The sages had a doubt they could not set down. Satyavati was known to the whole world as the wedded queen of King Shantanu, a chaste woman who kept her own house; how, then, had Vyasa been born her son while she lived there? How had Shantanu come to choose such a woman afterward, and how had two sons been born to her in that marriage? “Tell it in full,” they said to Suta. “The birth of Vyasa, and the birth of Satyavati. Every one of us has kept his vows, and every one of us is eager to hear.” Suta bowed first to the supreme Adishakti, who gives the four aims of a human life, dharma and wealth and desire and release, the goddess whose seed-syllable, spoken on any pretext at all, brings a perfection that does not end, and whom everyone should hold in mind with a surrendered heart for the fulfilling of every wish. Then he began the old and auspicious story. In the land of Chedi there ruled a king named Uparichara, truthful and righteous, a worshiper of Brahmins, and rich. Indra, king of the gods, pleased with his tapas, had given him a divine vimana cut from crystal, and the king of Chedi went everywhere in it. His feet never came down to the ground; he moved always above the earth, and so the world knew him as Uparichara Vasu. He was a most righteous man. His wife was Girika, lovely to look at, and he had five sons, heroic and glorious, each of whom he had set on the throne of a separate land.
One day Girika, bathed and purified after her season, came to the king wanting a son of him. In the very moment of her asking, the pitaras spoke to the king, the fathers of his line who are fed by what their descendants offer them: kill deer and bring them to us. The king remembered that his wife was in her season, and he weighed that against the word of the fathers, and the fathers were the heavier. He settled his duty and rode out to hunt with Girika in his mind. In the forest he went on thinking of her, beautiful as a second Lakshmi, and as he dwelt on her his seed fell of itself. He caught it quickly on a banyan leaf. The thought that came to him was a practical one: this must not be wasted; my seed is unfailing, there is no doubt of that, and the queen is in her season, so it must go to her. He folded the leaf into a cup, spoke a mantra over it to consecrate it, and called to a hawk perched near him. “Take this and go quickly to my house. Give it into Girika’s hands, for today is her season; do me this good.” The hawk took the cup from the king and rose into the sky. Another hawk saw it flying with a leaf-cup in its beak and came straight at it, taking the thing for a piece of meat, and a terrible fight broke out between the two birds, beak against beak in the empty air. While they fought, the cup with the seed in it fell into the water of the Yamuna. The birds, with nothing left to fight over, flew off wherever they pleased.
The apsara cursed into a fish
At that very time an apsara named Adrika was at play in the Yamuna, under the water. From below she saw a Brahmin standing in the river with his mind gathered for sandhya, the worship said at the turning of the day, and she reached up and took hold of his foot. He was in the middle of his pranayama, his breath held and measured, and when he found a willful woman’s hand on him he cursed her. “You have put an obstacle in my worship. Become a fish.” Cursed by that best of Brahmins, the lovely Adrika became a fish and roamed the waters of the Yamuna. She came upon the seed that the hawks’ struggle had let fall, and in her fish body she swallowed it at once.
Ten months passed. Then a fisherman caught that beautiful fish in his net, and when he split its belly open two children of human shape came out of it, a handsome boy and a girl with a lovely face. He stood over the opened fish amazed, and he carried both children to King Uparichara, who was as astonished as he, and who took the handsome boy for himself. That son of Vasu became the king named Matsya, righteous like his father, true to his vow, splendid and strong. The girl the king gave to the fisherman. She came to be known as Kali and as Matsyodari, and by a quality of her own she was called Matsyagandha; and in the fisherman’s house that daughter of Vasu, Vasavi, grew slowly. Here the sages stopped Suta. “When the apsara Adrika, cursed by the muni, became a fish and the fisherman split her open, did she die? Did he eat her? What became of her then, how did her curse end, and how did she reach heaven again?” Suta told them. When the muni cursed her she had stood astonished, and then she had wept piteously and praised him, and the Brahmin, who was kind, had said to the weeping woman, “Do not grieve. I will tell you the means by which this curse ends. By the curse I gave in anger you will enter a fish’s womb; when you have brought forth from your own belly a pair of human children, you will be free of it.” So it went. As a fish in the water of the Yamuna she bore the two children and died, and in dying she was released from the curse. She left the fish body, took her divine form again, and went to heaven. That is how the lovely-faced Matsyagandha came to be born. Raised like a daughter in the house of the fisherman, she grew, and when girlhood turned toward youth her beauty grew still more. The most beautiful daughter of Vasu lived doing the work of the Nishada chief, the lord of the fisherfolk who kept the river.
Parashara and the boat on the Yamuna
Of all the crossings she rowed for her father, one would give the world Vyasa. The muni Parashara, a sage of great splendor, came on pilgrimage one day to the fine bank of the Yamuna. The Nishada chief was sitting on the bank at his meal, and the righteous sage said to him, “Take me across the Yamuna in your boat.” The Nishada, eating, turned to his beautiful young daughter Matsyagandha. “Daughter, seat this muni in the boat and take him across. This righteous ascetic wishes to reach the other side.” Vasavi Matsyagandha did as her father told her. She seated the muni in the boat and took up the oars.
