before he could snatch the child from her arms, she handed it to him herself. He was beside himself now, raging.

“What is this dreadful thing you do again and again? How can a mother cut off these innocent lives?”

She smiled sadly, “You have broken your oath to me. It seems you need this son of yours more than you do me. So be it; the curse has ended.”

“What curse? What are you raving about, you murderess?” He saw hurt flash in her eyes; then she took his hand, “My lord, hear my story before you judge

me.” Stroking his face so tenderly he thought his heart would break, she whispered, “Look, Shantanu, at who I really am.”

She stood transformed before him. She was ethereal light and crystal waves at once: the tides of ages were contained in her. She was pure beyond belief, brighter than the rising sun. She was a God- dess. He drew back from her in awe—she who had been his wife for ten years, stood now, an immor- tal.

She said, “I am Ganga, the river of heaven and earth. The sins of men are washed in me.” Shantanu stood speechless. He wanted to kneel and worship her, but the child was in his arms and

confusion stormed through his body. In a moment, she returned to her human form. “Now you will believe me and my tale of two

curses.

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The first curse is the reason I came to you as a woman. Once, in a time you cannot remember, since this mortal body binds you now, you were another king. You were called Mahabhishek then.”

As Ganga spoke, the memory of another life rustled at Shantanu’s soul and he saw what she described in a vision.

Once Mahabhishek sat in Indra’s court, the Sudharma, among the Devas. Those were days when heaven and earth were hardly apart from each other and kings of the earth went freely to the realms of the Gods. Ganga came there then, as she often did and when Mahabhishek saw her he wanted her. When she looked at him, she also felt a powerful yearning. The Devas saw them quicken to each other and a hush fell in Indra’s court.

As Ganga told her tale, Shantanu saw it all again clearly: he was swept back to that unearthly occa- sion.

How could an immortal like her and he, a mortal king, come together? The Devas cursed them that they dared gaze at each other with forbidden desire, in the Gods’ very presence. They cursed Mahabhishek and Ganga to a human life, when they would be a king and his wife for a time and sat- isfy themselves with each other’s love.

“And I appeared before you at my water’s edge one day,” she said. He asked in a whisper, “And the children? What curse was that?” She said in her voice of tides, “Once the eight Vasus of heaven came down with their women to

roam the earth.” With invisible bodies those immortals came and saw a mountain where Vasishta the sage had his

asrama. They saw Nandini, the muni’s cow, with her calf beside her, cropping the grass that grew on a jade slope. They were besotted with that divine cow that lit up the mountainside with her luster.

One of the Vasus’ wives cried to her husband that she must have the creature for herself. The Vasu laughed, ‘Nandini belongs to the Rishi Vasishta, who is master of this mountain. My

love, a human may escape death by drinking her milk. But we are already immortal; it is foolish to tempt the sage’s wrath.’

But his woman would not listen. ‘It is not for me, but for a mortal friend of mine that I want the cow. My friend is dearer to me than I can tell you and I don’t want her ever to die.’

Taunted by their wives, who brought their husbands’ manhood into question, asking how could they, who were Gods, fear a mere rishi, those Vasus came down like eight comets on that mountain and took Nandini and her calf from Vasishta’s asrama.

But Nandini was like Vasishta’s daughter; he could not live without her. The muni was a seer of time. He looked into his heart and knew the Vasus had taken his cow. When he saw how his gentle animal had been spirited away, crying out, her calf lowing in terror, his eyes blazed. With all the power of his long tapasya, he cursed the Vasus.

‘Arrogant Devas, be born as mortal men!’

Ramesh Menon 8

He felt drained. In their distant world, the Vasus became aware of the curse and they trembled. It was unthinkable for them, who were as free as light, to be bound in chthonic flesh. They flew to the rishi’s feet, with Nandini and her calf and cried, ‘Muni, forgive us!’

