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Under the banyan where he had said he would sit until she came back to him, Shiva laughed, asked after her welfare. He asked how the test had gone: tell it all, and tell it truly. Sati has understood Rama‘s power by now, and what moves her is fear. She hides what she did. “I took no test,” she says. “I saluted, just as you did.”
Shiva fixes his mind, looks, and sees the whole of what she did. Then he decides, and says nothing of it. The decision is a vow made inside his mind: in this body of hers there will be no meeting between them. On the walk home a voice from the sky praises the vow. Sati hears it, asks what vow he has made, and gets no answer. She lives on Kailasa with that silence while Shiva sits under a banyan in a samadhi that lasts eighty-seven thousand years.
When he wakes, the story turns to her father’s house. Daksha, newly made chief of the patriarchs, holds a great sacrifice and invites every god who takes a share in one. Shiva is left out, and so is Sati. She goes anyway, finds no share set out for her husband, rebukes the assembly. She gives up in the fire of yoga the body Shiva had given up in his mind. Yajnavalkya is still the teller, and Bharadvaja still listens at Prayaga.
Kailasa, and the people of Daksha’s house
The main figures in this episode
- Shiva who learns the lie by meditation, resolves in his mind to give up Sati in this body of hers, and keeps the resolve to himself. He walks her home with stories, sits eighty-seven thousand years in samadhi under a banyan on Kailasa, wakes to repeat Rama’s name. He counsels her against going to her father uninvited, and sends her with his chief attendants when she will not stay.
- Sati Daksha’s daughter and Shiva’s wife, who hides the test out of fear, learns from his manner that she has been given up. She lives on Kailasa in a grief that stays secret, prays to Rama that her body fall. She goes to her father’s sacrifice without an invitation, finds no share there for Shiva, and gives up her body in the fire of yoga.
- Rama’s maya the power Shiva bows his head to when he knows the truth, since it was this power that moved Sati to speak a lie.
- Daksha made chief of the patriarchs by Brahma, who found him fit in every way. Pride comes to him with the authority. He holds a great sacrifice, invites every god who takes a share, leaves out Shiva and his own daughter. He asks nothing of her welfare when she comes, and burns at the sight of her.
- Sati’s mother and sisters at Daksha’s house the mother alone meets Sati with respect, and later consoles her in many ways. The sisters meet her smiling broadly.
- Bhrigu the sage who protects the sacrifice when Shiva’s attendants begin to wreck it.
A lie, and a meditation that sees all of it
The lie comes with its reason stated. Sati has understood Rama’s power, and fear makes her hide from Shiva what she did. What she gives him has two parts: she made no test, and she saluted, as he had. Then she adds, still speaking to him, and the addition rests the whole account on his own word: “What you said cannot be false. My mind trusts it deeply.”
Shiva fixes his mind in meditation and looks. What opens before him runs from the moment she left the banyan to her return: the road by which Rama was coming, and her going forward on it. Rama saluting her with joined hands, giving his own name and his father’s, and asking where Shiva was and why she wandered the forest alone. The road on which she sat down with her eyes shut, and the bows she made to Rama’s feet, again and again, before she set out for where Shiva was. He knows all that Sati did, the whole of it.
Most pure, and a great sin
Next Shiva bows his head, and the bow goes to Rama’s maya, the power that moved Sati to speak a lie. In his heart he reflects that what is to be is the Lord’s will, and that it is strong. The lie has been traced back to its mover, and the mover is bowed to.
Then comes the part of it that grieves him. Sati took Sita’s form. Great sorrow rises in Shiva’s heart, and his reasoning follows the sorrow. If he now loves Sati, the path of bhakti is wiped out, and a wrong is done. Against that stands the other side of it. She is most pure, and one so pure cannot be abandoned. To love her is a great sin. He says nothing of it openly. In his heart there is great anguish.
A vow made inside the mind
Then Shiva bows his head to Rama’s feet, and as he remembers Rama the thought comes to him: in this body of hers there is no meeting for me. The commentary reads the meeting as the meeting of husband and wife. He makes the resolve in his mind.
Having decided, steady of wit, he sets out for home, Kailasa in the commentary’s word, and walks remembering Rama. They are on the road when a voice comes out of the sky, and it is a handsome one: “Glory to you, Shiva! Well have you made bhakti firm.” The vow was made in his mind and kept there, and the first to speak of it is the sky.
