Bhagavatam · Kardama and Devahuti

The Ganga flowed slowly that morning, and Parikshit looked toward the sage Shukadeva.

“Bhagavan, one question has lodged in my mind. I have been a king; I have seen the palace and I have seen the battlefield. Six days remain to me now, and I keep wondering: can a person reach that shore while living amid household and world, or must one leave everything and go to the forest?”

Shukadeva stayed silent a while, then smiled. “Rajan, hear the story of a rishi and a king’s daughter. The answer you are seeking waited all along in the opening of a single palm, closer to hand than either the forest or the throne.”

This is a very old story, from the beginning of creation.

Among the lords of creation whom Brahma brought forth was Kardama, and Brahma had laid one charge on him: beget children, carry the world forward. On the bank of the Sarasvati he built his hut, nothing more than a thatched roof and a single stone seat. There he performed tapas for ten thousand years. He mastered the fire, mastered the breath, mastered the mind. The river’s cold water at dawn, the hushed sunlight of noon, and that silence of night in which only one’s own breathing can be heard: this was his world. Ten thousand years is no small span. In that much time mountains wear down and rivers change their course. But Kardama’s seat on that stone stayed exactly as it was, and within him a single call kept sounding, without words, without tongue, from the heart alone.

One desire had stayed inside him too, one he kept hiding even from himself. Let a companion come, a woman who knew dharma and could walk beside his tapas. To ask for this while being an ascetic pained him, and so did leaving it unasked.

One day that call was answered. At the dawn of the first age, the age men would later call Satya, Sri Hari came down to him in the form that only the Word of the Veda can name, and the empty air of the hut seemed suddenly filled. He stood in the air, effulgent as the sun, his feet upon the shoulders of Garuda, clad in spotless yellow silk. A crown sat on his head and bright rings hung at his ears. His face was the deep blue of a gathering dusk, framed by smooth curls, and his smile alone was enough to take the heart. A garland of white lotuses and water lilies fell across his chest, and on that chest lay the Kaustubha gem and the fine golden mark of Shri. He had four arms, and in them he held the conch, the discus called Sudarshana, and the mace, while the fourth turned a single white lotus, held only for play. Kardama gazed at this form, and a thirst of ten thousand years was quenched as if in one swallow. He fell with his forehead to the earth, and when he rose, his hands had joined of their own accord.

Kardama folded his hands.

“Lord, you are the ship that carries souls across the ocean of this world. The wise ask you for your feet. A fool like me has come to ask for a wife. Let there be a companion of good character, worthy of me, who can walk beside my tapas.”

There was no mockery in Sri Hari’s smile. “I knew what was in your heart long ago, Kardama, and I have already arranged it. The day after tomorrow, Svayambhuva Manu will come to your ashram with his daughter Devahuti. She will be your wife, and she will serve you until your heart is full. Through her you will father nine daughters, and from those daughters the great sages will raise their own lines.”

“The day after tomorrow,” Kardama repeated softly, as if after ten thousand years of waiting this small phrase felt like a stranger in his mouth.

“But keep one thing in mind. With her you must live the householder’s life for some years. Then I myself will descend into your house as a son, and in that form I will place in her the knowledge that cuts the knot of birth and death. Once the boy is grown you are free; return to your tapas.”

Kardama agreed. Sri Hari turned toward his own realm by the road the great Siddhas praise, and as Garuda’s wings beat the air they sounded the notes on which the Samaveda is sung. At the spot where he had stood, the air stayed full of the scent of lotus for a long while.

Meanwhile Manu was searching for a husband for his daughter Devahuti.

Devahuti was the daughter of Svayambhuva Manu and Queen Shatarupa, sister of Priyavrata and Uttanapada. Though a daughter of the royal house, her heart never settled in the palace. Once she was playing with a ball on her palace terrace, the anklets on her feet ringing sweetly, her eyes darting after the ball, and the gandharva Vishvavasu, crossing the sky above, swooned at the sight of her and fell from his own aerial chariot. Yet inside that beauty lived another thirst, one the palace could not fill. From Narada she heard an account of Kardama’s character and virtues, and from that day, in her heart, she had already taken him as her husband. She had told her father, “I want no prince. Find me a rishi.”

Manu heard Kardama’s name, seated his daughter on a golden chariot, and set out to meet him.

The hut was plain, mud walls and a faint smell of smoke. But Devahuti looked at Kardama’s face, a face grown long and radiant through ten thousand years of silent tapas, and the doubt inside her went still.

“Yes, Father. He is the one worthy of me.”

