Narada had let fall to Vyasa, in passing, that once, walking in a forest with Vishnu, he had suddenly become a woman as if in jest, and that, deluded by maya, he had been a king’s wife and borne him many sons. Vyasa wanted the whole of it: how a jnani of that stature became a woman, how he became a man again, in whose house he bore those sons. Narada told him, in his own voice, what he had lived. The power of maya is hard to know even for the munis most accomplished in yoga; that unborn and unthinkable maya has deluded the whole moving and unmoving world, from Brahma down to a blade of grass. Once I set out from Satyaloka for the lovely Shvetadvipa, playing my great vina Mahati, rich in svara and tana, and singing the Gayatra saman in its seven notes, because I wished to see Hari of the wondrous deeds. There I saw the God of gods, discus and mace in his hands, the Kaustubha gem on his chest, dark as a cloud, four-armed, in yellow garments, crowned, sporting joyfully with Lakshmi. And Lakshmi, bright as fine gold, adorned in every ornament, proud of her beauty and her youth and dearest of all to Vasudeva, saw me coming and went from his side into the inner apartments. I watched the ocean-born goddess go in, and I asked the lord of the world, with some pride in my voice, “Why did Mother Lakshmi leave your side the moment she saw me? I am no rake and no rogue. I am an ascetic who has conquered the senses, and anger, and maya.”
Janardana smiled at those words of mine and answered me in a voice as sweet as the vina. “Narada, this is the rule: a woman does not stay in the presence of any man other than her husband. And maya is very hard to conquer. Yogis who have mastered the breath, knowers of Sankhya, fasting ascetics, men who have conquered the senses, the gods themselves: she defeats them all. What you said just now, that you have conquered maya, you must never say. Neither I nor Shiva nor Brahma can conquer that unborn one, nor can Sanaka and the other munis. Who are you, who is anyone, to conquer her? Whoever bears a body, divine or human or animal, how is he to conquer the unborn? How does a man made of the three gunas conquer maya, though he knows the Veda and yoga, knows everything, and holds his senses in check? Kala, Time, is a form of hers too; formless, it takes on form, and the wise, the foolish and the middling, every embodied being, stays within its power. Time unsettles even a man who knows dharma, and neither nature nor karma can read its working.”
The demand to see maya
When he had said this and fallen silent, doubt filled my mind, and I said to Jagannatha, the eternal Vasudeva, “Tell me what form that maya has, how much power she has, where she dwells and what holds her up. I want to see her, and to know her fully. Show her to me quickly; be gracious to me.” Vishnu said, “That maya is made of the three gunas. She is the support of all, all-knowing, acknowledged by all, unconquerable and many-formed, and she stands pervading the whole world. If you wish to see her, mount Garuda with me now, and we two will go elsewhere at once. There I will show you the maya that no one who has failed to conquer himself can conquer. Only this: when you have seen her, do not let your mind sink into dejection.”
With that the God of gods remembered Garuda, Vinata’s son, and Garuda stood before him. Janardana seated me behind him with great courtesy and mounted, and Garuda, swift as the wind, carried us out of Vaikuntha toward the forest Vishnu had in mind. From his back we watched great forests pass beneath us, lakes and rivers, towns and villages, settlements at the feet of mountains, cattle pens, ashramas of munis, step-wells, ponds and deep pools laid over with lotuses, herds of deer and boar, until we came near the city of Kanyakubja. There we saw a divine lake covered in lotuses of every shade, full of hamsas and karandava ducks and chakravakas, humming with bees, its water pure and sweet as the milk of the ocean of milk, and the Lord said to me, “Narada, look at this deep lake, loud with cranes, covered everywhere with lotuses, full of clear water. We will bathe here, and then go on to Kanyakubja, the best of cities.” He set me down from Garuda, and, laughing, took hold of my forefinger and led me to the bank, praising the lake again and again as we went. We rested a while in the dense shade of that bank, and he said, “Bathe first in this clear water. Afterward I will bathe in the holy lake myself. Its waters are as clear as the minds of good men, and fragrant with the pollen of lotuses.”
