Mahabharata · Chapter 14 · Part 2 of 3 · The fowler of Mithila, the fires, the birth of Skanda, Draupadi and Satyabhama

About 135 minutes · in 5 sittings

A lesson in dharma at the butcher’s stall: the fowler answers for his trade, and explains that the soul does not die, it moves house

Kaushika had walked into Mithila expecting to find a saint and had been sent by a housewife to a man who sold meat. Markandeya, telling the story to Yudhishthira in the forest, does not soften the shock. The Brahmin stood in a butcher’s yard among the carcasses and looked at the man the whole city called virtuous, and the man looked back at him and answered the question that was in his face before he asked it. My deeds are cruel, the fowler said. There is no doubt of that. But destiny is all-powerful, Brahmin, and the consequence of what one did in a former life is hard to escape. This trade is the karmic residue of a sin committed in an earlier birth, and I spend my days working that sin off. The deity takes life; the executioner is only a secondary agent, and so are we all, agents of our own karma. Then he made an argument that a Brahmin could not easily wave away, because it was built out of the Brahmin’s own scriptures. The animals I kill and whose meat I sell also acquire merit, he said, because with their flesh gods and guests and servants are fed and the ancestors are propitiated. It is laid down that herbs and vegetables, deer, birds, and wild animals are the food of all creatures. King Shibi, son of Ushinara, that man of enormous forbearance, gave away his own flesh and reached a heaven that is hard to reach. In the old days two thousand animals were killed every day in the kitchen of King Rantideva, and two thousand cows besides, and Rantideva won a reputation no one has matched by distributing food with meat every day. For the four-monthly rites, animals are to be sacrificed daily. The sacred fire is fond of animal food, the saying has come down to us; at sacrifices, Brahmins kill animals as a matter of course, and those animals, purged of sin by the chanted hymns, go to heaven. If the fire had not been so fond of that food in ancient times, it could never have become anyone’s food at all. The sages settled the rule: whoever eats meat after first offering it duly and respectfully to the gods and the ancestors is not polluted by the act, and is not even considered to have eaten meat, just as a man who goes to his wife in her season is still counted a good Brahmin. That rule was laid down after weighing what is proper and what is not. King Saudasa, under a curse, used to prey on human beings; what is your opinion of that? I know this trade is the consequence of my own actions, and I make my living by it. To abandon one’s own occupation is accounted a sin, Brahmin, and to stick to one’s own occupation is beyond doubt a meritorious act. The karma of a former existence never lets a creature go, and the Creator did not lose sight of that rule when he fixed the consequences of every deed. A man born under the weight of evil karma must think constantly of how to atone for it and climb out of an evil doom, and there are many ways to do that. So I am charitable. I am truthful. I attend on my elders, I honor Brahmins, I keep clear of pride and idle talk.

Then the fowler turned the argument outward, and it became uncomfortable for everyone. Agriculture is called a praiseworthy occupation, he said, and yet everyone knows what the plow does: numberless creatures lurking in the soil are torn apart when the earth is dug, and countless other forms of life with them. Do you not think so? Rice seeds are living organisms, Brahmin. What is your opinion of that? Men hunt wild animals and eat them; they cut down trees and herbs, and there are numberless living things in trees, in fruits, in water. This whole creation is full of life feeding on life. Fish eat fish. One species preys on another, and there are species whose members eat each other. A man walking about kills countless creatures in the ground simply by treading on them, and even the wise and the enlightened destroy life in a dozen ways while they sleep or rest. What do you say to that? The earth and the air swarm with living things that men destroy without knowing it, out of pure ignorance. Is that not so? The commandment that no one should harm any creature was laid down long ago by men who did not know the facts. There is not one man on the face of this earth who is free of the sin of injuring living things. After full consideration the conclusion cannot be avoided: not a single man is free of it. Even the sage whose vow is to harm nothing does harm; his greater care only makes the harm less. He went further, into the moral weather of the world as it actually is. Men of noble birth and great gifts commit wicked acts in the face of everyone and are not ashamed of them. Good men who act well are not praised by other good men, and bad men who act badly are not praised by their own wicked companions; friends are not agreeable to friends, however fine their qualities, and foolish pedants run down the virtues of their own teachers. This reversal of the natural order is seen everywhere. What do you think, is that state of things righteous or not? Much can be said about the goodness or badness of what we do. But whoever gives himself to his own proper occupation surely earns a great name.

Markandeya said that the fowler, whose pity was famous, then spoke to the Brahmin again, and more carefully, because he had seen the man’s face change. The old say that the ways of righteousness are subtle, various, and endless. When life is at stake, and in the matter of marriage, it is proper to tell an untruth. Untruth sometimes leads to the triumph of truth, and truth dwindles into untruth; whatever does the most good to all creatures is what is called truth. That is how virtue is perverted, and you must watch its subtle ways. A man’s acts are good or bad and he reaps their fruit, no question. The ignorant man, fallen into a wretched state, curses the gods, not knowing that his state is the consequence of his own karma. The foolish, the scheming, and the fickle always get the reverse of what they hope for, and neither learning nor good conduct nor effort can save them. If the fruit of our exertion depended on nothing else, people would get what they wanted simply by striving for it. Look at the world. Able, intelligent, diligent people are baffled and never see the fruit of their labor, while those who spend their lives injuring others and cheating the world live happily. Some come into prosperity without lifting a finger; others, with the utmost effort, cannot get what is owed them. Misers worship the gods and practice severe austerities to obtain sons, and the sons, after ten months in the womb, turn out to be the disgrace of their line, while other sons, begotten under the very same signs, pass their lives comfortably in the heaps of grain and gold their ancestors piled up. The diseases men suffer are beyond doubt the result of their own karma; they writhe like small deer in the hands of hunters and are racked with mental pain, and as hunters cut off the flight of their game, skilled physicians with their stores of drugs cut off the progress of those diseases. You have seen it: men with every means of enjoyment kept from it by chronic complaints of the bowel, and strong men living in misery and scraping a livelihood with difficulty. Every man is helpless in this way, overpowered by misery and illusion, tossed again and again by the current of his own actions. If there were absolute freedom of action, no creature would die, no one would decay or wait for an evil doom, and everyone would get what he wanted. Everyone wants to outrun his neighbor in the race of life and strains to do it, and the result comes out otherwise. Many are born under the same star and the same auspices, and their deeds ripen very differently. No man, Brahmin, can be the dispenser of his own lot. The acts of a former existence are seen bearing fruit in this one. The tradition is immemorial: the soul is eternal, and the bodily frame of every creature is subject to destruction here below. So when life is extinguished only the body is destroyed; the spirit, wedded to its actions, travels elsewhere.

The Brahmin’s contempt had gone out of his voice by now. Best of those who understand karma and know how to teach it, he said, I want to know exactly how the soul is eternal. The fowler answered: the spirit does not die. There is only a change of tenement. Those who say foolishly that all creatures die are mistaken; the soul takes itself to another frame, and that change of dwelling is what people call its death. In the world of men no one reaps the consequences of another man’s karma. Whatever a man does, he reaps, because the consequence of an act once done can never be obviated. The virtuous become endowed with great virtues and the sinful become the doers of wicked deeds; men’s actions follow them, and under their influence they are born again. The Brahmin asked why the spirit takes birth at all, why its birth is sinful or virtuous, and how it comes to belong to a sinful or a virtuous line. This mystery belongs to the subject of procreation, the fowler said, but I will tell you briefly how the spirit is born again with its accumulated load of karma, the righteous into a virtuous birth and the wicked into a sinful one. By virtuous action it attains the state of the gods; by a mixture of good and evil, the human state; by sensuality and the like, birth among the lower animals; by sinful acts, the infernal regions. Afflicted by birth and old age, a man is fated to rot here below from the consequences of his own deeds. Through thousands of births and through the hells our spirits wander, chained by their own karma. Living beings become miserable in the next world because of what they did; from the reaction of that misery they take lower births, accumulate a new series of acts, and suffer again, like sick men eating unwholesome food, and though they are afflicted this way they think themselves happy and at ease, so their fetters never loosen and new karma keeps arising, and they turn in this world like a wheel. But if they cast off the fetters, purify themselves by their acts, practice austerity and religious meditation, then, best of Brahmins, by those many acts and that casting off and that purification they reach the blissful regions where misery is unknown. The sinful man addicted to vice never comes to the end of his course. Therefore we must strive to do what is virtuous and forbear from what is not. Whoever strives to do good with a grateful heart and no malice attains wealth, virtue, happiness, and heaven afterward. Those purified of sin, wise, forbearing, constant in righteousness, and self-restrained, enjoy unbroken felicity in this world and the next. A man must follow the standard of the good and imitate the righteous in his acts. There are virtuous men versed in the scriptures and learned in every branch of knowledge; a man’s proper duty is to follow his own calling, and where that is so, callings do not get confused and mixed. The wise man delights in virtue and lives by it, and with the wealth of righteousness he earns he waters the root of whatever plant he finds most virtue in. His mind is calmed; he is pleased with his friends here and finds happiness hereafter. The virtuous, good sir, acquire dominion over everything and the pleasures of beauty, flavor, sound, and touch as they desire; those are known as the rewards of virtue. But the man of enlightened vision is not satisfied with reaping the fruits of righteousness. With the light of the spiritual wisdom in him he grows indifferent to pain and pleasure, and the vice of the world does not touch him. Of his own free will he turns away from worldly pursuits, without forsaking virtue; seeing that everything worldly is passing, he tries to renounce everything and devises the means of salvation. So he leaves the world’s pursuits, shuns the ways of sin, becomes virtuous, and at last attains release. Spiritual wisdom is the first requisite for that; resignation and forbearance are its roots. By that means a man gets everything he desires. But by subduing the senses, and by truthfulness and forbearance, he attains the supreme refuge of Brahma. The Brahmin, most eminent in virtue and constant in your religious duties, said Kaushika, you speak of the senses. What are they? How may they be subdued, what is the good of subduing them, and how does a creature reap the fruit of that? I want to know the truth of it.