But a rishi’s curse was no trifle that it could be withdrawn. Moreover, the germ of a deep destiny was hidden in that curse; there were mysterious designs to be accomplished by it, on earth. Vasishta had grown calmer now and felt pity for the contrite Vasus.

He said, ‘I cannot withdraw the curse and you must pay for what you did. But for seven of you let the curse be brief. You will spend nine months in the darkness of a mother’s womb; but as soon as you are born you will meet your deaths and be free again.’

It was the eighth Vasu, Prabhasa, who had actually seized Nandini. He stood with his head hung before Vasishta. The rishi said kindly to him, ‘You led the others to sin; you must pay more fully than they. Prabhasa, you will live a whole life as a man on earth and yours shall be a great human life. But now, Devas, go and find a woman who can be your mother in this world.’

The curse and even its softening, had exhausted Vasishta. He had to find a lonely place to begin his tapasya once more. Taking Nandini and her calf with him, he disappeared from there.

Left alone on the mountain, the Vasus saw a sparkling spring that issued from a cleft in some rocks. They knew this was from where the Ganga flowed down into the world. It struck them that here, surely, was providence trying to show them their way ahead: who better than the river of heaven and earth to be their terrestrial mother?

They worshipped her on the icy mountain and, surprised at their being there, Ganga appeared before them. Already like children, the Vasus fell at her feet and cried, ‘Devi, listen to the curse Vasishta has laid upon us.’

They told their tale by turns. At last, Prabhasa said, ‘We beg you, O Ganga, take a human woman’s form. Marry a king of the earth and become our mother. And as soon as we are born, cast the first seven of us into your waters. But I, Prabhasa, must suffer the whole span of a mortal life.’

Ganga ended her story softly, “With the other curse already hanging over me Shantanu and long- ing for you as I did, how could I refuse?”

Now Shantanu knew she was pure. He knelt before her and asked her forgiveness that he had doubted her. Then, without a word, he handed her the shining infant he held in his arms. Tenderly, she took the child, the Vasu Prabhasa, from him.

Ganga said, “When he is sixteen our son will return with you to Hastinapura. And one day, he will rule the Kurus.”

Shantanu realized the time had come for her to leave him. He cried, “And you, Ganga? Will I never see you again? What if I come to the river? Won’t you meet me here in secret, hidden from the eyes of men and Gods? Oh, how will I live without you?”

Briefly, she was sad. But then she stroked his face and said, “Nothing is hidden, nor ever shall be. Our time together is past.”

Ramesh Menon 9

With the child in her arms, she vanished. Shantanu’s cries rang against sky, forest and river. Again and again he called out her name; but she had gone. In a while, knowing his old life was truly over, he climbed wearily into the chariot in which she had driven here and turned home.

THREE

The river’s son

For sixteen years Shantanu lived alone like a hermit, in his palace. He turned all his attention to his kingdom. The rule of Shantanu, son of Prateepa, of the House of the Moon, was a just and prosper- ous one and his people were contented. More than anything else he was a sad man; but his very sor- row seemed to give Shantanu strength and wisdom, so his reign could be a finer one than before.

The king had one pleasure he still indulged in: he hunted. But now Shantanu never killed any creature. He only watched their wild lives as an avid spy. Most of all, his hunting took him back to the place beside the river, where, to his mind, he had found and lost everything.

Whenever he came there he would grow strangely peaceful, as if he sensed her presence near him; though not once did she appear before him, for sixteen lonely years. But he would set himself down at the deep-flowing water’s side and lose himself in the murmuring of her currents and the mists that clung and drifted across her expanse. And it was as if she reached incorporeal fingers through daylight and darkness and took his pain from him.

Sixteen years passed and one day Shantanu fell asleep beside the Ganga, dreaming of the past. He saw her standing before him once more, stroking his face with her cool hands, smiling at him, calling him with her eyes and with open arms. It was midday. Shantanu dreamt that the river had stopped flowing.