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The news from Daksha’s sacrifice reached Shiva, and in his anger he sent Virabhadra. Yajnavalkya, who is telling all this to Bharadvaja, gives the wrecking of the sacrifice and Daksha’s end four lines, since the whole world knows that history. The story leaves Daksha’s house.
It goes to another house. Sati, as she died, had asked the Lord for love of Shiva’s feet in birth after birth. So she is born again in the house of Himavan, the king of mountains, as Parvati. From the day she comes, the mountain is always in flower.
Then a guest arrives. Narada hears the news and comes out of curiosity. Himavan, after washing his feet and laying his daughter at them, asks him to read the girl’s faults and virtues. The answer is true, and it is the same answer for everyone in the room. It makes two parents grieve, and it makes one girl glad. What the house does with a prophecy it cannot doubt fills the rest of the episode. At its end the girl is in a forest, eating dry leaves that have fallen to the ground, and then giving up even those.
Himavan’s house, and the divine sage
The main figures in this episode
- Parvati Sati born again, in Himavan’s house. Narada says her names are Uma, Ambika, and Bhavani. She hears his prophecy and is glad while her parents grieve. She tells her mother a dream, goes to the forest, and does a tapas of thousands of years, until she earns one more name by giving up even leaves.
- Himavan the king of mountains, who washes his guest’s feet, lays his daughter at them, and asks the question whose answer weighs on him. He trusts Narada’s word against his wife’s fear and tells her to teach their daughter tapas.
- Maina Parvati’s mother, who says plainly that she did not understand the sage, sets her conditions for the marriage, and goes to teach her daughter and cannot speak for tears.
- Narada the divine sage, who comes out of curiosity, laughs as he answers, and in one speech gives the house its joy and its worry. He counts the bridegroom’s faults, then says they all belong to Shiva, and names the tapas that can change what is written.
- Shiva who sends Virabhadra in the first lines and after that appears only in what others say of him: his faults counted and then defended, his virtues praised, his name given as the only bridegroom for this girl.
- The sage Vedashira who comes at the moment when no one in the family can speak, and consoles them all by telling them of Parvati’s greatness.
A boon asked at the hour of death
When the news reached Shiva, he sent Virabhadra in anger. Virabhadra went, wrecked the sacrifice, and gave each of the gods the fruit he had earned. Daksha came to the end that the world knows, the end of one who sets himself against Shiva. The teller adds one line of his own: the whole world knows this history, and so he has told it briefly.
Then the boon. Sati, as she died, had asked the Lord for one thing: that in birth after birth her love should rest on Shiva’s feet. The verse sets the cause and its effect side by side. For that reason she went to the house of Himavan, the snow mountain, and was born there, taking Parvati’s body. The body is new. The one who is born in it is Sati.
The house she came to, and a mountain always in flower
From the day Parvati came to the mountain’s house, every power and every kind of wealth settled there. Sages built fine hermitages here and there, and Himavan gave each of them a fitting place. The doha carries the change further. The trees on that mountain grew new, in many kinds, and stood in flower and fruit at every season. Mines of jewels of many sorts appeared on the mountain.
Pure water ran in all the rivers. Birds, beasts, and bees lived content. And the creatures gave up the enmity they were born with, and on that mountain they loved one another.
The verse then measures the mountain’s beauty. With Parvati in its house, the mountain shone the way a devotee shines who has gained bhakti to Rama. In that house there were new festivities every day, and Brahma and the other gods sang its fame.
A guest, and a father’s question
All this news reached Narada too, and he set out for Himavan’s house. The verse gives his reason in one word: curiosity. Himavan received him with great honor, washed his feet, and seated him on a fine seat. Then he and his wife bowed their heads at the sage’s feet and had the water from those feet sprinkled through the whole house. Himavan spoke at length of his own good fortune. Then he called his daughter and laid her at the sage’s feet.
So far it was a welcome. Then came a question, and after it the house would be a different place.
“You know the three times, and you know all things. Your reach is everywhere. Consider it in your heart, sage, and tell me my daughter’s faults and her virtues.” He asks for the faults first, this father who has just finished praising his own good fortune. Narada will answer in the other order.
A count of virtues that runs long
Before the answer, the verse sets down two things about how it was given. Narada laughed, and his words were soft and carried a hidden meaning.
Then the virtues. “Your daughter is a mine of every virtue: beautiful by nature, good, and clever. Her names are Uma, Ambika, and Bhavani. She has every good mark. She will always be dear to her husband, her married good fortune will stand unshaken forever, and through her, her father and mother will win fame. The whole world will worship her, and whoever serves her will find nothing out of reach.”
The next line steps outside the family. “Remembering her name, the women of the world will walk the sword’s edge of the wife’s vow.” A vow is given the shape of a sword’s edge, a thing to be walked along. The image comes just before the description of the husband begins.