A key to reading this (who is talking, and the examples): The fowler is the Dharmavyadha of Mithila, a hunter and meat-seller, to whom the chaste housewife sent the Brahmin Kaushika at the end of the previous part; Markandeya is telling the whole exchange to Yudhishthira. Shibi (who gave his own flesh for a pigeon) and Rantideva have appeared earlier in this sequence; Saudasa is the king Kalmashapada, whose curse made him a man-eater, a story told in the Adi Parva. The “four-monthly rites” are the sacrifices of the rainy season. The fowler is not arguing that killing is good. He is arguing that no one is clean of it, that the plow and the sleeping sage kill too, and that what is left to a man is to keep to his own calling and burn off its debt by charity, truth, and service.

The gist: The man Kaushika came to despise turns his contempt around by answering for his trade from the Brahmin’s own scriptures, then widens the charge until it covers every living person: the farmer, the walker, the sage in his sleep. From there he goes to the subtlety of dharma, the helplessness of effort against karma, and the fact that death is only a change of house. The Brahmin, by the end, is asking to be taught.

The mind’s slope and its climb: five elements, seventeen qualities, a chariot with six horses, and the Shudra who can become a Brahmin

Hear, king Yudhishthira, said Markandeya, what the virtuous fowler answered when the Brahmin asked him about the senses. He began with a diagnosis, the way a physician begins, and the patient was every man alive. Men’s minds are bent at first on acquiring knowledge, the fowler said. Once they have it, they give themselves to their passions and desires, and for those they labor and undertake tasks of great size and indulge in the pleasures of beauty and flavor that they have wanted so long. Then follows fondness, then envy, then greed, and then the extinction of all spiritual light. When men are governed by greed and overcome by envy and fondness, their intellect stops taking its direction from righteousness and they practice the very mockery of virtue. Acting out virtue with hypocrisy, they are content to acquire wealth by dishonorable means, and with that wealth the intelligent principle in them falls in love with those evil ways and fills with the desire to sin. When their friends and wise men remonstrate with them, they have specious answers ready, neither sound nor convincing. Addicted to evil ways, they become guilty of a threefold sin, in thought, in word, and in act; all their good qualities die out; they cultivate the friendship of men like themselves, and they suffer for it in this world and the next. That is the sinful man. Now hear the virtuous one. He sees these evils by his spiritual insight, he can tell happiness from misery, he is full of respectful attention to men of virtue, and by practicing virtue his mind inclines to righteousness. Kaushika, who had come to this yard to sneer, said: you have given a true exposition of religion that no one else could give. Your spiritual power is great, and you seem to me like a great rishi.

The fowler did not take the compliment. He bowed instead, to the Brahmins as a class, and said that great Brahmins are honored with the same honors as the ancestors and fed before anyone else, and that the wise do what pleases them with all their heart; and having bowed, he began to teach the Brahmin the Brahmanic philosophy. This whole universe, unconquerable everywhere and abounding in the great elements, is Brahma, he said, and there is nothing higher than this. Earth, air, water, fire, and sky are the great elements, and form, odor, sound, touch, and taste are their characteristic properties; those properties in turn have properties, correlated to one another. Of the three qualities, characterized gradually each by each, first in order comes consciousness, which is called mind; the seventh is intelligence, and after that egoism; then the five senses, then the soul, then the moral qualities called sattva, rajas, and tamas. These seventeen are called the unknown or incomprehensible qualities. I have described all this; what else do you want to know? The Brahmin asked him to describe in full the properties of any one of the five elements, and the fowler gave him all five, because their properties overlap. Earth has five qualities, water four, fire three, and air and sky together three. Sound, touch, form, odor, and taste belong to earth; sound, touch, form, and taste to water; sound, touch, and form to fire; air has two, sound and touch; and sound alone is the property of sky. These fifteen properties, inherent in the five elements, exist in every substance the universe is made of, and they are not opposed to one another; they exist in proper combination. When the whole universe is thrown into confusion, every corporeal being, in the fullness of time, takes another body; it arises and perishes in due order, and the five elementary substances of which the moving and unmoving world is made are present throughout. Whatever the senses can perceive is called vyakta, the knowable; whatever lies beyond the senses and can only be inferred is avyakta. When a man engages in the discipline of self-examination, having subdued the senses that have their own proper play in the external conditions of sound and form and the rest, he beholds his own spirit pervading the universe and the universe reflected in himself. The man still wedded to his previous karma, however skilled in the highest wisdom, knows only his soul’s outward existence; but the man whose soul is never affected by the conditions around it is never subject to ills, because it is absorbed in the elementary spirit of Brahma. When a man has overcome the dominion of illusion, his manly virtues, made of the essence of spiritual wisdom, turn toward the enlightenment that illumines the intelligence of sentient beings; and such a man is called, by the omnipotent, intelligent Spirit, one without beginning and without end, self-existent, immutable, incorporeal, incomparable.

And then the fowler came back to the question Kaushika had actually asked, and answered it with the plainest image in the whole discourse. What you asked about, Brahmin, is the result of self-discipline, and self-discipline is acquired only by subduing the senses; there is no other way. Heaven and hell both depend on our senses. Subdued, they lead to heaven; indulged, to perdition. The subjugation of the senses is the highest means of attaining spiritual light. Our senses are the root of our spiritual advancement and the root of our degradation. By indulging them a man contracts vices, and by subduing them he attains salvation; the self-restrained man who gains mastery over the six senses inherent in our nature is never tainted with sin, and evil has no power over him. A man’s body has been compared to a chariot, his soul to the charioteer, and his senses to the horses. A skilled man drives without confusion, like a quiet charioteer with well-broken horses; that man is an excellent driver who knows how to hold, with patience, the reins of those wild horses, the six senses. When the senses become ungovernable, like horses bolting on the high road, we must patiently rein them in, for with patience we are sure to get the better of them. When a man’s mind is overpowered by any one of these senses running wild, he loses his reason and becomes like a ship tossed by storms on the open sea. Men are deceived by illusion in hoping to reap the fruits of those six things; those of spiritual insight study their effects and reap instead the fruit of clear perception.

The Brahmin listened, Markandeya said, with great attention, and asked once more, this time in the form of a proper request: describe to me truly, since I ask you duly, the respective virtues of the qualities called sattva, rajas, and tamas. Very well, said the fowler, I will tell you what you have asked, each separately; listen. Of the three, tamas is characterized by spiritual illusion; rajas incites men to action; sattva is of great grandeur, and for that reason is called the greatest. The man deep in spiritual ignorance, foolish, senseless, given to dreaming, idle, without energy, swayed by anger and haughtiness, is said to be under tamas. The excellent man who is agreeable in speech, thoughtful, free of envy, industrious in action from an eager wish to reap its fruits, and warm in temperament, is under rajas. And the man who is resolute, patient, not subject to anger, free of malice, not skillful in action because he has no selfish wish for its fruits, wise and forbearing, is under sattva. When a man endowed with sattva is drawn into worldliness he suffers; but when he understands worldliness fully he comes to hate it, and a feeling of indifference to worldly affairs begins to work in him. Then his pride decreases, uprightness comes forward in him, and his conflicting moral sentiments are reconciled, and after that self-restraint in any matter is no longer necessary. And a man, Brahmin, may be born in the Shudra caste, but if he possesses good qualities he may attain the state of a Vaishya, and likewise that of a Kshatriya, and if he is steadfast in rectitude he may even become a Brahmin. I have described these qualities to you. What else do you wish to learn?

A key to reading this (the counts and the picture): The fowler’s seventeen is this text’s own tally, run off in one breath: the five great elements, their five properties, mind, intelligence, egoism, the five senses, the soul, and the three gunas, without the tidy ordering of the later Sankhya lists, and it should not be forced to match them. The descending count of properties (earth five, water four, fire three, air two, sky one) is the old scheme in which each subtler element drops one quality. The body as chariot, the soul as charioteer, and the senses as horses is the same image the Katha Upanishad uses; here the fowler counts six horses, the mind being the sixth sense. The last sentence, that a Shudra may become a Brahmin by his qualities, comes from the mouth of a man whom the Brahmin standing before him had judged low by birth.

The gist: Asked about the senses, the fowler first maps the mind’s descent, from knowledge to desire to fondness, envy, greed, and darkness, and the opposite road of the virtuous man; Kaushika calls him a rishi. Then he lays out the Brahmanic philosophy: five elements and their overlapping properties, seventeen qualities, the knowable and the unknowable, and the senses as six wild horses that only patience can rein, with heaven and hell both hanging on the reins. He ends with the marks of the three gunas and the sentence that a Shudra of good qualities may rise to be a Brahmin.

Five winds inside the body, a drop of water on a lotus leaf, and the two gods in the inner room whom the fowler worships

The Brahmin had one question left, and it was the hardest kind: the kind that asks how the machine works. How, he wanted to know, does fire, which is the life-force, combine with the element of earth to become the body of a living creature, and how does the breath of life, sitting where it sits in the muscles and the nerves, drive that body into action? A man who sells meat in a market answered him, and Markandeya told Yudhishthira the answer in full, because it was the fowler’s credentials. The life-force, the fowler said, shows itself in the seat of consciousness, and from there it moves the body. The soul is present in both, the consciousness and the body, and acts through both. Past, present and future cannot be pried apart from the soul; it is the greatest thing a creature owns, it is of the very essence of the Supreme Spirit, and we worship it; that same soul is the principle that animates every creature, the eternal purusha; it is the great one, it is intelligence, it is the sense of I, and it is the inner seat of the properties of the elements. Seated in a body it is held up, outwardly and inwardly, by the subtle air called prana, and then each creature goes its own way by the action of a second air called samana. That air, turning into apana and resting on the head of the stomach, carries the body’s refuse down to the kidneys and the bowels. The same air lives in effort, in exertion and in strength, and in that state the students of the body call it udana; and when it shows itself at every joint of the frame, its name is vyana. The inner heat spreads through all the tissues, and, carried by these airs, it works the change in what we eat and in the tissues and the humors of the system. When prana and the other airs meet, a reaction follows, and the heat it makes is the fire of the belly that digests food. Prana and apana lie between samana and udana, and the heat of their meeting builds the body of seven substances, bone and flesh and the rest. The part of their seat that reaches down to the rectum is apana, and from it rise the vessels that feed the five airs. Prana, driven by the heat, strikes the far end of apana’s region and recoils onto the heat again. Above the navel is the region of undigested food; below it, the region of digestion; and prana and every other air of the body are seated in the navel. The vessels rising from the heart run up and down and slantwise, carrying the finest essence of food, worked on by the ten pranas. That, he said, is the road by which patient yogins, who have overcome every difficulty and look on all things with an equal eye, seat the soul in the brain and find the Supreme Spirit.