I laid down my vina and my deerskin and went down to the water gladly. I washed my feet and hands, tied up my shikha, took kusha grass in my hand, sipped water in the ritual way, and, pure, I stepped into the lake and bathed. And as I bathed in that lovely water, while Hari watched, I left my male form and became a woman beyond compare. Hari took up my vina and the black deerskin, mounted Garuda and went at once to his own abode, and I stood there a woman, adorned with beautiful ornaments. From that moment the forgetting of my former body rose in my mind. I forgot Jagannatha. I forgot Mahati. In that bewitching form I came out of the lake and looked at the clear water and the lotuses standing in it, and I wondered, again and again, what is this?
Saubhagyasundari
While I stood wondering in a woman’s shape, King Taladhvaja came suddenly into view, seated in his chariot amid throngs of elephants, horses and chariots, young, hung with ornaments, like Manmatha himself in a body. He saw a woman alone, adorned with divine ornaments, her face like the full moon, and he was greatly amazed. “Who are you? Whose daughter, a god’s, a man’s, a gandharva’s or a naga’s? Why are you here alone, so young and so beautiful? Tell me truly, are you married or a maiden? What are you looking for in this lake? Tell me your wish. Take me, a fine king, for your husband, and enjoy with me every pleasure your heart desires.” I thought it over before I answered. “King, I do not know for certain whose daughter I am, where my parents are, or who set me down beside this lake. What am I to do, where am I to go, how is any good to come to me? I have no one; that is all I can think. Daiva alone is supreme, and my own effort counts for nothing here. You know dharma. Do as you wish. I am in your power, for I have no protector here, no father, no mother, no kinsmen, and no place of my own.”
At that the king was struck with desire. He looked at me and ordered his servants: bring a conveyance for her, carried by four men, wrapped in silk, soft-cushioned, hung with nets of pearls, square, spacious, made of gold. The servants brought a divine palanquin draped in cloth, I climbed into it to please him, and the king, very glad, carried me to his palace, where on a good day, at an auspicious lagna, he married me by the full rite with the fire as witness. I became dearer to him than his life, and he named me Saubhagyasundari. He enjoyed with me every pleasure the Kamashastra teaches, and he was happy; he gave up the work of the kingdom and played day and night, so lost in the arts of love that he did not know time was passing. Through gardens and step-wells, palaces and hills, by fine tanks and in the forest he roamed, drunk with varuni wine, every task abandoned, wholly under my control. And I was attached to him in return, ruled by the rasa of play. I did not remember my former body, my manhood, my birth as a muni. He is my husband, I thought; I am the wife, the dear and chaste one among his wives, the chief queen, the knower of every pleasure; my life is fulfilled. Thinking so day and night, bound in love, greedy for pleasure, I stayed under his control, and the eternal Brahma-jnana and my learning in the dharmashastra were forgotten, because my mind was fixed on him.
As I sported there, lost in love-play, twelve years passed like a moment. Then I became pregnant. The king was overjoyed and had the rites of the womb performed properly; he pleased me in every way and asked again and again what my pregnancy made me crave, and, very happy, I said nothing, out of shyness. When the tenth month was complete a son was born to me on an auspicious day, under strong planets and a strong nakshatra, and a great birth festival filled the king’s palace. When the days of birth-impurity had passed and he saw his son, he rejoiced, and I became his very dear wife. Two years later I conceived again, and a second son was born with every good mark on him. Prompted by the Brahmins, the king named this son Sudhanva and the elder Viravarma. In this way I bore twelve sons who pleased the king, and in my delusion I busied myself lovingly with rearing them. In time eight more were born, very handsome, and my householder life, with all its means of happiness, was complete. The king married them off in due course, and with sons and daughters-in-law my family grew large; then grandsons came, full of play, and their childish games deepened my delusion. Sometimes happiness and wealth came; sometimes a son’s illness brought great sorrow and unsettled the mind; sometimes fierce quarrels among the sons or the daughters-in-law caused me anguish. Sunk in this delusion that sankalpa had built, made of happiness and sorrow, petty and terrible, my former knowledge forgotten and my learning in the shastras gone, I was dissolved in womanhood and wholly busy with the household. And ahankara rose in me, feeding the delusion: these sons of mine are mighty, these daughters-in-law come from good families, these boys play so eagerly in my house; of all the women in this world I am surely the blessed one. “I am Narada, and the Lord has deceived me with his maya”: this I never once thought in my mind. Deluded by maya I thought only, I am a king’s wife of good conduct, with many sons, a pativrata, blessed in this world.