Two or four faults
The virtues end, and Narada goes on. “Your daughter has good marks, Himavan. Now hear the two or four faults she has.” Two or four is the number people give when a thing is small. The list that follows puts five words in one line and five more in the doha.
“Without virtue, without honor, without mother or father, indifferent, free of all doubt.” The commentary opens the last of these as heedless. Then the doha completes the man. “A yogi, with matted hair, a heart without desire, naked, in inauspicious dress. Such a husband she will get. Such is the line in her hand.”
Ten words for two or four faults, and a plain future verb: she will get him. The reason given is the line in her palm. No name is among the ten. Himavan has been told what kind of husband is coming, and he has still to learn who it is.
Two kinds of tears in one room
One line holds two opposite things. Hearing the sage’s words and knowing them in their hearts to be true, the husband and wife grieved, and Parvati was glad. All three took the words as true. The difference lay in what each heard in the same sentence.
And then: Narada too did not know this secret. The sage whom Himavan had hailed as knowing the three times did not see that one person in that room was glad. The verse gives the reason beside the fact. The outward state was one, and the understanding within was different. The next line shows that one state. All the companions, Parvati, Himavan, and Maina. Every body thrilled, and every eye was full of water. Grief and joy wore the same sign.
What Parvati did in that moment comes in the next line. A divine sage’s word cannot be false, and she took his words into her heart and kept them there. Love for Shiva’s feet rose in her, and after the love came a doubt in her mind: meeting him would be hard. Knowing that the moment was wrong, she hid her love and went and sat in a companion’s lap. The girl who will spend three thousand years on dry leaves is, at this moment, a daughter in her father’s house, in a friend’s lap.
What is written on the forehead
The divine sage’s word will not prove false. Thinking so, Himavan, Maina, and all the clever companions began to worry. Then Himavan steadied his heart and asked, “Tell me, master, what can be done now?” It is the question of a man who has accepted that what he heard is true. The answer is hard.
“Listen, Himavan. What the creator has written on the forehead, no god, danava, man, naga, or sage can erase.” The next line opens with one word, still. “Still, I will tell you one way. If fate helps, it may come about.” And he makes one thing plain at once. “Parvati will get the husband I described to you. There is no doubt of that.” The way he is about to give lies inside the prophecy.
Then the line on which the episode turns. “The faults I counted in the bridegroom are all, by my reckoning, in Shiva.” He says it as his own inference, and draws the conclusion at once. “If the marriage is with Shiva, everyone will call those very faults the equal of virtues.” The list stands exactly as he gave it. Now the man it describes has a name.
He gives his proofs, and all three are built the same way. Vishnu sleeps on the serpent’s bed, and the wise lay no fault on him for it. The sun and fire take in every juice, good and bad, and no one calls them low. In the Ganga flow pure waters and impure, and no one calls her impure. The conclusion: the able carry no fault, as the sun, fire, and Ganga carry none.
The next doha sets the limit of that allowance. If foolish men, proud of their knowledge, set themselves up to rival such beings, they fall into hell for an age of the world. For can a living being be the equal of the Lord? The example that follows makes the same point. Liquor made from Ganga water, the saints will not drink, knowing what it is. The same liquor poured back into the Ganga becomes pure. That is the gap between the Lord and one who is not the Lord.
The tapas that wins him
Narada goes on. “Shiva is the Lord, able by his own nature. In this marriage there is good in every way.” Then hope and warning in one line. Shiva is hard to propitiate, and once the trouble is taken, tapas in the commentary’s reading, he is quickly pleased.
“If your daughter does tapas, Shiva can erase even what is to be.” A few lines earlier, five could not erase the writing: gods, danavas, men, nagas, and sages. Now Narada names one who can. The condition is clear too. The girl herself does the tapas. “There are many bridegrooms in the world. For her there is no one other than Shiva.” He describes Shiva once more. The description runs the other way from the ten faults: a giver of boons, who ends the distress of those who come to him. He gladdens the hearts of his servants. Without his worship the fruit one wants is not to be had by ten million yogas and chantings.
So saying, and remembering the Lord, Narada blessed Parvati, and said to Himavan, “It will turn out well now. Give up your doubt.” Then he went away to Brahma’s world. The one whose words set the whole house moving does not stay to see where they lead.
A mother’s fear, and her husband’s answer
Hear now what happened next, Yajnavalkya says to Bharadvaja. With the sage gone, the talk inside the house begins. Maina finds her husband alone and tells him that she did not understand the meaning of the sage’s words. Then she sets her terms. “If the house, the bridegroom, and the family are matchless and fit for the daughter, make the marriage. Otherwise let the girl stay unmarried. Husband, Parvati is as dear to me as my life.” That is her reason.
