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The voice from the sky has not finished. It has told Parvati that her wish is fulfilled and that she will now have Shiva. It goes on to measure what she has done and to tell her how she will know its word for true. The seven sages will meet her. The proof the voice names is a meeting, and the meeting, when it comes, will be a test.
Before the sages arrive, the story leaves her in the forest and goes to Shiva. Since Sati gave up her body he has wandered the earth with his mind turned from the world. He repeats Rama‘s name and listens here and there to Rama’s stories. He grieves, the verse says plainly, for the devotee he lost. Rama himself appears to him and praises the vow he has carried. He tells him of Parvati’s birth and of all she has done. He asks him for one thing as a plea: go and marry her. Shiva answers that it is not fitting, and that a master’s word is obeyed without weighing, and agrees. Then he sends the seven sages to test her love.
What the sages do when they find her takes up the last four of these seven dohas. They laugh at her. They argue by example that no one who listened to Narada ever kept a home. They count the faults of the husband she wants and tell her how he treated Sati. They offer her Vishnu instead. Then comes her answer, and the episode ends with the seven testers bowing at her feet. This is Yajnavalkya’s telling, inside the Ramcharitmanas, and Bharadvaja is still listening at Prayaga.
The ascetic, the widower, and the examiners
The main figures in this episode
- Parvati Himavan’s daughter, in tapas in the forest. A voice from the sky tells her its proof will be a meeting with seven sages. When the seven come, she tells them her secret and hears them mock the husband she has chosen. She refuses the one they offer and sends them home.
- Shiva who has wandered the earth since Sati’s death, repeating Rama’s name and teaching knowledge to sages. He agrees to the marriage at Rama’s word, calling it his highest dharma, and then has Parvati’s love tested.
- Rama who appears to Shiva, praises the vow Shiva kept, tells him Parvati’s story, and asks him as a plea to marry her.
- Brahma whose voice is speaking from the sky in the first word of the episode. He hands Parvati, along with his word, the sign by which she will know it true.
- The seven sages sent by Shiva to test Parvati’s love. They find her, question her, and laugh at her. They argue against Narada’s counsel with examples and against Shiva with a list of faults. They offer another bridegroom and leave hailing her as the mother of the world.
- Narada who never appears in this episode and is named five times in it: by Parvati as the one whose word she holds. By the sages as the cheat who empties homes.
- Sati whose body is gone. She is named twice: once at the start of Shiva’s turning from the world, and once in the sages’ taunt about how Shiva treated her.
A word spoken from the sky
The episode opens in the middle of a speech, and the speaker has no body in sight. The voice that told Parvati at the end of the last episode to give up her unbearable hardships goes on. “No one has done a tapas like this, Parvati. Many steadfast men, sages, and knowers have lived. Now take into your heart the word of Brahma, knowing it always true and ever pure.” The voice names itself as it speaks. This is Brahma’s word.
Then come the two instructions. “When your father comes to call you, give up your stubbornness then and go home. When the seven sages meet you, know the word for proof.” She is handed a promise and, with it, the receipt for the promise. Seven men will come, and their coming will be the sign that what she heard was true. The word the voice uses for what she must give up when her father comes is stubbornness, and the word will return.
Hearing Brahma’s word spoken from the sky, Parvati rejoiced, and her body thrilled. Right here the telling turns from her to Shiva. “I have sung Parvati’s beautiful story,” Yajnavalkya says to Bharadvaja. “Hear the handsome story of Shiva.” One of the poem’s outer frames, the sage telling and the sage listening, shows for one line at the joint and then closes over again.
After Sati, a Shiva who wandered
Shiva’s turn from the world takes one line. From the time Sati went and gave up her body, his mind turned away from the world. The last episode told what she asked as she died, love for Shiva’s feet in birth after birth, and how that asking brought her to Himavan’s house. The one he lost is Parvati, in tapas in the forest where the story has just left her.