Sourness in the milk
The voice goes on. “Who but you could make such a vow? You are Rama’s devotee, able, and the Lord.” Sati hears it too, every word of it, and worry enters her heart. A vow has been made, and she was not told of it. She asks Shiva, hesitating: “Tell me, what vow have you made? You are the home of truth, and kind to the humble.” She asks in many ways. Shiva says nothing.
Sati reasons it out in her heart: the all-knowing one has known everything. “I deceived Shiva,” she thinks, “and a woman is by nature dull and unknowing.”
Here Yajnavalkya, who is telling it, turns to his hearer Bharadvaja with a sortha. See the fine way of love, it says. Water sells at the price of milk, mixed into it, as the commentary explains. Then the sourness of deceit falls in. The water separates, the milk curdles in the commentary’s words, and the taste is gone.
The road to Kailasa, and an unbroken samadhi
As Sati remembers what she did, her heart fills with a sorrow and a worry past telling. One thing about his silence she understands. Shiva is an ocean of mercy, deep past sounding, and that is why he did not speak her fault aloud. Then she reads his manner, the look of him as they walk, and she knows what it means: her lord has given her up. Her heart is in turmoil. Knowing her own sin, she can say nothing, and her heart burns fiercely, like a kiln.
Shiva sees that she is troubled, and for her comfort he tells her beautiful stories. So they go, Shiva telling histories of many kinds along the road, until they reach Kailasa. The resolve stands, and so does the kindness. There he remembers his vow. He sits beneath a banyan, his legs folded in the lotus posture, and gathers himself into his own natural form. Samadhi takes hold of him, the deep absorption of the mind, unbroken and boundless.
Sati lives on Kailasa after that, and the sorrow in her mind is great. No one knows anything of the secret, and each day passes for her like an age.
A prayer to Rama
Every day brings a new grief, and each one is heavy in her heart: when will she cross this ocean of sorrow? She counts her own two deeds: she insulted Rama, and she took her husband’s word for false. The creator gave her the fruit of that, and in giving it did what was fit. Then she turns to the creator. “But now, creator, this is wrong of you,” she says in her heart, “to keep me alive when I am turned away from Shiva.”
The remorse in her heart cannot be told. She is clever, and in her mind she remembers Rama and prays to him. The prayer is a condition with a request inside it. “If you are called kind to the humble, and the Vedas sing your fame as the remover of affliction, then I ask with joined hands. Let this body of mine fall soon. If I have love for Shiva’s feet, and this vow is true in mind, deed, and word, then hear me, all-seeing Lord. And quickly make the means by which death comes and the unbearable calamity passes without effort.” The calamity, the commentary says, is her husband’s abandonment of her. She prays for death to the one she had insulted, and she stakes the prayer on her love for the one who has given her up.
Eighty-seven thousand years, and Daksha’s new power
So Sati grieves, with a dreadful sorrow past words. She had asked for her body to fall soon. Eighty-seven thousand years pass. Then the imperishable Shiva leaves his samadhi.
He begins to repeat Rama’s name, and it is by the name that Sati knows he has woken. She goes to him and bows at his feet, and Shiva gives her a seat facing him. After eighty-seven thousand years, husband and wife sit face to face, and he begins to tell her the sweet stories of the Lord.
At that same time Daksha becomes a patriarch, one of the lords of created beings. Brahma sees him, weighs him, finds him fit in every way, and makes him chief of the patriarchs. When the great authority comes to him, great pride comes into his heart with it. No one has been born in this world who gains power and is free of its intoxication. Daksha calls together all the sages and begins a great sacrifice. He invites with respect every god who receives a share in a sacrifice.
Chariots in the sky, and a pretext
Kinnaras, nagas, siddhas, gandharvas, and all the gods set out with their wives, their chariots made ready for the journey, all of them except Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva.
Sati sees the chariots going across the sky, beautiful and of many kinds. The goddesses are singing so sweetly that sages who hear it lose their meditation. She asks what it means, and Shiva explains it all. When she hears that the sacrifice is her father’s, she is a little glad. A thought comes with the gladness: if Shiva allows it, she could go on this pretext and stay there some days.
The grief of being given up is heavy in her heart, and knowing her fault she keeps it to herself. Then she speaks, and her enchanting voice is steeped in fear, hesitation, and love: “There is a great festival at my father’s house. If you give me leave, I would go, with respect, to see it.”
