Bhagavatam · The Mohini Avatar

The Ganga’s waves ran very slow that morning, as if they too had paused to listen. Parikshit looked at Shukadeva and said, “Munivar, yesterday you told the katha of the churning of the ocean. Mandarachala, Vasuki, the halahala that Shiva held fast in his throat. But one thing has stayed lodged in my mind. The amrita did come forth, so how did it end up in the hands of the devas? The asuras stood right there too, and they were no lesser in strength.”

A faint smile floated into Shukadeva’s eyes, the way an old and cherished memory returns. “Rajan, where plain strength fails, Shri Hari puts his maya to work. And the form he took that day, no one had seen its like before, and no one has seen it since.”

He paused a moment. Then he said, “Listen.”

The last thing the sea gave up was the amrita, and it rose in the hands of a man no one had ever set eyes on. He came up out of the churning water dark as a rain cloud, a young man in the first strength of his years, his arms long and full, his neck lined like a conch, his eyes touched faintly with red. He wore yellow silk over a broad chest, bright jeweled earrings swung at his ears, a garland of fresh flowers lay on his shoulders, and in his two hands he carried a golden kalasha brimming with the liquid that takes away old age and death. He had risen from a single ray of Shri Vishnu himself. Dhanvantari, the world would come to call him, the physician who first gave men the science of medicine and who takes his share of every fire-offering to this day.

The eyes of the devas were fixed upon it. So were the eyes of the asuras.

But asuras waste no time. They lunged and wrenched the kalasha from Dhanvantari’s hands by force. Then they fell upon one another. One snatched it from the first, a third from the second, like bandits robbing bandits.

“The amrita is ours,” each one shouted. “I drink first, I do. Never you, never you.”

The weaker among them began pleading with the stronger asuras. “Brothers, we all bent our backs to the same labor. It was a common work, like a great yajna a whole people undertakes together, and by the eternal law the fruit belongs to all who shared the toil. We deserve a portion too.” But who was listening.

The ground slid out from under the devas’ feet. Defeat stood in plain view. They joined their palms, closed their eyes, and called out to Shri Hari.

“Do not grieve, devas,” Shri Hari’s voice rose from within. “I will stir up feud among them with my maya, and in the shape of a bewitching woman I will see your work done.”

He would not settle this by force.

He was the master who knows every means. He turned his form over. Where a moment before there had been something else, a woman now stood. The kind of woman at whose sight breath forgets its own place.

The color of her body was dark as a blue lotus. Youth was new upon her, every limb shaped so finely the eye could not pull away. Glittering jeweled earrings swung at both ears, lovely cheeks, a high nose, an enchanting face. A wreath of full-blown jasmine crowned her hair, a necklace lay at her throat, armlets circled her rounded arms, and a jeweled girdle rode the curve of her hips. Her waist had grown slender under the weight of the full bosom her young age had given her. Gold anklets chimed sweetly at her feet. And bees hovered on the fragrance of her breath, setting a light flutter of alarm adrift in her eyes.

One sidelong glance from her, one bashful smile, and the three worlds stood still for a moment.

She came walking slowly in among the asuras, that same kalasha full of amrita in her hand, no hurry anywhere in her step.

The asuras forgot the amrita. They forgot their feuding. Their eyes caught on that form and stayed there.

“Who is she?” one asked in a whisper.

“What matchless beauty,” said another, and could manage no more. “Lotus-eyed one, who are you, whose daughter, where have you come from? You have thrown our hearts into a churning of their own. What is it you mean to do here?”

“We know this much,” said a third. “No deva, daitya, siddha, gandharva, or charana can ever have so much as touched you, nor even the guardians of the spheres. How would mere men reach you then? Surely the merciful creator has sent you to bring delight to every living sense. Then bring peace to us as well. We are kinsmen, and we stand here at war with one another over a single prize.”

Mohini, for that was the name of this form, smiled faintly.

“Why are you all tangled up with one another?” Her voice was honey. “Over so small a quarrel. Give the kalasha to me, and I will make the division.”