The next line tells what he does. He repeats Rama’s name always, and here and there he listens to the stories of Rama’s virtues. Then the doha gives the teller’s own account of him. Shiva is consciousness and bliss, the home of joy, free of delusion, pride, and desire. He wanders the earth holding in his heart the Lord who delights all the worlds. The commentary names that Lord as Rama. Soon seven sages will describe him very differently.
The lines after the doha add what it leaves out. Here he teaches knowledge to sages, there he tells Rama’s virtues, and though he is wise and free of desire, he grieves with the grief of separation from his devotee. The verse calls the one he lost his devotee, and the commentary names her: Sati. So the grief and the freedom from desire stand in one line, side by side. The sages will soon tell a girl that this man sleeps in peace, has no cares, and begs his food. The story has set down the truth of his grief before anyone says otherwise.
Rama appears
Much time passed this way, and his love for Rama’s feet grew new every day. Then the verse says what was seen before anyone is named. Shiva’s rule, his love, and the unmoving line of bhakti in his heart were seen. The commentary names the one who saw them: Rama, who appears in the next line. The first thing the verse says of him is that he is grateful, which the commentary opens as one who acknowledges a kindness done to him.
He praised Shiva in many ways, and the verse keeps one sentence of the praise. “Who but you could carry such a vow?” Before any talk of marriage, Rama names the vow Shiva carried. Then Rama explained to Shiva in many ways, told him of Parvati’s birth, and described her most pure deeds at length, in full. The one who will soon send seven sages to test her love has already heard, at length, what she has done.
A plea taken as a command
Then the asking. “Now hear my plea, Shiva, if you have love for me. Go and marry Parvati. Give me this as the thing I ask.” Rama calls it a plea and calls the marriage a thing he begs, and he makes Shiva’s love for him the ground of it.
Shiva’s answer does two things at once. “Though this is not fitting,” he says, “a master’s word cannot be set aside. To take your command on my head and carry it out is my highest dharma, master.” He says it is not fitting, and he says he will do it. Then the line this episode will return to. “The word of mother, father, guru, and master is to be done as good, without weighing it. In every way you are a supreme benefactor. Your command is on my head, master.”
Hearing Shiva’s words, made of bhakti, discernment, and dharma, Rama was pleased. “Shiva, your vow has stood,” he said. “Now keep in your heart what I have said.” The word for vow here is the one the verse used two episodes ago for the resolve Shiva made in his mind. There would be no meeting with Sati in that body of hers. He remembered it as he sat down under the banyan. That body is gone, and the vow has stood. The commentary says it is fulfilled. So saying, Rama vanished, and Shiva kept that image of him in his heart. Twice now a speaker has given the same instruction. Brahma told Parvati to take his word into her heart, and Rama tells Shiva the same.
Seven sages, and three tasks
At that same moment the seven sages came to Shiva. The vanishing and the arrival come one line after the other in the same chaupai, with no gap between them. Shiva spoke to them in words the verse calls very handsome, and what he gave them was three tasks. “Go to Parvati and test her love. Prompt the mountain to send her home, and remove the doubt.” The commentary reads the mountain as Himavan, who is to be sent to fetch her, and the doubt as Parvati’s.
The second task is the one Brahma spoke of at the start of the episode: when her father comes to call, go home. The sky had promised a summons, and Shiva now arranges it. The third task, the doubt, is one this episode does not come back to. Of the three, only the first is carried out within these seven dohas.
Shiva has already agreed to the marriage, and now he has the love tested, the love that is for him. The one who will be tested is told nothing of it.
What the sages saw
They were sent to test her love. When they reached her, what they saw was Parvati as tapas itself would look if it took a body.
Then they question her. “Listen, daughter of the mountain. For what reason do you do this heavy tapas? Whom do you worship, and what do you want? Why do you not tell us the true secret?” Her answer begins in shyness. “My mind shrinks from saying it. You will laugh when you hear my foolishness.” Foolishness is her own word for herself, before anyone has mocked her.