An ocean of grief, and Puntirtha
Then a great king who ruled a distant land turned hostile to my husband. He fitted out an army of chariots and elephants, came to Kanyakubja and laid siege to the city. My sons and my grandsons went out through the gates and fought a fierce battle with him, and by the working of time every one of them was killed. King Taladhvaja came home from the field broken, and that is how I heard that my sons had died in the dreadful battle; the enemy, having killed my sons and grandsons, went away with his army. I went wailing to the battlefield. I saw my sons and my grandsons lying on the ground, and tormented by grief I sank in an ocean of sorrow and cried out, “My sons, where have you gone today? I am killed by this wicked daiva, so mighty, so sinful, that nothing can stand against it.”
At that moment Lord Madhusudana came there in the form of an old Brahmin, handsome and well dressed, a knower of the Veda, and he came up to me where I wailed on the battlefield and spoke. “Why do you grieve? This error has come upon you through delusion about a household of husband and sons. Who are you? Whose sons are these, and who are they? Think of the supreme goal of the self. Rise, stop weeping, and be at ease. To keep the rule of things, do now the bath and the offering of sesame for your sons who have gone to the other world. The dharmashastra lays it down that for dead kin the bath is done at a tirtha, never at home.” Instructed so, I rose, and with the king and my kinsmen around me, and Bhagavan in his Brahmin form walking before us, I went at once to a most holy tirtha.
By his grace he led me to the lake called Puntirtha, and there, still in the Brahmin’s form, Vishnu said to me, “Bathe in this holy lake and give up this useless grief. The time for your sons’ rites has come. Tens of millions of your sons have died, born to you birth after birth, and fathers, husbands, brothers and sisters with them. For which of them will you grieve? This is a delusion born in the mind, false, like a dream, and it gives pain to the embodied here.” Urged on by Vishnu, I went down to bathe in that tirtha that carries the name of the male, and by the mere bathing in it I became a man at once; and Hari, with my vina in his hand, stood on the bank in his own form. I came up out of the water and saw the lotus-eyed one standing there, and recognition rose in my mind. I am Narada, I thought; I came here with Hari; deluded by maya I became a woman. As I thought this, Hari called to me, “Narada, come here. What are you doing, standing in the water?” I remembered my dreadful womanhood, wondered by what cause I had become a man again, and stood amazed.
The secret of maya
The king, meanwhile, stared at me in amazement. Where has my wife gone, he thought, and where has this great muni come from? And he lamented, again and again. “Beloved, where have you gone, leaving me to grieve in separation? Without you my life, my house and my kingdom are useless. What am I to do? In this separation my life refuses to leave me, and by living on without you the dharma of love is ruined. Give me a loving answer. Where has the love gone that you had for me at our first meeting? Did you sink in the water? Did the fish and the turtles eat you? Or did Varuna seize you, through my ill luck? You are blessed, for you have gone with your sons; your love for them was true. And yet it is wrong that, bound by that love, you have gone to heaven and left me, your wretched husband, lamenting. Both are gone, my sons and you, who were dear to me as life, and still death does not come to me in my great sorrow. What am I to do, where am I to go? Rama is on the earth no longer; only Raghunandana knew the pain of separation from a wife. Cruel Brahma has done a perverse thing on this earth: he makes the deaths of a husband and wife who are of one mind come at different times. The munis did women a great kindness when they prescribed in the dharmashastras the burning with the husband.” Lord Hari checked the king’s lament with reasoned words. “Why do you grieve? Where has your beloved gone? Have you heard no shastra, kept no company with the wise? Who was she, who are you, what was the union, what the separation? In this flowing world men are like travelers riding in one boat. Go home; what use is your weeping? Union and separation among men are always in the hands of daiva. Your union with her has run its course; you have enjoyed that wide-eyed, slender-waisted beauty. You never saw her parents; you found her at a lake, and by a chance like the crow and the palm fruit, which falls as the crow alights, what came has gone the same way. Time cannot be overcome. Go home, enjoy the pleasures that time brings; as she came, so the fair one has gone; be as you were before, and do your work.”