The asuras bowed their heads as if to a command. “We are all sons of Kashyapa ji, blood brothers. We have labored greatly for this amrita. Divide it with justice, and no quarrel will remain among us.”

Mohini gave a small laugh and said a curious thing.

“You are sons of the maharshi Kashyapa, and I am a woman who follows her own whim. A discerning man never places his trust in a woman of loose desires. The friendship of such a woman and of a wolf never holds; both keep hunting for newer and newer companions. Why then are you laying the burden of justice on me?”

But the fine edge of this jest slipped past the asuras. Their trust only deepened: why would so beautiful a woman ever practice deceit? They laughed, a laugh whose meaning ran too deep for them to reach, and placed the kalasha in Mohini’s hands.

Taking the kalasha, Mohini said with a small smile, “Whatever I do, fitting or unfitting, only if all of you accept it will I divide this amrita.”

The great daityas heard these sweet words and answered in one voice, “We accept.” Of Mohini’s true nature they had no inkling at all.

Then came a day of fasting. Bathing, and offerings poured into the fire, and gifts of kindness to cows, to brahmins, to every living thing; and brahmins spoke the rites of blessing over the gathering. Everyone put on fresh clothes and fresh ornaments and took their seats on blades of kusha grass laid with their tips to the east. In a hall thick with fragrant smoke, hung with flowers and lamps, devas and daityas sat down in their separate rows, all facing east. Then Mohini came in, slow of step under the weight of her hips, the kalasha in her hands, her gold anklets warbling as she walked. To pour immortality into the asuras, she knew, would be like pouring milk into serpents. It would only swell their venom, and the worlds would pay. So she seated the two races apart, soothed the daityas with soft words, and turned first toward the devas.

She served one deva. Then a second. Then a third. Measuring drop by drop, pausing between each.

The asuras sat watching, and did not rise. They had their pledge to keep, and a fear in the heart besides, that the bond of love with Mohini might snap. There was, too, a certain shame in wrangling with a woman. Each time, Mohini would turn a glance their way, and that glance bound them like a fetter. “Have patience,” she would say, smiling. “Your turn is nearly here.”

Among those asuras was one named Svarbhanu, whom later ages would call Rahu. More watchful than the rest.

Suspicion crept into his eyes. “This woman is cheating us,” a voice spoke inside him, and he could not sit still.

Quietly he changed his form, the exact likeness of a deva, and went and sat in the devas’ row, directly between Surya and Chandra.

When his turn came, Mohini placed amrita in his hands. Rahu took a swallow.

But Surya and Chandra sat on either side of him. They saw the asura behind the disguise, and they said it aloud. “Stop. This is an asura.”

Not even a moment passed. The Sudarshana chakra, its edge keen as a razor, spun in Mohini’s hand, and Rahu’s head parted from his trunk while the nectar was still in his mouth.

But it was already too late.

The amrita had passed his throat. It had reached the head; it had never reached the trunk. The head stayed immortal, and the rest of the body, untouched by the nectar, fell down dead.

Brahma raised that immortal head to the rank of a planet-deity, a graha, and it hangs in the sky to this day. It never forgave Surya and Chandra, who had laid its secret bare.

That is why it lunges at them still, in old enmity. At the new moon it hurls itself at the sun; at the full moon, at the moon. The shadow that falls in those hours is what people call an eclipse.

But he is only a head. In a little while Surya and Chandra slip free of his grip and shine out again.

Meanwhile the kalasha had run empty. All the amrita had passed into the devas. Nothing came to the asuras’ hands.

When they learned they had been tricked, they attacked in fury. But the devas were immortal now, and one who is immortal fights without fear. The asuras lost once more.

And Mohini? The work done, that form dissolved into the air before the eyes of all the devas, and there stood Shri Hari again.

The devas joined their palms. They had no words left to say.

Shri Hari mounted Garuda and, having given the devas the amrita to drink, set out for his own abode. As he went he cast back one glance, and in it lay the same compassion that comes down in every yuga to save its own.