Her second point is of another kind. “If no bridegroom fit for Parvati is found, everyone will say that mountains are dull by nature. Think of that, husband, and make a marriage that brings no burning of the heart afterward.” Love and the fear of what people will say stand side by side in one speech. Having said it, she fell with her head at his feet.
Himavan answered with love. “Fire may appear in the moon before Narada’s word proves false.” The moon is the measure of coolness, and fire in it is his measure of the impossible. His comfort rests on the maker of their daughter. “Dear, give up all this worry and remember the Lord. He who made Parvati will bring about what is good.”
Then the practical word. “If you love your daughter, go to her and teach her this: let her do the tapas that wins Shiva. No other means will end this trouble.” The next line shows that Himavan has followed Narada’s speech to its end. “Narada’s words have a meaning inside them and a reason behind them. Shiva is the store of every virtue. Think of that and let go of your doubt. Shiva is spotless in every way.” This is the man who grieved when the faults were counted. Between that grief and this answer he heard the rest of Narada’s speech, and his answer now rests on it.
She went to persuade, and was persuaded
Glad at her husband’s words, Maina got up at once and went to Parvati. At the sight of her, her eyes filled. She drew her daughter into her lap with love and pressed her to her heart again and again. Her throat closed, and the words would not come. The mother who had come to teach could not say one thing.
Right there the verse changes how it names the girl in her lap: the mother of the world, who knows all. In a mother’s lap sits the mother of the world, and she knows what is in her mother’s mind, the commentary adds. So she spoke, in soft words that comforted her mother. The verse used the same word for Narada’s speech.
“Listen, mother. I will tell you a dream I saw. A fair, beautiful brahmin, the best of brahmins, gave me this teaching.” The brahmin in the dream says: “Go and do tapas, daughter of the mountain. Take what Narada said as true. Moreover, this counsel has pleased mother and father. Tapas gives joy, and it destroys sorrow and fault.” He knows the decision that was taken a little while ago in private. The dream carries the very counsel her mother had come to give and could not.
The dream goes on. “By the power of tapas Brahma makes the world. By the power of tapas Vishnu guards the whole world. By the power of tapas Shiva brings destruction. By the power of tapas Shesha bears the weight of the earth. All creation rests on tapas. Knowing this in your heart, go and do tapas.” The making, keeping, and ending of the world, and the weight of the earth. All four rest on the one thing she is being sent to do.
Hearing this, her mother was astonished, and she called Himavan and told him the dream. Then Parvati persuaded her mother and father in many ways and set out gladly for her tapas. Behind her, her dear family, her father, and her mother were distraught, and no word came from anyone’s mouth. Then the sage Vedashira came and spoke to them all, and when they had heard Parvati’s greatness they were consoled.
The forest, and a name earned by giving up leaves
Holding in her heart the feet of the lord of her life, Parvati went into the forest and began her tapas. The verse says at once that her body was very delicate, and unfit for tapas. Still, remembering her husband’s feet, she gave up every comfort.
Then the verse keeps an account. A new love for those feet rose in her every day. Her mind settled so deep in the tapas that she forgot her body. For a thousand years she ate roots and fruit. For a hundred years she lived on greens. For some days her food was water and air, and for some days she kept hard fasts. Then the bilva leaves that dried and fell to the ground. For three thousand years she ate those.
Then she gave up even the dry leaves, and her name became Aparna, she who gave up even leaves. Until now everything said of her had come from someone else’s mouth: her names and her virtues from Narada, her husband from the line he read in her hand. Her instruction from the brahmin in the dream. This one name she earned herself, by giving up.
Her body was wasted by tapas, and at the sight a deep voice came from the sky, the voice of Brahma. “Listen, daughter of the mountain king. Your wish is fulfilled. Give up all these unbearable hardships. Now you will have Shiva.” The episode ends on that promise.
Fixed words, changing listeners
One sentence spoken in Himavan’s house is never taken back. Narada counted the bridegroom’s faults once and withdrew none of them. When he came to the remedy, he said again that the husband would be exactly as described. Everything that followed, the parents’ grief and the daughter’s gladness, the mother’s terms and the father’s trust, the dream, and three thousand years of dry leaves. It happened around that fixed sentence. What moves is the understanding of those who heard it.
Shiva himself is in the first lines, sending Virabhadra in anger, and he is not seen again in this episode. He is described, defended, and compared with the sun, fire, and Ganga. He is called hard to propitiate and quick to please. He is named the one bridegroom for this girl. A thousand years, a hundred, three thousand. All of it is given for someone who has not said a word in this episode.
Everyone in that room heard the sage and took his words as true, and even Narada did not catch the difference. Her parents heard what kind of husband was coming. The daughter knew, from the same words, who he was. Love for Shiva’s feet rose in her before anyone in that house had said his name. The voice from the sky has more to say, and the next episode opens on the rest of it.
The same story, elsewhere: the Shiva Purana: The Birth of Parvati.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Balkand, doha 65 to 74, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.