Shiva says no, and then lets her go
Shiva answers, and he begins by agreeing with her. “You have spoken well, and it pleases me too. He has sent no invitation, and that is improper. Daksha has called all his daughters, and because of his enmity with us he has forgotten you as well. In Brahma’s assembly he took offense at us, and for that he insults us even now. If you go uninvited, Sati, neither good conduct nor affection nor honor will remain.”
Then he gives her the rule, and the exception to it, in his own words. “There is no doubt that one may go uninvited to the house of a friend, a master, a father, or a guru. Still, where someone holds hostility, going there brings no good.” He explains it in many ways. By force of what is to be, the understanding does not enter her heart. When he knew the lie, Shiva had held in his heart that what is to be is the Lord’s will, and strong. Now it works on Sati. He says it once more: “If you go uninvited, in our view it is not a good thing.”
He tries by many words and sees that they fail. Sati will not stay. So Shiva gives his chief attendants, his ganas, to go with her, and sends her off.
In the assembly, where Shiva had no share
When Sati reaches her father’s house, no one receives her, for fear of Daksha. One person meets her with respect, and that is her mother. Her sisters meet her smiling broadly. Daksha asks nothing of her welfare. At the sight of her his whole body burns.
Then Sati goes to look at the sacrifice, and nowhere in it does she see a share for Shiva. Every god who receives a share had been asked with respect, and for her husband there is no share. What Shiva had told her comes home to her now. Her heart burns at the insult to her lord. The sorrow she carried before, her husband’s abandonment in the commentary’s reading, had not filled her heart the way this anguish does.
There are many dreadful sorrows in the world, and the hardest of them all is dishonor among one’s own people. Understanding this, Sati grows very angry. Her mother consoles her in many ways. Shiva’s insult cannot be borne, and no comfort reaches her heart. Then she turns on the whole assembly, checks it sternly, and speaks in anger.
Sati’s last words, and the fire of yoga
“Listen, members of this assembly, and all you great sages. Those who have spoken slander of Shiva, and those who have heard it, will all have the fruit of it at once. And my father too will repent of it well.” Speaker and hearer are set on the same scale. Then she gives the rule for such a place. Where slander of the saints, of Shiva, or of Vishnu is heard, the law is to cut out the slanderer’s tongue if one has the power. If not, to close one’s ears and flee.
She says who Shiva is, and says it as a fact about the world. “Shiva is the soul of the world, the father of the world, and the benefactor of all. My dull-witted father slanders him, and this body was born of Daksha’s seed. So I will give up this body at once, holding Shiva in my heart.”
So saying, she does it. With Shiva held in her heart she kindles within herself the fire of yoga, and in it she burns her body before the assembly and the sages. A cry of lament goes up through the whole sacrifice.
The news of Sati’s death reaches Shiva’s attendants, and they begin to wreck the sacrifice. Seeing it being destroyed, the sage Bhrigu protects it. The episode stops there, in the middle of the tumult, with Sati gone and the sacrifice under attack.
A household ended without a harsh word
Between husband and wife, from the lie to the farewell, no harsh word passes. Shiva keeps two things from Sati: that he knows what she did, and what he resolved because of it. She asks about the vow in many ways, is met with silence, and lets the question go. What she comes to know, she knows from a voice in the sky, from her own reasoning, and from the look on her husband’s face. Then the secret keeps for eighty-seven thousand years, known to no one.
The body is at every turn. Shiva’s vow is about Sati’s body: in this one, there is no meeting for him. Sati’s prayer on Kailasa asks that it fall soon. Her last words give it up. Born of Daksha’s seed, it goes at once. The reason changes each time. For Shiva it is the form of Sita it wore. For Sati on Kailasa it is a sorrow she cannot bear. For Sati in the assembly it is a father who slanders Shiva. What was given up in silence before the walk home is given up aloud before the assembly.
The steps from the lie to the fire are few. A doubt became a test, and the test became a lie. Daksha was raised for his fitness and grew proud with the authority. By Shiva’s account, an old offense Daksha took in Brahma’s assembly left Shiva uninvited, and his wife with him. A wife went uninvited to her father’s house and found no share there for her husband. Shiva thought of what is to be when he knew the lie. It was what is to be that kept his counsel out of Sati’s heart at the end. The next episode opens on the news reaching Shiva, and on Virabhadra, whom he sends in his anger.
The same story, elsewhere: the Shiva Purana: Daksha’s Yajna and the Burning of Sati.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Balkand, doha 56 to 64, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.