Kardama took her hand by the rite the wise call the Brahma rite, on one understanding spoken plainly: he would keep the householder’s life only until she bore a child through him, and then he would turn to the road of the recluse. Queen Shatarupa gave the couple what a mother gives, jewels and fine cloth and all the vessels of a household. Then came the hour of the daughter’s farewell. Manu, the first emperor of the world, whose command ran across seven continents, could not bear the parting. He clasped Devahuti to his chest and wept, saying “my daughter, my daughter.” The tears fell in such a stream that he soaked all the hair on her head. Then the chariot turned.

The palace fell away behind her. Devahuti came to live in Kardama’s small hut. The silks came off, the ornaments were set aside one by one, and what remained was her body and her service.

She accepted all of it without a single complaint. She read her husband’s wishes before he spoke them and tended him the way Parvati tends Shiva, holding him higher in her heart than fate itself. Setting aside lust, pretense, malice, greed, vanity, and every forbidden thing, she won him over by faith, by cleanness of body and mind, by reverence and restraint and plain sweet speech. So absorbed was she in serving him that her body grew thin and worn with her observances, yet the line of her brow never tightened.

Year after year passed. The two lived close beside each other, but like ascetics, bound by the rule of brahmacharya. Husband and wife, and seekers both.

One day Kardama looked at his wife and could no longer keep silent. Her body had thinned in his service, and it moved him.

“Daughter of Manu, you have honored me past all deserving, and you have spent your own body for my sake. Ask, and I will open to you the unearthly joys my penance has stored up. Let your eyes be given the power to see them.”

Devahuti’s face warmed, and she answered in a voice low with love. “My lord, I know well what your yoga can do. We have lived as husband and wife and yet kept the householder’s bond unformed, and in all these years I have asked you for nothing. But one promise still waits, the promise you gave before my father: that I might bear a child through you. Grant me that. Tell me what must be made ready, and let there be a fit house for it.”

Kardama looked at his wife. In those eyes was a true longing, and with it the thing he already knew, that this woman had given up all her splendor for his tapas.

“Very well,” he said.

Then, to fulfill his beloved’s wish, Kardama settled into yoga that very moment and fashioned a vimana, a flying palace that could travel anywhere at will, resting on pillars of jewels. Whatever a heart could want, it gave, and its riches only increased with use. It rose in storey upon storey, hung with bright flags and flower garlands that pulled the bees in to hum, spread with couches and seats and fans, curtained in linen and silk. Its pavements were emerald and coral, its thresholds coral, its doors paneled with diamond. Domes of sapphire were crowned with pinnacles of gold, and the choicest rubies set into its diamond walls glowed as if the palace had eyes. Gold canopies and festoons hung through its halls. The artificial swans and pigeons placed about it were so lifelike that real swans took them for their own kind, settled beside them, and called to them. It had pleasure grounds and resting rooms and inner and outer courts, all set for comfort, and all of it Kardama had made himself, and still, whenever he looked at it, he seemed to be looking at another’s work.

Then Kardama, who could weigh the feeling inside every heart, said to Devahuti of his own accord, “Go first and bathe in that lake. Then climb into the vimana.”

That lake was no ordinary water. Bindu-sarovar, the lake of the drop. It lay beside that very ashram, at the place where Sri Hari, moved to the depths by the very sage who had sought his refuge, had let fall drops of tears from his eyes, and from those drops this tirtha was born. The Sarasvati fed it. Its water was wholesome and sweet as amrita, flocks of rapturous birds chattered along its banks, and rapturous peacocks spread their tails and danced.

Devahuti stepped into that water. By then her sari was worn and soiled, the hair on her head had tangled into matted locks, the grime of tapas had settled on her body, and the radiance of her bosom had faded. She took one dip.

And beneath the water she saw a palace.

In that palace were a thousand maidens, Vidyadhara girls, all young, the fragrance of lotus rising from their bodies. The moment they saw Devahuti they rose as one and said with folded hands, “We are your servants. Command us: what service shall we do?” They bathed her with costly oil and fragrant powders, untangled her hair, washed away the grime, and dressed her in two spotless new garments. They brought her rich jewels, food that carried every good quality, and sweet drinks. Then they held a mirror before her.

Devahuti looked at her face in the mirror, and for a moment did not know it. It was the same beauty she had worn on her wedding day, and something beyond it. A gold necklace and a string of pearls at her throat, bangles on her wrists, a jeweled golden girdle at her waist, and on her feet the same chiming golden anklets that had once rung on the palace terrace. Her lips trembled on their own, but no words came. Everything her body had quietly given away through the years of tapas had been returned, as if in a single dip. And the moment she thought of her husband, she found herself standing with her companions at the very spot where Kardama waited beside the vimana, amazed at what his yoga had done.

He helped Devahuti up into the vimana.