Then he lifted the whole account off the anatomy table and set it where it belonged. Prana and apana are in the body of every creature, he said; know that the spirit is embodied in a disguise of flesh, in the eleven conditions of the living frame, and that, though it is eternal, its natural state seems altered by what accompanies it, the way a fire purified in its pan is eternal and still has its course bent by its surroundings. Know that the divine thing which is kin to the body is related to the body the way a drop of water is related to the sleek surface of the lotus leaf it rolls on. Sattva, rajas and tamas are the attributes of all life; life is an attribute of the spirit; and the spirit in turn is an attribute of the Supreme Spirit. Inert, insensible matter is the seat of the living principle, which is active in itself and stirs activity in others; and the thing by which the seven worlds are moved to act is what men of high spiritual sight call the most high. In all these elements the eternal spirit does not show itself, and yet those learned in the science of the spirit perceive it, by the keenness and height of their perception. A person of pure mind, by purifying the heart, destroys the good and evil effects of his actions and reaches eternal bliss by the light of his own inner spirit. That state of peace and purity is like a man who, cheerful in mind, sleeps soundly, or like the brightness of a lamp trimmed by a skilled hand. Such a person, living on a spare diet, sees the Supreme Spirit reflected in his own, and by fixing his mind in the evening and in the small hours of the night he beholds the Supreme Spirit that has no attributes, shining in the light of his heart like a dazzling lamp, and so he wins release.

The fowler’s last teaching was a set of rules for living, delivered by a man whose living was the butcher’s block. Greed and anger must be subdued by every means, he said, because that act is the most sacred virtue a person can practice, and it is the means by which men cross to the far shore of this sea of affliction. A man must guard his righteousness from the consequences of anger, his virtues from pride, his learning from vanity, and his own spirit from illusion. Leniency is the best of virtues, forbearance the best of powers, knowledge of our spiritual nature the best of all knowledge, and truthfulness the best of all religious obligations. Telling the truth is good; knowing the truth may also be good; but what works the greatest good of all creatures is called the highest truth. He whose actions are done without any eye to reward, who has sacrificed everything to the demands of his renunciation, is the real sannyasin and the truly wise man. Since communion with Brahma cannot be taught, even by a spiritual preceptor, who only hands us a clue to the mystery, the renunciation of the material world is what is called yoga. We must do no harm to any creature and live in amity with all, and in this present life we must take revenge on none. Self-abnegation, peace of mind, the renunciation of hope, and equanimity: these are the ways by which spiritual enlightenment is always secured, and the knowledge of the self is the best of all knowledge. In this world and in the next, giving up every worldly desire and taking on the indifference in which all suffering is at rest, people should fulfill their religious duties with the help of their intelligence. The muni who wants moksha, which is very hard to attain, must be constant in austerities, forbearing and self-restrained, and must give up the fond longing that ties him to the things of this earth. These, he said, they call the attributes of the Supreme Spirit. The gunas we are conscious of become non-gunas in Him; He is bound by nothing, and is perceptible only through the expansion of our spiritual vision; as soon as the illusion of ignorance is dispelled, that supreme unalloyed bliss is attained. By giving up the objects of both pleasure and pain and renouncing the feelings that bind him to the things of the earth, a man may attain Brahma. Good Brahmin, the fowler said, I have now briefly told you all this as I have heard it. What else do you wish to know?

The Brahmin had nothing else to ask. Everything you have explained is rational, he said, and it seems to me there is nothing about the mysteries of religion that you do not know. And the fowler, who had spent the afternoon explaining, stopped explaining and offered proof instead. Good and great Brahmin, he said, you shall see with your own eyes all the virtue I lay claim to, and the reason I have attained this happy state. Rise, worshipful sir, and come quickly into this inner room. It is proper that you should see my father and my mother. Kaushika went in, and what he found behind the meat-seller’s shop was a fine house divided into four suites of rooms, a house the gods would have admired, furnished with seats and beds and sweet with excellent perfumes. In it, dressed in white, having finished their meal, sat two old people at their ease. The fowler saw them and went down flat, his head at their feet. Rise, they said, rise, man of piety; may righteousness shield you. We are well pleased with your devotion; may you have long life, knowledge, high intelligence, and the fulfillment of your desires. You are a good and dutiful son, for you look after us constantly and with good sense, and even among the gods you have no other divinity to worship. By constantly subduing yourself you have acquired the self-restraint of the Brahmins, and all your grandsires and ancestors are pleased with you for it and for your piety toward us. In thought, word and deed your attention to us never flags; it seems you have no other thought in your mind at present than how to please us. As Rama, the son of Jamadagni, labored to please his aged parents, so have you, son, labored for us, and more. Then the fowler introduced his guest, and the old couple gave the Brahmin the customary welcome, and he asked whether they and their children and servants were all well at home and whether they kept good health at their time of life. We are all well at home, they said, with all our servants. Did you, adorable sir, reach this place without difficulty? Yes, said the Brahmin, I did.

And then the fowler told him what the inner room meant. These two, worshipful sir, are the idols I worship; whatever is owed to the gods, I do for them. As men worship the thirty-three gods with Indra at their head, so I worship these two old people. As Brahmins labor to procure offerings for their gods, so I labor for these two idols of mine. My father and my mother, Brahmin, are my supreme gods, and I try to please them always with offerings of flowers, fruit and gems. To me they are the three sacred fires the learned speak of; to me they are as good as the sacrifices and the four Vedas. My five life-breaths, my wife and children and friends, are all for them, dedicated to their service, and with my wife and children I attend on them always. With my own hands I help them bathe and wash their feet; I give them food and say to them only what is agreeable, leaving out what is not. I consider it my highest duty to do what pleases them, even when it is not strictly justifiable, and I am always diligent in attending on them. Two parents, the sacred fire, the soul, and the spiritual preceptor: these five, good Brahmin, deserve the highest reverence from anyone who seeks prosperity. By serving them properly a man earns the merit of keeping the sacred fire lit forever. And that, he said, is the eternal and unvarying duty of every householder.

A key to reading this (the five airs and the lotus leaf): Prana, apana, samana, udana and vyana are the five airs by which Indian physiology explains breath, excretion, digestion, effort and the movement of the joints; the fowler also speaks of ten pranas, which count these five together with five subsidiary airs. The seven substances of the body are the seven dhatus of the medical tradition (chyle, blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow and seed), which he names only by bone and flesh. The drop of water rolling on a lotus leaf, the soul in the body and untouched by it, is an image the Gita and the Upanishads also use. Rama, son of Jamadagni, is Parashurama, whose obedience to his father Lomasha told earlier in this exile, in chapter 13a. The fowler’s teaching is spoken in Mithila, the city of Janaka, and it belongs to the same tradition of Kshatriya and lay teachers instructing Brahmins that Janaka’s court is famous for.

The gist: Asked how fire and earth become a living body, the fowler gives Kaushika the physiology of the five airs, the navel’s fire and the vessels from the heart, and then climbs above it: the soul sits in the body like a drop on a lotus leaf, the gunas belong to life and life to the spirit, and the road to the Supreme is the conquest of greed and anger, truth, gentleness, and renunciation. When the Brahmin says there is nothing about religion the fowler does not know, the fowler takes him into the inner room to show him where the knowledge comes from: two old people in white, whose feet he washes with his own hands and whom he calls his thirty-three gods.

“Go home; your parents have wept themselves blind”: the fowler’s former life, a rishi’s curse, and Kaushika’s farewell; then the fire that hid in the sea and the sage who became fire

Having shown the Brahmin the two people he called his highest gurus, the fowler turned the lesson on the pupil. Mark the power of this virtue of mine, he said, by which my inner sight reaches so far. That is why the self-restrained, truthful lady who is devoted to her husband told you: go to Mithila, there lives a fowler who will explain the mysteries of religion to you. Kaushika agreed that the lady had been right about him in every particular. Then the fowler said what he had been waiting all afternoon to say. I have explained all this to you as a favor, he said. Now, good sir, listen, for I am going to tell you what is good for you. Good Brahmin of irreproachable character, you have wronged your father and your mother. You left home without their permission to learn the Vedas. You did not act properly in that, for your ascetic, aged parents have gone entirely blind with grief at losing you. Go home and console them. May this virtue never leave you; you are high-minded, of ascetic merit, always devoted to your religion, and all of it has become useless to you. Return without delay to console your parents. Have some regard for my words and do not act otherwise; I am telling you what is good for you, Brahmin rishi. Go home this very day. The Brahmin did not argue. What you say is undoubtedly true, he answered; may you prosper, pious man; I am much pleased with you. And the fowler, softening, told him that a man who practiced the ancient and eternal virtues so assiduously, virtues hard even for the pure-minded to attain, seemed to him a divine being, and that he should hurry back to his father’s and mother’s side and be diligent in honoring them, for the fowler knew of no virtue higher than that.

Kaushika’s reply was the speech of a man who has just seen the edge of a pit he was walking toward. By a singular piece of good luck I arrived here, he said, and by the same luck I have been joined with you. It is very hard to find among us a man who can expound the mysteries of religion so well; there is scarcely one in thousands who is versed in its science. I am glad, great man, to have won your friendship; may you prosper. I was on the point of falling into hell, and you pulled me out. It was destined to be so, for you came into my path unlooked for. As the fallen king Yayati was saved by his virtuous grandsons, his daughter’s sons, so have I now been saved by you. As you advise, I shall honor my father and my mother, for a man with an impure heart could never expound the mysteries of sin and righteousness as you have. And then the question that had been under everything since he walked into the butcher’s yard. It is very hard, he said, for a person born in the Shudra class to learn the mysteries of the eternal religion, and so I do not consider you a Shudra. There must be some mystery here. You must have come to a Shudra’s estate through the fruit of your own past karma. Magnanimous man, I long to know the truth of it. Tell me, with attention, and as far as you are inclined to.

