Bhagavatam · Saubhari the Sage

The Ganga’s waves had settled almost to stillness that morning. Parikshit sat with a question a long while before he let it out.

“Bhagavan, until now you have told me of devotees who reached the far shore in their last breath. But another fear has taken a seat inside me. Suppose a man has done sadhana for years, has brought his own mind to heel. Can even he slip? A man who holds that much power, what is left for him to fear?”

Shukadeva smiled, very faintly. “Rajan, power and vairagya are two different things. A man may command enormous power and still carry a desire asleep inside him, waiting only for its hour to wake. Listen to the story of a muni named Saubhari.”

Saubhari was a great ascetic, an acharya of the Rigveda, a master of its powerful mantras. He had steeped himself in tapas (austerity) so long that his brahmatejas, the fire of his penance, stayed undimmed across an age of years.

The manner of his tapasya was itself a strange one. He practiced it underwater.

In a deep pool of the Yamuna, the dark river the poets also call the Kalindi, he would stay submerged, sunk in meditation. Above him the sun climbed and fell, shadows shivered across the surface, and far below he sat without stirring.

His breath went still. His mind went still. Everything went still.

A vast stretch of time passed this way. Around him the cold weight of the water, and within him a peace so settled that no disturbance could reach it.

One day he was seated in his usual place, deep in the water.

And something moved across his sight.

A fish-king, the leader of his shoal, gliding among his many mates, sunk in a full and easy happiness.

One fish, and around him such company, such motion, such life.

Saubhari’s eyes came to rest there and stayed.

In all the solitude of the water he had never watched such a thing. Here, right in front of him, a lowly creature of the river was steeped in a whole thriving world of its own, male and female paired and content.

From the floor of his mind a thought rose up, very fine, very old. It was a longing for the pleasures of a shared life, for a companion, for the delights of marriage itself.

“Even a fish comes into a world of happiness of its own. And I, so great a muni, sit here alone. Should I not also have someone at my side?”

He rose. He cut up through the surface and came into the open air.

For the first time in many days the wind touched his face.

His body had dried nearly to a husk, yet a glow of tapas still rested on it.

He went straight to the court of King Mandhata.

Mandhata was a mighty king, son of Yuvanaswa, lord of the seven continents, a sovereign whose land ran from the point where the sun rose to the point where it set. Through his queen Bindumati he had three sons, Purukutsa, Ambarisa, and Mucukunda the mystic, and fifty daughters besides, all grown, all of an age to marry.

“O Rajan,” said Saubhari, “I have come to ask one of your daughters in marriage.”

Mandhata paused. To refuse so great a muni to his face was no easy thing. So he took shelter in a condition. “Holy one, let a daughter be yours, and gladly, if one of them chooses you of her own free will.”

Saubhari understood the king’s meaning at once.

He thought to himself, “The king has handed me this dry answer because I have grown old. Wrinkles cover my skin, my hair has gone white, my head shakes on my neck. He believes no woman could want me, and so he has refused me without seeming to refuse.”

Then a resolve hardened in him. “Very well. I will make myself so flawless, so beautiful, that not only the king’s daughters but the very women of the gods will ache for me.”

And Saubhari, who held real power, did exactly that. By the force of his yoga, in the space of a breath, the withered ascetic blazed into a youth so radiant that any eye that fell on him would fix there and not want to leave.

The keepers of the inner palace led him into the luxurious hall set apart for the princesses.

All fifty chose that one man for their husband.

And what a choosing it became. Each girl’s heart fastened on him so completely that they forgot they were sisters and fell to quarreling.

“He is meant for me, not for you.” “No. For me.”

A contest broke out among all fifty, every one of them set on the same groom.

Saubhari, the knower of the Rigveda, took the hands of them all in marriage.

Then, out of the inexhaustible wealth of his austerity, he raised mansions furnished with priceless beds and seats, fine garments and jewels. Around them lay lakes of clear water bedded with lotuses, parks and flower gardens heavy with scent, the chatter of birds, the drone of bees, and bards to sing his praise. Servants and maids moved through it all, decked in ornaments of their own.

There he settled, with his fifty wives, in the middle of every pleasure a body could ask for. Baths and perfumes, rich food and garlands, one delight following the last.

From each wife a hundred sons were born to him. Five thousand in all.

The ascetic who had once sat holding his breath under the river now lived in palaces loud with the cries of children and the voices of servants.

One day Mandhata himself, lord of the seven continents, came to look on Saubhari’s household. The splendor of it, the sheer weight of comfort, left him stunned. Whatever pride he had carried, that he was master of the wealth of the whole earth, quietly drained out of him.

But one thing had not changed.

Saubhari was tasting every pleasure, and still there was no contentment in him. As fire is never filled by the ghee poured into it, so his mind was never filled. Each satisfaction only widened the appetite for the next.

One day, sitting quietly by himself, he saw his fall for what it was.

“What have I done?”

“For an age I kept my brahmatejas whole and undimmed. Then, under the water, the sight of one fish, a single glimpse of its happiness, swept it all away. The fish had done nothing to me. Everything that followed came out of my own mind. I was one, a companionless ascetic. Through that company under the water I became fifty. Through fifty I became five thousand. And still the wanting has no floor to it. The duties of husband and wife breed fresh desires without end, and nowhere can I find their edge.”

He looked inward. His mind was more restless now than it had ever been, as restless as it had once been calm under the river.

And his error stood plain before him. One who truly wants moksha (liberation) must let go, entirely, of the company of those bound to pleasure and to household life, and must never let the senses wander outward even for a moment. He should sit alone in some quiet place and fasten his mind on Bhagavan. If he must keep any company at all, let it be only with the great souls who love Bhagavan and nothing besides.

He rose. He called his fifty wives together.

“Listen. I made a mistake. I chased one small desire, and it cost me my tapas. Now I have to turn back.”

He handed the running of his affairs to his five thousand sons, took sannyasa, and set out for the forest.

His wives held their husband to be their whole world. They walked out behind him, toward the forest, every one.

There Saubhari took up fierce austerity again, wore his body down to nothing, and with the sacred fires, the ahavaniya and the rest, merged himself into the Paramatma.

And when his wives saw the height their husband had reached, then, as flames sink back into a fire that has burned down to its last, they too gave up their bodies and were taken into him, and reached the very state he had.