“Your weeping will never bring her back; you grieve for nothing. Be joined to yoga now. Pleasure comes by the power of time and goes by the same power, and nothing on the fruitless road of becoming deserves grief. Happiness never comes alone, and neither does sorrow; like the pots on a water-wheel the two keep turning, one rising as the other goes down. Steady your mind and rule happily, or hand the kingdom to your heir and live in the forest from today. The human body is rare among creatures and perishes in a moment; having got it, a man must by every means pursue the good of the self. The taste of the tongue and of the loins exists in the births of animals; knowledge is found in the human body, and in no low birth beside. So give up the grief your wife has caused you, and go home. This is the maya of Bhagavati, by which the whole world is deluded.” The king bowed to Kamalapati, performed the bathing rite in full, and went back to his palace, and a wondrous dispassion came over him there. He gave the kingdom to his grandson, went away to the forest, and attained the knowledge of what is real.
When the king had gone, Adhokshaja stood laughing at me, again and again, and I said to Jagannatha, “You deceived me, and I have come to know the great power of maya. I remember everything I did in a woman’s body. Tell me this: when I entered the lake, why did my former knowledge vanish by the mere act of bathing? I took a woman’s body and gained that best of kings for a husband, and I was deluded exactly as Shachi, Puloma’s daughter, was on gaining Indra. My mind was the same, my chitta the same, the old body the same, the same subtle marks; how then was my memory destroyed? This destruction of knowledge is a great wonder to me; tell me its real cause. In a woman’s body I enjoyed many pleasures, drank liquor every day and ate food the rules forbid, and in all that time I did not know clearly that I was Narada; everything I know distinctly now, I did not know then.” Vishnu said, “See, Narada, this is the play of maya; by it the bodies of all creatures pass through many states. The embodied have waking, dream, deep sleep and turiya, the fourth state beyond the three, and the taking of another body is a state of the same kind; what doubt is there in that? A sleeping man knows nothing, hears nothing, says nothing; woken, he knows again everything he knew. Sleep moves the mind, and out of dreams many moods and turns of thought arise. In that state a man thinks, an elephant is coming to kill me and I cannot run, and there is nowhere to flee. In a dream a man sees his dead grandfather come to the house, and he believes he meets him, talks with him, eats with him. Woken, he knows that the pleasures and pains he saw were a dream, and he remembers them and tells people at length.”
“Just as no one inside a dream knows for certain that this is illusion, so the glory of maya is hard to know. Narada, neither I nor Shambhu nor the lotus-born Brahma knows the far limit of the gunas of maya. What duller man could know it fully? No one in this world has full knowledge of maya’s gunas. This whole world of the moving and the unmoving is made of the three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, and without them it could not stand for a moment. In me sattva is foremost, and rajas and tamas are in me as well; without the three I could never be lord of the world. So in your father Brahma rajas is foremost, with tamas and sattva joined to it, and he is free of neither; and in Shiva tamas is foremost, with rajas and sattva in him too. I have heard of no one who is free of the three gunas. So do not let this world that maya has made, essenceless, boundless, hardest of all things to grasp, infatuate you. You have just seen maya, and you have enjoyed many pleasures. Why then do you ask me about her wondrous doings?”
Source: Shrimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)