The fowler told him. Brahmins deserve all respect from me, he began, so listen, sinless one, to the story of a former existence of mine. Son of an excellent Brahmin, I was once a Brahmin myself, well read in the Vedas, an accomplished student of the Vedangas, and through my own fault I was brought down to my present state. A certain king, an expert in the science of archery, was my friend, and from his company I too became a skilled bowman. One day that king went hunting with his ministers and his best warriors and killed a great many deer near a hermitage. I too, good Brahmin, loosed a terrible arrow. And a rishi was struck by that arrow with its bent head. He fell to the ground and cried out, loudly: I have harmed no one; what sinful man has done this? I went up to him, taking him for a deer, and found him pierced through the body by my arrow. My heart was sick at what I had done. I said to that rishi of severe austerity, as he lay crying on the ground: I did this unknowingly, rishi; be pleased to pardon this whole transgression. But the rishi, whipping himself into a fury, said to me: you shall be born a cruel fowler in the Shudra class. Cursed like that, the fowler went on, I tried to appease him. Pardon me, muni, I said; I did this wicked deed without knowing; it is fitting that you forgive it all; calm yourself, worshipful sir. And the rishi answered: the curse I have spoken can never be made false; that is certain. But out of kindness to you I will do you a favor. Though born in the Shudra class you shall remain a pious man, and you shall certainly honor your parents, and by honoring them you shall attain great spiritual perfection; you shall remember the events of your past life and go to heaven; and when this curse is spent you shall become a Brahmin again. That, best of men, is how I was cursed of old by that rishi of severe power, and how I appeased him. Then I drew the arrow from his body and carried him into the hermitage, and he did not lose his life; he recovered. I have told you what happened to me of old, and how I shall go to heaven hereafter.

The Brahmin answered him the way the fowler had answered him an hour before, with doctrine, and this time the doctrine went the other way. Man of great intelligence, he said, all men are subject like this to happiness and misery; you should not grieve over it. Following the customs of your present race you have pursued these harsh ways, but you are always devoted to virtue and versed in the ways and mysteries of the world, and since these are the duties of your profession, the stain of evil karma will not stick to you. After dwelling here a little while you will become a Brahmin again; and even now I consider you a Brahmin, without any doubt. For the Brahmin who is vain and haughty, addicted to vices and wedded to evil and degrading practices, is like a Shudra, and a Shudra who is always adorned with righteousness, self-restraint and truthfulness I consider a Brahmin. A man becomes a Brahmin by his character; by his own evil karma a man comes to an evil and terrible doom. I believe that sin in you has now died out. You must not grieve, for men like you, so virtuous and so learned in the ways of the world, have no cause for grief. The fowler accepted the kindness and corrected the premise, gently, as a teacher does. Bodily afflictions, he said, are to be cured with medicines, and mental ones with spiritual wisdom; that is the power of knowledge, and knowing it, the wise should not behave like boys. Men of low intelligence are overpowered with grief when something disagreeable happens or when something good and much desired fails to happen; and indeed every creature is subject to this, not one creature or one class only. Those who recognize the evil mend their ways quickly, and those who see it at the very start cure it altogether; whoever grieves over it only makes himself miserable. The wise, whom knowledge has made happy and content and who take happiness and misery alike, are the truly happy. The wise are always content and the foolish always discontented; there is no end to discontent, and contentment is the highest happiness. Those who have reached the perfect way do not grieve, for they are always aware of the final destiny of all creatures. One must not give way to discontent, which is a virulent poison; it kills men of undeveloped intelligence the way an enraged snake kills a child. There is no manliness in a man whose energies desert him and who is overwhelmed with confusion when the moment for vigor arrives. Our actions are surely followed by their consequences. A man who simply surrenders to passive indifference accomplishes no good; instead of murmuring he must look for the way to free himself from spiritual misery, and having found the means of salvation he must free himself from sensuality. A man who has reached a high state of spiritual knowledge is always conscious of the great instability of all matter, and keeping the final doom of everything in view, he never grieves. I too, learned man, do not grieve. I stay here, in this life, biding my time. That is why, best of men, I am not perplexed. Kaushika bowed to that. You are wise and high in spiritual knowledge, he said, and vast is your intelligence; you who are versed in holy writ are content with your spiritual wisdom, and I have no fault to find in you. Farewell, best of pious men; may you prosper, may righteousness shield you, and may you be diligent in the practice of virtue. Be it so, said the fowler. The Brahmin walked around him, the way one walks around a shrine, and went home, and there he was duly assiduous in attending to his old parents. I have now told you in full, Markandeya said to Yudhishthira, the history you asked me to recite, full of moral instruction: the virtue of a wife’s devotion to her husband, and the virtue of a son’s devotion to his parents. And the king, who had meant to be consoled for an afternoon, said that the time had gone by like a moment, and that he was not yet sated.

So he asked for more, and the question he chose turned the story from the earth toward the fire. Why, he asked Markandeya, did the fire-god hide himself in the waters in olden times, and why did Angiras of great splendor, officiating as the fire-god, carry the oblations during that eclipse? There is only one fire, and yet by the nature of its work it is seen to divide itself into many. I long to be enlightened on all of this, worshipful sir: how the Kumara was born, how he came to be called the son of Agni, and how he was begotten by Rudra, or by Ganga and the Krittikas. Noble scion of Bhrigu’s race, I want to learn all this accurately, as it happened; I am filled with curiosity. Markandeya took the questions in order. In this connection the learned cite an old story, he said, of how the carrier of oblations, in a fit of rage, sought the waters of the sea to perform a penance, and how the adorable Angiras, transforming himself into the fire-god, destroyed darkness and distressed the world with his scorching rays. In olden times, long-armed hero, the great Angiras performed a wonderful penance in his hermitage; he came to excel even the fire-god in splendor, and in that state he lit up the whole universe. At that time the fire-god was also performing a penance, and he was sorely distressed by the sage’s effulgence, greatly depressed, and at a loss what to do. Then he thought: Brahma has created another fire-god for this universe; because I have been practicing austerities, my services as the presiding deity of fire have been dispensed with. And he began to consider how he might reestablish himself as the god of fire. He saw the great muni giving heat to the whole universe like fire, and he approached him slowly, in fear. But Angiras said to him: reestablish yourself quickly as the fire that animates the universe; you are well known in the three stable worlds, and you were the first created by Brahma to dispel darkness; take your proper place quickly, destroyer of darkness. My reputation is injured now in this world, Agni answered. You have become the fire-god; people will know you, and not me, as fire. I have given up the godhood of fire; be the primeval fire yourself, and I will officiate as the second, the Prajapatya fire. Angiras refused the exchange. Be the fire-god and the destroyer of darkness, he said, and attend to your sacred duty of clearing people’s way to heaven; and do you, lord, quickly make me your first child. The fire-god did as he was asked, Markandeya said, and Angiras had a son named Brihaspati. Knowing him to be the first son of Angiras by Agni, the gods came and asked about the mystery, and Angiras, asked by the gods, enlightened them, and the gods accepted his explanation. And in this connection, Markandeya went on, I shall describe to you the many kinds of fire of great effulgence which are known in the Brahmins by their various uses.

A key to reading this (Yayati’s grandsons, and two questions about fire): The fallen Yayati whom Kaushika mentions was raised back to heaven by his daughter’s sons, Ashtaka, Pratardana, Vasumanas and Shibi, who gave him their merit; that story is told inside the Galava episode of the Udyoga Parva. Yudhishthira’s question at the end braids two separate stories together: the fire-god’s flight into the waters and Angiras’s turn as fire, which Markandeya begins to answer here, and the birth of the Kumara, Skanda or Kartikeya, which follows. The Prajapatya fire that Agni offers to become is the second fire, the one of Prajapati’s work; Brihaspati is here the first son of Angiras, begotten through Agni, which is why he is called Angirasa in the stories that follow. The Brahmins in which the fires are named are the ritual books attached to the Vedas.

The gist: The fowler names Kaushika’s real sin, committed in his zeal for the Vedas: he left home without leave, and his parents have wept themselves blind. Then he opens his own past, a Brahmin’s life ended by a hunting arrow that struck a rishi; the rishi’s curse made him a Shudra fowler, and the rishi’s mercy gave him piety, memory and the promise of return. Kaushika declares that a man is a Brahmin by character, the fowler gives his last lesson, that the body’s diseases are cured by medicine and the mind’s by knowledge, and the Brahmin goes home to serve his parents. Yudhishthira’s next question turns the telling toward fire: outshone by the penance of Angiras, Agni hides in the sea, Angiras becomes fire, and from their bargain Angiras’s first son, Brihaspati, is born.

The lineage of the fires: Angiras’s seven daughters, the six sons and one daughter of Brihaspati, and a five-colored blaze born of penance

When the fowler’s story was finished, Markandeya let it settle for a moment, and then turned to a subject that sounds at first like a change of key and is, in the forest, the most practical knowledge a Brahmin can carry. Every oblation Yudhishthira’s priests pour is poured into a fire, and every fire has a name, a parentage, and a portfolio. Ornament of Kuru’s race, the sage said, hear now of the family without which no sacrifice reaches its god. Brahma’s third son was Angiras, and his wife was called Shubha; hear the children they had. Their son was Brihaspati, a king among counselors, famous, large-hearted, strong in body, deep in learning and in wit. Then the daughters, seven of them, each named for what she was. Bhanumati came first, the loveliest of all the children. Raga came second, named because every creature loved her. Sinivali came third, so slender that she was visible one moment and gone the next, which is why people likened her to Rudra’s daughter. Archishmati was the fourth, named for her radiance. Havishmati the fifth, who accepts the havis, the oblation itself. Mahishmati the sixth, the pious one. And the seventh, keen-witted king, is Mahamati, who is present at every sacrifice of great splendor. There is one more, the daughter people call peerless and undivided, at whose name they murmur “kuhu, kuhu” in wonder: she is Kuhu, the new moon’s own night.