“My mind has taken a stubborn hold, and it listens to no teaching. It wants to raise a wall on water. Taking what Narada said as true, I want to fly without wings.” Both pictures are hers, drawn of her own wish: a wall on water, a flight without wings. She tells them, before they can, that what she wants looks impossible. And then she says the thing itself, with the fault laid on herself first. “See my want of discernment, sages. I want Shiva, always, as my husband.” The stubbornness Brahma told her to set aside when her father came is now her own word for her own mind, and she hides nothing of it.
Laughter, and the witnesses called after it
Hearing her, the sages laughed, and the first thing they said was about the mountain she was born of. “Your body is born of a mountain!” It is a joke about hardness, and before the episode ends the same remark will be in her hands as her answer. Then the question that, by their reckoning, should end the argument. “Tell us: whose house was settled after hearing Narada’s teaching?”
The examples follow, all of one kind. “He went and taught Daksha’s sons, and they never came back to look at their home. He wrecked Chitraketu’s house. And Hiranyakashipu’s was the same story. Men and women who hear Narada’s counsel surely leave their homes and turn beggars.” Every witness they call is a house, and every house is empty. Then the charge against the man himself. “His mind is a cheat’s, and his body wears the marks of a good man, and he wants to make everyone like himself.”
Then the bridegroom, one word at a time. “Trusting his word, you want a husband who is by nature indifferent: without virtues, shameless, ill-dressed, a wearer of skulls, without family, without house, naked, wreathed in snakes.” Indifferent by nature, and then eight words more. Much of it she has heard before. In the last episode, in her father’s house, Narada counted the faults of the husband written in her hand: without virtue, without honor, without mother or father. Indifferent, free of all doubt, a yogi with matted hair, a heart without desire, naked, in inauspicious dress. The sages’ list shares its ground with his, indifferent, without virtue, ill-dressed, naked, and adds shamelessness, the skulls, the snakes, and the missing family and house.
Then the question, and the blow. “Tell us, what happiness is there in getting such a bridegroom? You have been well fooled, maddened by a cheat.” The cheat, the commentary says, is Narada. “At the word of the elders, Shiva married Sati, and then he abandoned her and had her killed.” They say it to a girl who has spent years in tapas for that same man. And they say it to Sati herself, born again in a mountain’s house.
They close the case as they see it. “Now he sleeps in peace, with no worry, and eats what he begs. In the houses of men who are solitary by nature, can women ever stay?”
What comes out of stone
Then they offer a bridegroom in exchange. “Even now take our word. We have weighed up a good bridegroom for you: very beautiful, pure, pleasing, and good-natured, whose fame and play the Vedas sing. Free of faults, a heap of all virtues, the lord of Lakshmi, who lives in the city of Vaikuntha. We will bring such a bridegroom and join you to him.” The bridegroom is Vishnu. The offer runs the other way from the list they have just read out: a heap of all virtues against a man without virtues. A dweller in Vaikuntha against a man without a house.
Hearing it, Parvati laughed. The verse records her laugh in the same shape it gave the sages’, a laugh on hearing. She herself had said, before any of this began, that they would laugh when they heard her. Two laughs in one episode, and the first was foretold by the one who was laughed at.
Her first sentence hands the taunt back as a gift. “You spoke truly: this body is born of a mountain. The stubbornness will not go, though the body may. Gold too is born of stone, and even burned it does not give up its nature.” She takes their picture and completes it. The word she uses for nature is the sages’ own. They had called Shiva indifferent by nature and solitary by nature. Both times it was an argument against her. She picks the word up and agrees with it. Nature does not change, and the nature in question is hers. As for the body going, she has let a body go once already. Shiva’s story in this episode began with Sati giving hers up.
“I will not give up Narada’s word. Let the house be settled or let it be ruined. I am not afraid.” Then the rule behind it. “One who has no faith in the guru’s word: for him, even in a dream, happiness and attainment are not easy to come by.” Shiva gave Rama a rule of the same kind: the word of mother, father, guru, and master is to be done as good without weighing it. He stated that rule and acted on it. Parvati states hers to seven sages and acts on it against them.