For years the two lived in that vimana. They flew above the valleys of Meru, where the eight lokapalas have their pleasure grounds, where the auspicious sound of the Ganga falling from heaven echoes without pause, and where a cool fragrant wind blows that quickens Kamadeva. They rested in the celestial groves of Vaishrambhaka, Surasana, Nandana, Pushpabhadra, and Chaitrarathya, and bathed in Manasa-sarovar. On that palace that went where its rider willed, Kardama passed through the spheres more freely than the gods, who each keep to their own. He lived every enjoyment of the householder, with full honesty, yet the greatness within him never dimmed. By the power of yoga he passed a hundred years so lightly that the time went by like a single muhurta. That distance from time, which always keeps a seeker a little apart from the world, stayed with him.

By that same yoga Kardama took nine forms at once, and on a single day Devahuti bore nine daughters, each lovely in every limb, the scent of red lotus on their bodies. In time all nine would become the wives of nine great rishis, Marichi, Atri, Angira, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, Bhrigu, Vasishtha, and Atharva, and through them the lineage of creation would move forward.

Then one day, like fire hidden in wood, a son emerged from Devahuti’s womb. That day the clouds in the sky rumbled as if drums were being sounded, gandharvas sang, apsaras danced, and divine flowers rained down from the heavens. The quarters cleared, the rivers ran bright, and a quiet settled over the minds of living things. The child was named Kapila, and in that form Sri Hari himself had descended, exactly as he had promised Kardama ten thousand years before.

Now Kardama’s promise stood fulfilled.

Devahuti had known this day would come, and still, when it came, she found herself helpless. She stood with her head lowered, scratching at the ground with a jeweled toenail, as if she were trying to write there some word that would not come to her lips. She held her tears inside. “Bhagavan,” she said slowly, in a voice very sweet and trembling, “the vow you made, you have honored in full. But I am still in your refuge. Husbands must be found for these daughters, and after you are gone there must also be someone to lift from me the grief of birth and death.”

Kardama knew that the answer lived in her own house. He assured her that the son of her own womb would be the one to show her the way. Then Brahma himself came down to the hermitage on the Sarasvati, looked on the newborn, knew him at once for the Lord come down to earth, and told Kardama the hour had come to give his daughters to the great sages. So, with the due rites, Kardama gave each of the nine to her rishi, Marichi, Atri, Angira, and the rest, and honored them all before they left for their own hermitages.

Kardama knew now that his own son was the one he had beheld long ago on the shoulders of Garuda. He went to him alone, bowed, and asked his leave, and Kapila blessed him and said that he would give the same saving knowledge to his mother in time. After that Kardama left it all behind: the vimana, the jeweled pillars, the ties. Under a vow to harm no living thing he gave up even the sacred fire and any settled roof, took refuge in Sri Hari alone, and set out toward the forest without attachment and without a home. His mind fixed on Brahman, seeing all things as one, he began to wander the earth. He never returned.

Devahuti remained with her son.

Years passed. Kapila grew. And one morning the hour arrived that the mother had been feeling for inside herself for days.

Devahuti came and stood before her son. The same son she had nursed at her breast, whose tiny toenails she had trimmed with the pad of her thumb, whose first laugh she still kept safe in her ears. She was looking at him and could not quite see him, because in that face now lived the one who had once descended on the bank of the Sarasvati, four-armed, on the shoulders of Garuda.

She drew a long breath. Her throat tightened; her lips opened and closed again. Slowly she raised both hands and joined them, the way a disciple joins them before a guru. The palms that had once held this child now bowed before him. Something trembled in her chest, a mother’s pride and a disciple’s humility together, and both were joined in that bowed gesture. Nearby the water of the Sarasvati flowed on, and somewhere in the distance a rapturous peacock cried.

“Bhagavan,” her voice was very small now. “All the time I spent turned away from the Supreme, sunk in the pleasures of the senses, has gone to waste. I fell into the dark by chasing them. And even so late, by your grace, my eyes have opened enough to know you: the most ancient one, risen like the sun before a world blinded by its own ignorance.” And then she turned toward that subtle knowledge for which Sri Hari had descended into this lap.

Kapila looked at his mother’s joined palms, at the lines worn into them in his own service. Then he began to tell her what would later be called Samkhya, that subtle path of the atman which had long since faded from the world, and to speak it anew was the very reason Sri Hari had descended into this lap.

Here Shukadeva paused a moment.

Parikshit was quiet for a while. Then he said, “Bhagavan, Kardama built that flying palace with his own hands, lived in it for years, and then one day left it where it stood and walked away empty-handed. My throne too is a vimana of that kind.”

Shukadeva smiled. “The palm that made it, Rajan, is the same palm that let it go. And see: Devahuti found her answer in the lap of her own son, the very lap in which she had raised him, closer than any forest or palace. To see as guru the one who is nearest of all, that is the hardest thing.”

Shukadeva said this much and fell silent. The morning sun had spread across the Ganga by now, and the trembling light on the water’s surface swayed the way two joined hands sway beneath a bowed forehead.