Brihaspati married Tara, who belonged to the world of the moon, and by her he had six sons who carried the energy of fire, and one daughter. Markandeya gave the sons in the order in which the sacrificial calendar meets them. The fire honored with clarified butter at the full-moon rites and the others like them is Brihaspati’s son Shanyu, of great ascetic merit; at the four-monthly rites and at the horse sacrifice the animals are offered first to him, and this powerful fire is known by its many flames. Shanyu’s wife was Satya, matchless in beauty, sprung from Dharma for the sake of truth. Their son was the blazing fire, and they had three daughters of great religious merit. Their first son is Bharadvaja, the fire that receives the first oblations at a sacrifice; the second is Bharata, to whom butter is offered with the long wooden ladle called the sruk at every full-moon rite. Besides these three, of whom Bharata is the senior, Shanyu had another son named Bharata and a daughter, Bharati. That Bharata fire is the son of Prajapati Bharata Agni, and because he is so greatly honored he is also called the great. Bharadvaja’s wife is Vira, and she bore Vira, whom the Brahmins worship with the same hymns and the same butter offerings they use for Soma; he is joined with Soma in the secondary butter oblation, and his other names are Rathaprabhu, Rathadhvana and Kumbhareta. By his wife Sarayu he begot a son named Siddhi; he wrapped the sun in his own splendor, and because he presides over the fire sacrifice his name is always in the hymns that praise fire. Then the fire Nishchyavana, who praises only the earth and never loses reputation, splendor or wealth; his son is the sinless fire Satya, of pure flame, untouched by fault, unstained by sin, the regulator of time, whose other name is Nishkriti because he accomplishes the nishkriti, the release, of every creature that cries out here, and who grants good fortune when he is properly worshiped. Satya’s son is Svana, the begetter of every disease, who makes people cry aloud with suffering and moves through the intelligence of the whole universe. Brihaspati’s third son is the fire the spiritually wise call Vishvajit. The fourth is the heat inside every creature by which food is digested, known through all the worlds as Vishvabhuk: self-restrained, of great merit, a lifelong celibate, worshiped by Brahmins at the cooked-food sacrifices; the holy river Gomati was his wife, and through her all religious-minded men perform their rites. The fifth is the terrible water-drinking fire of the sea, Vadava, the Brahmic fire that moves upward and is therefore called Urdhvabhag, seated in the vital breath called prana. The sixth is the great Svishtakrit, through whom offerings become svishta, excellently offered, and to whom the udagdhara oblation is always made.

And the daughter. When all creatures are claimed, Markandeya said, the fire called Manyauti fills with fury; that inexorable, terrible, quick-tempered fire is Brihaspati’s daughter, known as Svaha, and she is present in all matter. By the working of the three qualities, sattva, rajas and tamas, Svaha had three sons. From the first she bore a son whose beauty no one in heaven could equal, and for that the gods surnamed him the Kama fire, the fire of desire. From the second she bore Amogha, the invincible fire, destroyer of enemies in battle, who curbs his anger because he is sure of success, carries a bow, rides a chariot, and wears garlands of flowers. From the third she bore the great Uktha, the means of liberation, praised by the three Ukthas, the source of the great word, and therefore called Samashvasa, the means of rest.

It was this Uktha who performed a penance lasting many years, wanting a pious son whose fame would equal Brahma’s. When the invocation was made with the vyahriti hymns and with the help of five sacred fires, Kashyapa, Vasishtha, Prana, the son of Prana, Chyavana the son of Angiras, and Suvarchaka, there rose a very bright energy full of the animating principle, in five different colors. Its head was the color of blazing fire, its arms bright as the sun, its skin and eyes golden, and its feet, Bharata, were black; those five colors were given to it by the five men through their great penance, so this celestial being is described as belonging to five men, and he is the progenitor of five tribes. Having performed a penance of ten thousand years, that being of great ascetic merit produced the terrible fire of the ancestors to begin the work of creation, and from his head and his mouth he made Brihat and Rathantara, day and night, the two who quickly steal life away. From his navel he created Shiva, from his might Indra, from his soul wind and fire, and from his two arms came the accents Udatta and Anudatta; he produced the mind, the five senses and other creatures, and then the five sons of the ancestors. Of these Pranidhi was the son of Brihadratha, Brihadratha the son of Kashyapa, Bhanu the godson of Chyavana, Saurabha the son of Suvarchaka, and Anudatta the son of Prana; these twenty-five beings are reputed to have been created by him. Tapa, as this being is also called, created fifteen other gods who obstruct sacrifices: Subhima, Bhima, Atibhima, Bhimabala, Abala; Sumitra, Mitravan, Mitasina, Mitravardhana, Mitradharman; Surapravira, Vira, Suveka, Suravarchas and Surahantri, three classes of five. Located here in this world, they destroy the sacrifices of the gods in heaven, frustrate their objects and spoil their oblations of butter, purely to spite the sacred fires that carry offerings up to the gods. Careful priests set their portions outside the altar, for they cannot come to the place where the sacred fire is set; they carry their own votaries’ offerings on wings, and when appeased with hymns they leave the rites alone. Another son of Tapa, Brihaduktha, belongs to the earth and is worshiped here by pious men who keep the Agnihotra; and of the son called Rathantara the officiating priests say that the oblation offered in his name is offered to Mitravinda. So the celebrated Tapa, Markandeya said, was very happy in his sons.

A key to reading this (why a list): This is a genealogy of fire, and its logic is liturgical. In Vedic sacrifice each offering goes to a particular fire at a particular rite: the full-moon and new-moon rites, the four-monthly rites, the horse sacrifice; the sruk is the long wooden ladle for pouring butter, and the udagdhara is a specific oblation. Svaha is also the word spoken with every offering, which is why the daughter who “is present in all matter” bears that name. Uktha and Tapa are two names for the same being, and the five-colored blaze he raises is the door into the next story, the birth of Skanda. Several names in this stretch come to us through variant readings in Ganguli’s text; they are kept as he prints them.

The gist: After the fowler, Markandeya opens the family tree of fire: Angiras and Shubha have Brihaspati and seven daughters; Brihaspati and Tara have six fire-sons (Shanyu, Bharadvaja, Vishvajit, Vishvabhuk, Vadava, Svishtakrit) and the daughter Svaha, whose three qualities give birth to Kama, Amogha and Uktha; and Uktha’s penance raises a five-colored blaze that creates day and night, Shiva, Indra, wind and fire, the accents, the senses, the five sons of the ancestors, and fifteen gods whose only work is to spoil sacrifices.

The fire that hid in the sea and the seer Atharvan who found it; the rivers that are the mothers of fires; and a woman’s cry on Mount Manasa that Indra heard

Markandeya went on down the branches, because a priest who forgets a fire forgets where an offering goes. The fire called Bharata was bound by severe rules of asceticism; Pushtimati is his other name, since when he is satisfied he gives pushti, growth, to all creatures, and for that he is called Bharata, the cherisher. The fire named Shiva is devoted to the worship of Shakti, and because he always relieves the sufferings of the afflicted he is called Shiva, the giver of good. When Tapa had won his great ascetic wealth, an intelligent son named Puranda was born to inherit it; another, Ushma, is the fire seen in the vapor of all things; a third, Manu, served as a Prajapati. The Brahmins learned in the Vedas then tell of the exploits of the fire Shambhu, and after him of the bright Avasathya fire of great radiance. So Tapa created the five Urjaskara fires, all bright as gold, who share the Soma at sacrifices. The great sun, when he is tired after his day’s labor, is known as the Prashanta fire; he created the terrible Asuras and many other creatures of the earth. Angiras also created the Prajapati Bhanu, son of Tapa, whom the Brahmins call Brihadbhanu as well. Bhanu married Supraja and Brihadbhanu the daughter of the sun, and they had six sons: Balada, who gives strength to the weak; Manjuman, who looks terrible even when all the elements are at rest; Angiras or Dhritiman, to whom butter is offered at the new-moon and full-moon rites and who is known in this world as Vishnu; Agrayana, to whom, with Indra, the first-fruits offering is made; Agraha, the source of the daily oblations of the four-monthly rites; and Stuva. Nisha was another wife of that Manu who is called Bhanu, and she bore a daughter, the two Agnishomas, and five other fire-gods: Vaishvanara, who receives the first oblations together with the lord of the clouds; Vishvapati, the lord of all the worlds, Manu’s second son; the daughter Svishtakrit, so called because offerings to her bring great merit, and who, though she was Hiranyakashipu’s daughter, became his wife through her evil deeds, and is nonetheless one of the Prajapatis; Sannihita, the fire seated in the vital breaths of every creature, animating their bodies, the cause of our perceiving sound and form; and the divine spirit whose path is marked with black and white stains, the supporter of fire, sinless yet the accomplisher of desired action, whom the wise count a great rishi: the fire Kapila, founder of the Sankhya system of yoga. And the fire through whom the elemental spirits receive the offerings called agra at every particular rite in this world is called Agrani.

Then there are the fires made for repairs. These other bright fires, famous in the world, were created to set the Agnihotra right when it goes wrong, and Markandeya listed the faults with their remedies the way a physician lists fevers. If the wind makes the fires overlap one another, the correction is the Ashtakapala rite in honor of the fire Shuchi. If the southern fire touches the other two, the Ashtakapala rite for the fire Viti. If the fires in the place called Nivesha touch the fire Devagni, the Ashtakapala rite for Shuchi again. If a woman in her monthly course touches the perpetual fire, the Ashtakapala rite for the fire Dasyuman. If, while the Agnihotra is being performed, someone speaks of a creature’s death, or animals die, the Ashtakapala rite for the fire Suraman. A Brahmin who is too ill to pour his oblations for three nights makes amends with the Ashtakapala rite for the northern fire. One who has performed the new-moon and full-moon rites corrects with the Ashtakapala rite for the fire Patikrit. And if the fire of a lying-in room touches the perpetual sacred fire, the Ashtakapala rite for the fire Agniman.