As the boat moved out over the water, by divine chance and by what destiny had already written for him, Parashara looked at the lovely-eyed girl and his heart went to her. He saw her in the full flower of her youth, he wanted her, and he reached across and laid his right hand on her right arm. The dark-eyed girl smiled. “Does this act befit your family, your tapas, your learning in the Veda? You are of Vasishtha’s line, you have family and character both, you know what dharma is; and yet, tormented by Kama, what is it you mean to do? A human birth is rare on this earth, and birth in a Brahmin house I hold rarer still. By family, by conduct, by your study of the Veda you are a righteous and excellent Brahmin. How, looking at me, Matsyagandha, have you come to such a thought? What is it you see in this body of mine that brings you toward me with your hand out, struck by lust? Do you not know your own dharma?” And while she spoke she was thinking: this dull-witted Brahmin wants to take me here, in the middle of the water; the touch of me has set his mind shaking under Kama’s arrow, and there is no one on this river who can stop him. So she said to the great muni, “Hold your patience. I am taking you across right now.” Parashara took her words as meant for his good. He let go of her arm and stayed where he sat until the boat reached the far side. There he seized her again. Trembling with fear, the girl said to the muni who stood facing her, “I smell foul. Do you feel no disgust for me? A union is pleasant only between those of like form.” Parashara answered that with his tapas. In a moment, by the power of his austerities, he made her fair-faced and lovely, her fragrance carrying a full yojana in every direction, and sweet as musk.
The lovesick king of munis took hold of her right hand again, and now the beauty, whose name was Satyavati, spoke to the man who wanted her. “My father is on the bank, and all the people with him, and they are watching us. This dreadful conduct, fit for beasts, does not please me. Wait until night comes. For human beings union is ordained for the night; by day it is a great fault, and by day there are many eyes. You are great-minded; now do as you wish, only know that public blame is a very painful thing.” Parashara heard the reason in her words, and at once, by the strength of his merit, the generous-minded sage called up a mist. It rose off the river and the bank went dark. In that darkness the girl spoke to him sweetly. “I am still a maiden, and when you have had your union with me you will go away. Your seed is unfailing. What is to become of me then? If I conceive, what answer will I give my father? Tell me what I am to do when you have gone.” Parashara said, “Even after pleasing me today you will remain a maiden. Ask the boon you wish.” Satyavati asked. “Give me a boon such that my mother and my father, and the world, never know of this. Act so that my maiden vow is not destroyed. Let the son born to me be of unequaled vigor, like you. Let this fragrance of mine stay with me always, and let my youth be always new.” “Listen,” Parashara said. “Your son will be pure, born of a portion of Lord Vishnu, and famed through the three worlds. It is for some particular reason that I have been lovesick for you; no delusion like this ever came to me before. I have looked on the beauty of apsaras and kept my composure every time, and it is by fate alone that the sight of you has brought me under Kama. Understand that there is a cause at work here, and that fate is very hard to step over. Why else would I have been so infatuated at the sight of you as you were, with that foul smell on you? Your son will be the author of the Puranas and the divider of the Vedas, and the three worlds will know his name.”
The coming forth of Vyasa
When he had said this, the best of munis united with the girl who had come under his control, bathed at once in the Yamuna, and went quickly on his way. The virtuous Satyavati conceived that very moment. In due time, on an island in the Yamuna, she gave birth to a beautiful son who shone like a second Kamadeva, and as soon as he was born the splendid child spoke to his mother. “Mother, I entered the womb with my mind already fixed on tapas. Go now wherever you wish; I too am going from here, to do my tapas. Whenever you remember me I will surely appear; when some good work arises, think of me and I will come quickly. May it be well with you. Now I go. Put down your worry and live happily.” With those words Vyasa went away, and Satyavati went back to her father. Because she had borne him on an island in the Yamuna, the world came to know him as Dvaipayana.
He was a partial incarnation of Lord Vishnu, and so the child grew tall almost as soon as he was born, and bathing at tirtha after tirtha he took up an excellent tapas. This was Dvaipayana, born to Satyavati by the muni Parashara. He saw that the age of Kali, the last of the four ages, had arrived, and he divided the Veda into many branches; because he extended the Vedas in this way the muni was named Vyasa. He composed the various Purana collections and the great Mahabharata, and having made his many divisions of the Vedas he taught them to his disciples Sumantu, Jaimini, Paila, Vaishampayana, Asita and Devala, and to his son Shukadeva. Suta closed the telling where the sages’ doubt had begun. He had given them the whole cause of the holy birth of Vyasa, son of Satyavati, he said, and they should keep no doubt about it: from the lives of great persons only the virtues are to be taken. For some particular reason the muni Vyasa was born; for the same reason Satyavati came out of a fish’s belly, and joined with Parashara, and afterward married King Shantanu. Otherwise, why would the mind of the muni Parashara have turned to lust, and why would that great sage, who knew dharma, have done a deed of the kind that anaryas do, those who live outside the Arya way? “I have told you this wonderful birth, and the special cause that lay behind it; a man who hears it is surely freed from sin. The man devoted to shruti who hears this auspicious tale meets no bad end, and he is always happy.”
Source: Shrimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)