And then, as the commentary reads it, she grants them their whole account. “Shiva is a house of faults and Vishnu the home of all virtues. Whoever one’s mind is set on, with that one alone is one’s business.” She disputes none of the words on their list. She accepts it, and then she sets the scale aside.
Had you come first
Then comes a very courteous refusal. “Had you met me first, sages, I would have heard your teaching with my head bowed.” Order decided it, and Narada came first. “Now I have lost this birth to Shiva. Who weighs virtues and faults?” Lost, in the sense of a stake wagered and gone. Virtues and faults were the two words of the sages’ own offer, free of faults, a heap of all virtues, and in one question she hands both back. The account is closed, and the weighing with it.
Then she hands another word back to them. “If the stubbornness in your hearts is great, and you cannot rest without arranging a match, then those who love such sport are never idle. And there are many brides and bridegrooms in the world.” Go and arrange one elsewhere, the commentary completes the thought. The word Brahma used when he told her what to set aside when her father came is the word she has twice used of herself. It is now placed in the hearts of the seven men in front of her.
And then she goes further. “For ten million births this quarrel of mine will stand: I will marry Shiva, or I will stay unwed.” Then she adds one thing more. “I will not give up Narada’s teaching, though Shiva himself should say so a hundred times.” The man she will not give up wanting is the one man whose word, on this point, she will not take.
“I fall at your feet,” said the mother of the world. “Go to your homes. It has grown late.” In this episode Brahma told her to go home when her father came and Shiva arranged for it. In the end it is she who tells the sages to go home. In the same line, the verse calls her the mother of the world, at the moment she is dismissing seven sages.
Glory to the mother of the world
Then the line that gives the result of the test in one word. Seeing her love, the wise sages spoke. Shiva had sent them to test her love, and the word on which they turn is love. “Glory, glory to you, mother of the world!” The name the verse gave her a line before, the sages now give her in their own voice.
“You are maya, and Shiva is the Lord: the father and mother of the whole world.” The men who had argued at length that no house survives Narada’s counsel, and that this husband had none, leave calling him the father of the world.
The last word is about their bodies as they go. Bowing their heads at her feet, the sages went, their bodies thrilling again and again. Near the episode’s opening, when Parvati heard the voice from the sky, her body thrilled and she rejoiced. The episode closes on the same joy in the body, this time in seven.
A stubbornness put to the test
The test first. Shiva agreed to the marriage at Rama’s asking before any sage set out. What the seven weighed was her love, exactly as Shiva had told them to. Every argument against her choice was pressed with full force and with examples. She turned each one aside. The marriage was settled before they spoke. What their words reached was her, and she held.
Then the word she was told to set aside. Here stubbornness names a fault. The voice from the sky told her to drop it when her father came. When she uses it of her own mind it sits beside her own words for foolishness and want of discernment. The word comes four times in these dohas, and Parvati speaks it three of those times: twice of herself and once of the sages’ hearts. She says her mind has taken hold and will hear no teaching, and she accepts their diagnosis and changes nothing. What the episode shows is what that stubbornness came through intact: the laughter of seven learned men, a count of nine faults. The taunt about Sati’s death and a faultless alternative.
The sages hail her and go, and she stays where she was. She never tells them that their coming was foretold to her as the proof of a word from the sky, and no one tells her that Shiva has already agreed. The second of Shiva’s three tasks, Himavan sent to bring her home, waits for the next episode, which opens with the sages sending him.
And last, the word that came from three mouths. Shiva said that the word of mother, father, guru, and master is to be done as good without weighing it. The sages said they had weighed up a good bridegroom for her. Parvati asked who weighs virtues and faults now. One man declines to weigh, because the one asking is his master. Seven learned men weigh, and then see love and cry glory. And one woman says that the weighing was finished before they came. It was finished on the day she heard the faults of the husband written in her hand and was glad.
The same story, elsewhere: the Shiva Purana: The Testing of Parvati.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Balkand, doha 75 to 81, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.