And then the oldest story of them all, the one about fire refusing to be fire. Mudita, the favorite wife of the fire Svaha, lived in water, and Svaha, the regent of earth and sky, begot in her a most sacred fire called Advanta; the learned Brahmins hold that this fire is the ruler and inner soul of all creatures, worshipful, resplendent, lord of all the great elements here. Under the name Grihapati, the householder, that fire is worshiped at every sacrifice and carries every oblation made in this world. That great son of Svaha, the great Adbhuta fire, is the soul of the waters, the prince and regent of the sky, the lord of everything great; his son the Bharata fire consumes the bodies of the dead. His first rite is known as Niyata at the Agnishtoma sacrifice, and here is the trouble: that powerful first fire is always going missing on the gods, because when he sees Niyata approaching he hides in the sea for fear of contamination. Once the gods searched every direction and could not find him. The fire saw Atharvan and said to him: valiant one, carry the oblations for the gods; I have not the strength. Take on the state of the red-eyed fire and do me this favor. Having advised Atharvan this way, the fire went off somewhere else. But the fish gave away his hiding place, and in his anger he cursed them: you shall be the food of all creatures in many ways. Then he said to Atharvan what he had said before, and though the gods entreated him he would not agree to go on carrying their offerings. He became insensible, gave up the ghost on the spot, and leaving his material body entered the bowels of the earth. Touching the earth he created the different metals: from his pus came force and scent, from his bones the deodar pine, from his phlegm glass, from his bile the emerald, from his liver black iron, and with these three substances, wood, stone and iron, the whole world has been embellished. From his nails came the clouds, from his veins corals, and many other metals from the rest of his body. Having left his body this way he stayed absorbed in meditation, until the penance of Bhrigu and Angiras roused him; gratified by their penance, the powerful fire blazed up intensely, and then caught sight of the rishi Atharvan and fled again to his refuge in the water. At that extinction of fire the whole world was frightened and ran to Atharvan for protection, and the gods and the others began to worship him. Atharvan, with all those beings watching in expectation, rummaged the whole sea, found the fire, and himself began the work of creation. So in olden times fire was destroyed and called back to life by the adorable Atharvan; but now he carries the oblations of all creatures without fail, and living in the sea and traveling through many countries he produced the various fires the Vedas name.

The fires have mothers, and the mothers are rivers. The Indus, Markandeya said, and the five rivers of the Punjab, the Sone, the Devika, the Sarasvati, the Ganga, the Shatakumbha, the Sarayu, the Gandaki, the Charmanvati, the Mahi, the Medha, the Medhatithi, the three rivers Tamravati, the Vetravati and the Kaushiki; the Tamasa, the Narmada, the Godavari, the Vena, the Upavena, the Bhima, the Vadava, the Bharati, the Suprayoga, the Kaveri, the Murmura, the Tungavena, the Krishnavena and the Kapila: these rivers, Bharata, are said to be the mothers of the fires. The Adbhuta fire had a wife named Priya, and Vibhu was the eldest of his sons by her. There are as many kinds of Soma sacrifice as there are fires named before. All this race of fires, first-born of the spirit of Brahma, sprang also from the race of Atri, who conceived these sons in his own mind out of a wish to extend the creation, so that by that act the fires came out of his own Brahmic frame. I have told you the origin of these fires, the sage said; they are great, resplendent, unrivaled in power, destroyers of darkness. Know that their powers are the same as those of the Adbhuta fire as the Vedas relate them, for all these fires are one and the same. This adorable being, the first-born fire, is to be thought of as one, though like the Jyotishtoma sacrifice he came out of Angiras’s body in many forms. So much for the great race of Agni, who, when they are duly worshiped with the hymns, carry the oblations of every creature up to the gods.

Sinless scion of Kuru’s race, Markandeya said, I have described the branches of the race of Agni; listen now to the birth of the intelligent Kartikeya, the wonderful, famous and fiery son of the Adbhuta fire, begotten on the wives of the Brahmarshis. In ancient times the gods and the Asuras were busy destroying each other, and the terrible Asuras kept winning. Purandara, watching his armies slaughtered and anxious to find a leader for the celestial host, thought to himself: I must find a mighty person who, seeing the ranks of the gods shattered by the Danavas, can reorganize them with vigor. He went to the Manasa mountains and was deep in thought there when he heard a woman’s heart-rending cry: may someone come quickly and rescue me, and either point me to a husband or be my husband himself. Do not be afraid, lady, Purandara said, and looking up he saw, some way off, the Asura Keshin, crowned, mace in hand, standing like a hill of metal and holding the woman by the hand. Why are you bent on insulting this lady? Vasava asked him. Know that I am the god who wields the thunderbolt. Do her no violence. Keshin answered: leave her alone, Shakra; I want her. Do you imagine, slayer of Paka, that you will get home with your life? And he hurled his mace to kill Indra. Vasava cut it apart in mid-flight with the thunderbolt. Furious, Keshin flung a huge mass of rock; the god of a hundred sacrifices split it with the thunderbolt, it fell to the ground, and the falling rock wounded Keshin himself. Badly hurt, he fled and left the woman behind. When the Asura had gone, Indra said to her: who are you, lady of the lovely face, whose wife are you, and what has brought you here?

A key to reading this (the fire who hid): Fire hiding in the waters and the gods searching for him is one of the oldest stories the Vedas know, and the Mahabharata tells it here in its own way: the fire abandons his body, which turns into the metals and stones of the earth (deodar from his bones, emerald from his bile, iron from his liver), and the seer Atharvan drags the sea until he finds him. The Ashtakapala is a cake baked on eight potsherds, the standard offering of atonement when the Agnihotra has been disturbed. The river list keeps the names as Ganguli prints them. The woman crying out on Mount Manasa is identified in the next scene; her story is the beginning of the birth of Skanda.

The gist: Markandeya completes the roll of fires: Bharata and Shiva, Tapa’s sons, Bhanu’s six, Manu’s children, Sannihita, Kapila and Agrani, and the fires that repair a spoiled Agnihotra. Then the story of Adbhuta, son of Svaha and Mudita: the fire that hides in the sea, curses the fish that betray him, abandons his body to become the metals of the earth, and is found again by Atharvan. The rivers are the mothers of the fires, and all fires are one fire. Then the telling turns to Kartikeya: Indra, hunting for a general to lead the beaten gods, hears a woman cry out on Mount Manasa and drives off the Asura Keshin.

Devasena’s boon, a fire in love with the wives of the seven rishis, and Svaha in six shapes: the six-faced child born from a golden lake on the White Mountain

The Asura was gone and the mountain was quiet again, and Indra asked the woman standing in front of him who she was. I am a daughter of Prajapati, she said, and my name is Devasena. My sister Daityasena was carried off by Keshin before this. The two of us used to come to these Manasa mountains with our maids to enjoy ourselves, by our father’s leave, and that great Asura came courting us every day. Daityasena listened to him, conqueror of Paka. I did not. So he took her away, and now you have rescued me with your might. Lord of the celestials, choose me an invincible husband. Indra looked at her with new attention. You are a cousin of mine, he said, since your mother is a sister of my mother Dakshayani. Let me hear you describe your own prowess. Hero with long arms, she answered, I am Avala, which is to say the weak one, and my husband must be powerful; by the potency of my father’s boon he will be respected by gods and Asuras alike. Indra pressed her further. Blameless creature, what sort of power do you wish your husband to possess? And she gave him a specification that no one in the three worlds could meet: a manly and famous and powerful being devoted to Brahma, able to conquer all the celestials, the Asuras, the Yakshas, the Kinnaras, the Uragas, the Rakshasas and the evil-minded Daityas, and able to subdue all the worlds with Indra himself beside him.

There is no husband for this lady answering to her own description. That was the thought that came to Indra, and it grieved him, because he had climbed the Manasa mountains looking for a commander for a beaten army and had found a woman asking for a husband larger than any god he could name. Then he looked up, and the sky gave him his answer. The sun was rising over the Udaya hill and the great Soma was gliding into the sun. It was the day of the new moon, and at the Raudra moment the god of a hundred sacrifices watched gods and Asuras fighting on that hill of sunrise. The morning twilight was tinged with red clouds. The quarter that belongs to Varuna had gone blood red. He saw Agni carrying up the oblations that Bhrigu and Angiras and the rest had offered with their hymns, and saw him pass into the disc of the sun. He saw the twenty four Parvas adorning the sun, and the terrible Soma standing in the sun in the middle of all this. Watching that union of sun and moon and the fearful conjunction they made, Shakra reasoned it out. This terrific meeting of sun and moon foretells a fearful battle tomorrow. The Sindhu is running with a current of fresh blood and the jackals with fiery faces are crying at the sun. This great conjunction is full of energy, and the union of Soma with the sun and with Agni is a wonderful thing. If Soma begets a son now, that son may be the husband of this lady. Agni stands in the same surroundings, and he too is a god. If those two beget a son between them, that son may be her husband. With that in his mind the illustrious celestial took Devasena with him to the regions of Brahma, saluted the Grandsire, and asked him to fix a renowned warrior as this lady’s husband. Slayer of Asuras, Brahma replied, it shall be as you have intended. The issue of that union will be mighty and powerful accordingly. That powerful being will be the husband of this lady and the joint leader of your forces with you.

Indra and Devasena bowed to him and went from there to where the great Brahmins lived, the powerful celestial rishis, Vasishtha and the others. The gods, with Indra at their head and the Soma beverage in their minds, came to the sacrifices of those rishis to receive their shares of the offerings. The ceremonies were performed with a bright blazing fire, oblations were poured to the celestials, and the Adbhuta fire, the carrier of oblations, was invited with mantras. He came out of the solar disc and arrived there in silence, keeping his speech restrained, and he entered the sacrificial fire that had been kindled and into which the rishis were making their various offerings with recitations of hymns, and he took those offerings and carried them up to the dwellers in heaven. And on his way back down he saw the wives of those high-souled rishis asleep at their ease on their beds. Their complexions were beautiful as an altar of gold, spotless as moonbeams, like fiery flames, like blazing stars. He looked at them with eager eyes and his mind was shaken and he was smitten. Then he held his heart still and told himself that this agitation was improper. The wives of these great Brahmins are chaste and faithful and beyond the reach of other men’s desires, he said. I am filled with a wish to possess them. I cannot lawfully cast my eyes on them, and I can never touch them while they are not filled with desire themselves. So I shall content myself with looking at them every day, by becoming their Garhapatya fire, the fire of their households. He made himself that household fire and was gratified by the sight of those gold-complexioned women and by touching them with his flames, and he lived there a long while, having given them his heart, filled with an intense love for them. And having failed in every effort to win the hearts of those Brahmin ladies, with his own heart tortured by love, he went away to a forest with the settled purpose of destroying himself. Now Svaha, the daughter of Daksha, had given her love to him a little while before. That excellent lady had been trying for a long time to catch him in a weak moment, and in all that time she had found no weakness in the calm and collected fire god. But now the god had taken himself into a forest, genuinely tortured by the pangs of love, and she saw her opening. I am distressed with love myself, she thought. I shall put on the guise of the wives of the seven rishis, and in that disguise I shall go to the fire god who is smitten with their charms. He will be gratified, and my own desire will be satisfied too.

