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To keep his word, King Harishchandra had spent himself into ruin paying the fee he owed Vishwamitra. The kingdom had already slipped from his hands. Then he was forced to sell his queen, Shaivya, and his son, Rohit, and at the last he sold his own self into the service of a chandala, a keeper of the burning grounds. The chandala handed the money over to Vishwamitra, and a voice from the sky proclaimed that the king now stood free of his debt. Yet what freedom was this? He was the chandala’s slave. His master set him to guard the vast cremation ground on the southern edge of Kashi, with a single order: whatever corpse arrived there, Harishchandra was to take its shroud as the fee, and that alone would be his work.
The Watchman of the Cremation Ground
That cremation ground was a place of terror. Skulls lay scattered on every side, broken pots and torn rags among them; vultures and jackals cried through the day and the night; and the smoke of the pyres hung over every direction. The king, his body caked with grime, worn thin as a stick of dry wood, wore garlands stripped from the dead and crowned his own head with them. He stilled his hunger on the leftover rice of the funeral offerings, and counted to himself, over and over: this fee came from that corpse, this portion is mine, this the king’s, this the chandala’s. Where have my servants gone, where are my ministers, where is the kingdom that came down to me through my line, where is my beloved, where is my innocent son? Lamenting so, he found no sleep by day and none by night. In this way twelve months passed over him like a hundred years.
The Death of the Prince
Elsewhere his son, Rohit, who now lived in the house of a brahmin, went with the other boys into a forest near Varanasi. To gather the materials for his master’s agnihotra, the fire offering, he collected kusha grass and kindling and lifted the bundle of wood onto his head. Tormented by thirst, he stopped at a pool, drank, and settled to rest. The moment he reached again for the bundle he had set upon an anthill, a great black serpent, driven by the will of Vishwamitra, slid out of that mound and struck the boy. Rohit fell to the earth in that same instant. The terrified boys ran to his mother and told her that her son had died of a snakebite.
The words fell on Queen Shaivya like a thunderbolt. She, who was now that same brahmin’s bondwoman, collapsed in a faint. Holding it an ill omen to weep at the hour of dusk, the brahmin flew into a rage and, scolding her again and again with harsh words, ordered her to finish the work of the house. Only after long pleading, and after she had pressed his feet until the middle of the night, did the brahmin grant her a single muhurta to go to her son. Alone in the dark, weeping as she went, the queen made her way out, and when she saw her dead son lying on the ground she threw herself upon him and broke into piteous cries.
The queen’s lament woke the watchmen of the city, and they came near, astonished. They asked her who she was, whose child this was, and why she wept here alone in the night. Choked with grief, the queen could not utter a word and stood as though struck dumb. The watchmen then suspected that she must be some rakshasi, a devourer of children, who had eaten even her own infant. They seized her by the hair and dragged her to the chandala, and handing her over they said that this killer of children should be put to death at once. Taking her for a notorious rakshasi, the chandala placed a sword in Harishchandra’s hand and ordered him to kill her without delay.
Recognition at the Cremation Ground
Harishchandra had taken a stern vow never in his life to kill a woman, and so, trembling from head to foot, he said that he could not do this, and begged to be given some other task. The chandala rebuked him: a servant who takes his wages and then neglects his master’s work is not released from hell for ten thousand kalpas. Left with no choice, the king raised the sword and told the woman to come and sit before him; if his hand could move, he would cut off her head. In that darkness the king did not recognize his wife, nor the queen her husband. Longing only for death, the queen said that a little way off her son lay dead; she asked him to wait until she had brought the body and burned it, and then to kill her. The king agreed.
The queen brought the boy who had died of the snakebite, laid him on the ground, and wept, crying, “Alas, my son! Alas, my child!” Hearing her sobs, Harishchandra, whose duty was to take the dead one’s shroud as his fee, came to the body and drew off its cloth. On the boy’s palms he saw the marks of the discus, the fish, the Shrivatsa, and the swastika, and he thought that this child, born into the line of some king, had been bound by Yama in the noose of Death. In that moment his old memory woke, and he recognized his devoted wife, Shaivya, and his son, Rohit. Both fell in a faint, then came to their senses and lamented together. The king told her the whole story of his downfall. In the end the two resolved that they too would burn themselves upon their son’s pyre. Yet the king remembered as well that to do so without his master’s leave would bring the sin of betraying that master; and the queen, a votary of the goddess Gauri, prayed that this man might be her husband in birth after birth.
The Meditation on the Goddess and the Coming of the Gods
Then King Harishchandra built the pyre, laid his son upon it, and, his wife beside him, folded his hands and turned his mind in meditation to the goddess Shatakshi, the Hundred-Eyed, who is the sovereign of the world, who dwells forever within the five sheaths of the body, who wears a garment the color of blood, who is the very ocean of the rasa of compassion, who bears many weapons, and who is ever ready in the guarding of the world.
Before the king, lost so in meditation, and with Dharma at their head, there suddenly appeared all the gods, Indra among them, together with Brahma, Vishwamitra, the Maruts, the Rudras, and the two Ashvins. Brahma told him that he was the Grandsire himself, and that at his side stood the god Dharma in person. Dharma revealed that, knowing the suffering that lay ahead for the king, it was he who had taken the form of the chandala through his own maya; the chandala’s house that Harishchandra had seemed to see was that same maya as well. Indra said, “O most fortunate one, today, with your wife and your son, you have won the eternal worlds.” Then Indra rained amrita, the nectar of immortality, over the dead Rohit lying on the pyre, and the boy sat up whole, glad, and full of joy; flowers fell from the sky and celestial drums sounded. The king and queen were adorned with divine garlands and garments.
Indra told the king that he should now set out for the world of heaven, his wife and son with him. But Harishchandra said that he would not go to heaven without the leave of his master, the chandala, and without repaying him; Dharma set this doubt to rest by reassuring him. Even then the king said, how could he go alone to heaven and leave behind all the people of Ayodhya, who were scorched with grief for him? No happiness comes to the one who abandons a faithful, trusting devotee. And so, if the fruit of the charitable gifts, the yajnas, and the tapas he had performed were shared with all the citizens of the city, even for a single day, he would go only with them. Indra accepted this. Vishwamitra performed Rohit’s consecration and made him the king of Ayodhya, and then every citizen of Ayodhya, made radiant, mounted splendid celestial chariots and set out for heaven alongside their king. Seeing this, Shukracharya, filled with wonder, sang the glory of forbearance and the great fruit of charity, on the strength of which King Harishchandra had won the world of Indra.
This tale of Harishchandra is found in the Aitareya Brahmana and the Markandeya Purana as well, yet the account in the Devi Bhagavata is told from the Shakta perspective, in which Harishchandra is a devotee of the goddess Shatakshi and his whole ordeal was the maya of Dharma.
Source: Shrimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)