Of the seven rishis, Angiras had a wife named Shiva, a beautiful woman of great virtues and unspotted character, and it was Shiva’s shape that Svaha put on first. She came into Agni’s presence and said: Agni, I am tortured with love for you. Think it fit to woo me. If you will not grant my request, know that I shall destroy myself. I am Shiva, the wife of Angiras. I have come here on the advice of the wives of the other rishis, who sent me after due deliberation. Agni was cautious. How did you know that I was tortured with love, he asked, and how could the others know it, the beloved wives of the seven rishis you speak of? You are always a favorite with us, Svaha answered, and we are afraid of you. They read your mind by the well-known signs and sent me to your presence. I have come here to gratify my desire. Be quick, Agni, and compass the object of your own; my sisters-in-law are waiting for me and I must return soon. Then Agni, filled with great joy and delight, married Svaha in the guise of Shiva, and that lady, dallying with him joyfully, caught his seed and held it in her hands. And then she thought about what the sight of her would do. Anyone who saw her in this disguise in the forest would cast an undeserved slur on the conduct of those Brahmin women in connection with Agni. To prevent that, she took the shape of a winged creature and in that shape left the forest more easily, and she flew to the White Mountain, a place thick with clumps of heath and other plants and trees, guarded by strange seven-headed serpents with poison in their very looks, crowded with Rakshasas and with male and female Pishachas, with terrible spirits and with birds and animals of every kind. That excellent lady climbed quickly to a peak of those mountains and threw the seed into a golden lake. Then she took the forms of the wives of the high-souled seven rishis one after another and went on dallying with Agni; only Arundhati she could not become, because of that lady’s great ascetic merit and her devotion to her husband Vasishtha. Six times on the first lunar day Svaha threw the seed of Agni into that lake.

What grew there was a male child endowed with great power, and because the rishis regarded that seed as cast off, the child born from it came to be called Skanda. He had six faces, twelve ears, twelve eyes, twelve hands, twelve feet, one neck and one stomach. He first took a form on the second lunar day. He grew to the size of a little child on the third. The limbs of Guha were fully developed on the fourth, and surrounded by masses of red cloud shot with lightning he shone like the sun coming up inside a red dawn. Then he seized the terrific and immense bow that the destroyer of the Asura Tripura had used for the destruction of the enemies of the gods, and he let out a roar so terrible that the three worlds with everything mobile and immobile in them were struck with awe. The great Nagas Chitra and Airavata, hearing a sound like the rumbling of massed clouds, were shaken with fear, and seeing them unsteady that lad of sun-like radiance caught them up, one in each hand. With a dart in another hand, and a stout red-crested cock held fast in another, the long-armed son of Agni began to play about, making a terrible noise. With two more hands he held an excellent conch shell and blew it, to the terror of even the most powerful creatures. Striking the air with two of his hands, romping on the hilltop, the mighty Mahasena of unrivaled prowess looked as though he were about to devour the three worlds, and shone like the sun god at the moment of his climbing into the sky. He sat on the top of that hill with his many faces turned toward the different quarters, observing everything, and roared again. Creatures of every order fell flat with fear at those roars and came to him for protection, frightened and troubled in mind, and all those people of various orders who sought his protection then are known as his powerful Brahmin followers. He rose from his seat, quieted their fears, drew his bow and sent his arrows into the White Mountain. Those arrows split the hill Krauncha, the son of Himavat, from side to side, and that is the reason swans and vultures migrate now to the Sumeru mountains. Krauncha fell, sorely wounded, groaning horribly, and the other hills screamed to see him fall. The mighty being heard the groans of the afflicted and was not moved by them at all; he lifted his mace and yelled his war whoop, and hurled that mace of great luster and split one of the peaks of the White Mountain in two. The White Mountain was afraid of him after that, and it detached itself from the earth and fled, and the other mountains fled with it. The earth was greatly afflicted, stripped of her ornaments on every side, and in her distress she went over to Skanda and shone again with all her might; and the mountains bowed to Skanda and came back and set themselves into the earth. And all creatures celebrated the worship of Skanda on the fifth day of the lunar month.

A key to reading this (names and a lunar calendar): Shiva, the wife of Angiras, is a woman of that name and has nothing to do with the god Shiva; the epic uses the name for both. Skanda means the one poured out or cast off, from the seed the rishis disowned, and Guha means the one born in a secret place; Mahasena, the great army, is the name he earns from what he is about to become. Avala, the name Devasena gives herself, means the strengthless one, which is why the husband she asks for must be the strongest thing alive. The Raudra moment is the harsh hour of the new moon when sun and moon stand together, and the twenty four Parvas are the divisions of the lunar year read on the sun’s disc. The Garhapatya is the householder’s fire, the one that is never allowed to go out, kept burning in the home; becoming it is how Agni contrives to stay in the presence of the women he cannot touch.

The gist: Devasena asks Indra for a husband no one can defeat, and Indra, who has no such husband to give her, reads the new-moon conjunction of sun, moon and fire and reasons that a son born of Agni under it could be the man. Brahma confirms it. At the sacrifice of the seven rishis, the fire who carries the oblations falls in love with their sleeping wives, refuses to touch them, becomes their household fire so that he can at least look at them, and finally goes into a forest to die of it. Svaha, who has loved him for years, takes the shape of one rishi’s wife after another and comes to him six times, carrying the seed away each time in the form of a bird and casting it into a golden lake on the White Mountain. Only Arundhati’s shape is beyond her. The child that grows there has six faces and twelve arms, is full grown in four days, lifts the bow that burned Tripura, splits the Krauncha hill and makes the mountains and the earth take shelter with him.

Six wives put away, the first man to bow to the child, milk from the Mothers who came to kill him, and the thunderbolt that gave Skanda a brother

When that powerful, high-souled and mighty being was born, the world went wrong in every direction at once. The natures of male and female were reversed, and of heat and cold, and of the other pairs of contraries. The planets and the cardinal points and the firmament blazed with light and the earth rumbled underfoot. Even the rishis, who want nothing except the welfare of the world, watched these terrific prodigies breaking out on all sides and set about restoring the calm of the universe with anxious hearts. And in the Chitraratha forest the talk began. This miserable condition of ours has been brought about by Agni cohabiting with the six wives of the seven rishis, the forest dwellers said. Others, who had seen a goddess take the shape of a bird and fly out of the woods, said that the evil had been brought about by a bird. No one ever imagined that Svaha was the author of the mischief, and Svaha, when she heard that the newborn child was hers, went to Skanda and revealed to him by degrees that she was his mother. But the seven rishis heard only that a son of great power had been born, and the whole forest was saying whose son he was. They divorced their six wives, every one of them except the adorable Arundhati, because the dwellers in that place protested that those six women had been instrumental in bringing the child into the world. Svaha said it to the seven rishis again and again, king, in as many words as she could find. You ascetics, this child is mine. Your wives are not his mother.

One man in the world already knew the whole of it. The great Muni Vishvamitra, after the sacrifices of the seven rishis were finished, had followed the god of fire unseen while that god was being tortured by lust, and had watched every turn of what happened next. So he knew everything exactly as it had occurred, and he was the first person in creation to go to Mahasena and seek his protection. He offered divine prayers to the child and performed for him all thirteen of the auspicious rites that belong to childhood, the natal ceremony and the rest, with his own hands. For the good of the world he proclaimed the virtues of the six-faced Skanda, and he performed the ceremonies in honor of the cock, of the goddess Shakti, and of the first followers of Skanda, and for all this he became a great favorite of the celestial youth. Then he went to the seven rishis and told them the truth about the transformations of Svaha, and told them plainly that their wives were perfectly innocent. The seven rishis heard the testimony of a sage who had seen it with his own eyes, and abandoned their wives anyway, unconditionally.

The gods, meanwhile, had done the arithmetic of the newborn’s strength and found the answer intolerable. Shakra, they said to Vasava, kill Skanda without delay, because his prowess cannot be borne. If you do not exterminate him he will conquer the three worlds and us with them, and overpower you, and make himself the mighty lord of the celestials. Indra was perplexed and answered them honestly. This child is endowed with great prowess, he said. Putting out his might in battle he could destroy the Creator of the Universe himself. I do not venture to do away with him. There is no manliness in you, the gods said, that you talk this way. Let the great Mothers of the Universe go to Skanda today. They can master any degree of energy at will. Let them kill this child. It shall be so, the Mothers said, and they went. Then they stood in front of him and saw what he was, and their resolution failed them. They considered that he was invincible, and they sought his protection instead of his life. Mighty being, they said, become our adopted son. We are full of affection for you and we want to give you suck. Look, the milk is oozing from our breasts. Hearing that, the mighty Mahasena found that he wanted to be suckled, and he received them with due respect and granted what they asked. And then that mightiest of mighty creatures saw his father Agni coming toward him, and the god who is the doer of all good was honored by his son and stayed there beside Mahasena with the Mothers to look after him. The one among the Mothers who was born of Anger, with a spike in her hand, kept watch over Skanda the way a mother guards her own offspring. The irascible red-colored daughter of the Sea, who lives on blood, held Mahasena to her breast and nursed him. And Agni turned himself into a trader with a goat’s mouth, and with a train of children behind him he came up the mountain to his son and began to please him with toys.

That was the court that Indra found when he came to fight it. The planets with their satellites, the rishis, the Mothers, Agni, numerous other blazing courtiers and many dwellers of heaven of terrible aspect were all in attendance on Mahasena. The illustrious sovereign of the gods wanted the victory and privately doubted he would get it, and he mounted his elephant Airavata and advanced on Skanda with the other gods behind him and the thunderbolt in his hand. The celestial army that came with him was of great splendor, sounding its shrill war cry, furnished with standards of every kind, its warriors cased in various armor, carrying numerous bows and riding on various animals. Mahasena watched the gloriously decked Shakra come on in his best clothes with the settled purpose of killing him, and went out to meet that chief of the celestials. The mighty Vasava, praised by the Tridashas and the great rishis, shouted aloud to encourage his warriors and marched fast, and at length he reached the dwelling of Kartikeya. There he shouted again with the other gods, and Guha answered the shout with a war cry like the roaring of the sea. At the sound of it the celestial army heaved like a troubled ocean, and then it stopped where it stood, stunned, fixed to the spot. And the son of Pavaka, seeing the gods come close with the object of killing him, filled with wrath and let a rising flame of fire out of his mouth. The flames went through the celestial forces struggling on the ground below and burned their heads, their bodies, their arms and the animals they rode, so that all at once they looked like stars knocked out of their proper spheres. Afflicted like that, the gods renounced their allegiance to the thunderbolt and sought the protection of Pavaka’s son, and the peace of the field was restored that way.

Forsaken by his own army, Shakra hurled the thunderbolt at Skanda. It struck him on the right side and passed clean through the body of that high-souled being. And out of the place where it pierced him there rose another being, a youth with a club in his hand, wearing a celestial amulet, and because he was born from the piercing of the thunderbolt he was named Vishakha. Indra, who had just watched his last weapon manufacture a second opponent who looked like the destroying fire, was frightened out of his wits and joined the palms of his hands together and asked Skanda for protection. And that excellent being told him with a motion of his arm to put away all his fear. Then the gods were carried away with joy, and their hands struck up of their own accord.

A key to reading this (the Mothers, and a name): Vishakha means the branched one, the one split off, from the wound the thunderbolt opened in Skanda’s side; he stays beside Skanda from here on and is counted among his forms. The Mothers, the matrikas, are the fierce feminine powers sent as assassins and kept as nurses, and the epic names two of them by their origins here: one born of Anger who stands guard with a spike, and the red daughter of the Sea who drinks blood and gives milk. The thirteen rites of childhood are the samskaras, the naming, the first outing, the first feeding and the rest, which Vishvamitra performs here because nobody else has the standing or the nerve to claim the child. Pavaka, the purifier, and Vasava and Shakra and Purandara are the by-names of Agni and Indra; Tridashas is a term for the gods.

The gist: The birth throws nature into reverse, and the forest blames the six wives of the seven rishis, who are put away by their husbands even after Vishvamitra, who followed Agni and saw everything, testifies that they are innocent and Svaha says openly that the child is hers. Vishvamitra is the first to bow to the boy and performs his childhood rites. The gods, afraid of what has been born, send the Mothers of the Universe to kill him, and the Mothers take one look, ask to adopt and nurse him instead, and stay. Agni comes as a goat-faced trader with toys. Then Indra attacks with the whole celestial army, is burned off the field by the fire from Skanda’s mouth, is deserted by his own gods, and throws the thunderbolt, which passes through Skanda’s right side and produces a second armed youth, Vishakha. Indra puts his palms together and asks the six-day-old child for protection.

The kumaras who carry off children, the throne of Indra that a six-day-old child refused, the anointing of a commander, four reasons for the name son of Rudra, and the marriage to Devasena

Now hear about the followers of Skanda, Markandeya said, who are terrible and strange to look at. When Skanda was struck with the thunderbolt a crowd of male children came into being with him, those terrific creatures who spirit away little children, the born and the unborn alike, and with them a crowd of female children of great strength. All of them took Vishakha for their father. That adorable and dexterous Bhadrashakha, who has a face like a goat, stood through the whole of that battle surrounded by these sons and daughters of his, guarding them carefully in the presence of the great Mothers, and this is the reason the people of this earth call Skanda the father of the kumaras, the father of little children. People who want sons born to them worship the powerful Rudra in the form of the fire god and Uma in the form of Svaha in their own homes, and by that means they are blessed with sons. Then the daughters begotten by the fire called Tapa came to Skanda, and he asked them what he could do for them. Do us this favor, those girls said: by your blessing, may we become the good and respected mothers of all the world. Be it so, he answered, and that liberal-minded being said it again and again over them: you shall be divided into Shiva and Ashiva, into those who are kind and those who are not. So the Mothers went away, having first established that they were Skanda’s mothers and he their son. Kaki, Halima, Malini, Vrinhila, Arya, Palala and Vaimitra: these were the seven mothers of Shishu. By the blessing of Skanda they had a son named Shishu, powerful, red-eyed, terrific and very turbulent, who is reputed to be the eighth hero born of the mothers of Skanda, and who is also counted the ninth when the being with the goat’s face is included among them. Know that the sixth face of Skanda is the face of a goat. That face is set in the middle of the six, king, and is the one the mother looks at always; and the head with which Bhadrashakha created the divine energy is reputed to be the best of all his heads. All these virtuous and wonderful things happened on the fifth day of the bright half of the lunar month, and on the sixth a fierce and terrific battle was fought in that place.

Skanda wore a golden amulet and a golden wreath, a crest and a crown of gold. His eyes were the color of gold and his teeth were sharp, and he was dressed in a red garment and looked handsome and comely, endowed with every good characteristic, the favorite of the three worlds, a giver of boons to those who asked for them, brave, young, with bright earrings in his ears. While he was resting, the goddess of fortune took a body of her own, lotus-like, and came and gave him her allegiance, and possessed of that good fortune the famous and delicate-looking creature appeared to everyone like the moon at the full. High-minded Brahmins worshiped him. And then the Maharshis put a proposal to him. You who were born of the golden egg, they said, may you prosper and may you become an instrument of good to the universe. Best of the gods, although you were born only six nights ago, the whole world has already owned allegiance to you within that time, and you have allayed its fears. Become the Indra of the three worlds, therefore, and take away the cause of their apprehension. Skanda answered the offer with a question, the way a boy asks what a job involves. You gentlemen of great ascetic wealth, tell me what Indra does with all the three worlds, and how that sovereign of the celestials protects the hosts of the gods without a break. The rishis told him. Indra is the giver of strength and power and children and happiness to all creatures, and when he is propitiated that lord of the celestials bestows on everyone the objects of their desire. He destroys the wicked and fulfills the desires of the righteous. That destroyer of Vala assigns to every creature its own duties. He officiates for the sun and the moon in places where there is no sun or moon, and when the occasion requires it he acts for fire, for air, for earth and for water. These are the duties of Indra, and his capacities are immense. You too are mighty; therefore, great hero, become our Indra.

Shakra himself put his weight behind it. Mighty being, he said, make us happy by becoming our lord. You are worthy of the honor, excellent being, and we shall anoint you this very day. And Skanda refused the three worlds as simply as he had asked what they were. Go on ruling the three worlds yourself, he said, with self-possession, and with your heart set on conquest. I shall remain your humble servant. I do not covet your sovereignty. Indra answered him with a piece of political reasoning that no one else in that assembly had the honesty to say out loud. Your prowess is unrivaled, hero, and people have been struck with wonder at it. I have been stripped of my own prowess and defeated by you. If I were to go on acting as Indra now, I should not command the respect of all creatures; they would busy themselves in setting the two of us against each other, and they would become partisans of one or the other, and when they had formed themselves into two distinct factions there would be war between us as before. And in that war you would defeat me without difficulty and become the lord of all the worlds in any case. Skanda closed the matter. You, Shakra, are my sovereign and the sovereign of the three worlds; may you prosper. Tell me if there is any command of yours I can obey. At your bidding, powerful being, Indra said, I shall continue to act as Indra. And if you have said this deliberately and in earnest, then hear how you can gratify your wish to serve me: take the leadership of the celestial forces. Anoint me as leader, Skanda said, for the destruction of the Danavas, for the good of the celestials, and for the well-being of cows and Brahmins.

So he was anointed by Indra and by all the other gods and honored by the Maharshis, and at that moment he looked grand. The golden umbrella held over his head looked like a halo of blazing fire. The famous conqueror of Tripura fastened round his neck with his own hands the celestial wreath of gold that Vishvakarma had made; that worshipful god with the bull on his banner had come there earlier with Parvati, and he honored the boy with a joyous heart. Here Markandeya paused over a name, because Skanda is called the son of Rudra and was begotten by Agni, and there are four reasons for it. The Brahmins call the fire god Rudra, and from that fact Skanda is called the son of Rudra. The White Mountain where this birth took place was formed from the discharges of Rudra, and it was on that same White Mountain that the fire god’s indulgence with the Krittikas occurred. All the dwellers in heaven saw Rudra heap honors upon the excellent Guha, and for that reason too he was reputed to be the son of Rudra. And this child came into being through the action of Rudra entering into the constitution of the fire god, so that Rudra, the fire god, Svaha and the six wives were together instrumental in the birth of the great god Skanda, which is the last and best reason of them all.

The son of the fire god was clad in a pair of clean red cloths and looked resplendent in them, like the sun coming out from behind a mass of red cloud. The red cock that Agni had given him became his ensign, and perched on the top of his chariot it looked like the image of the all-destroying fire. The presiding deity of the power that brings victory, the power that directs the exertions of all creatures and is their glory and their prop and their refuge, went in front of him, and a mysterious charm entered into his constitution, the charm that shows what it can do on a battlefield. Beauty, strength, piety, power, might, truthfulness, rectitude, devotion to the Brahmins, freedom from illusion and perplexity, protection of his followers, destruction of his foes and care of all creatures: these, lord of men, are the inborn virtues of Skanda. Anointed by all the gods he looked pleased and composed, and dressed in his best he looked beautiful as the full moon. The well-loved chanting of Vedic hymns rose on all sides, with the music of the celestial band and the songs of the gods and the Gandharvas. Surrounded by the well-dressed Apsaras and by many gay and happy-looking Pishachas and by hosts of gods, the anointed son of Pavaka enjoyed himself in all his grandeur, and to the dwellers in heaven the anointed Mahasena looked like the sun rising after darkness has been put out. The celestial forces took him for their leader and closed round him on every side in thousands, and that adorable being, followed now by all creatures, took up their command and was praised and honored by them and encouraged them in return.

Then the performer of a thousand sacrifices remembered Devasena, whom he had rescued on the Manasa mountains, and considering that this being was the husband the Self-existent had promised her, he had her brought there and dressed in the best apparel. Foremost of the gods, the vanquisher of Vala said, this lady was destined to be your bride by the Self-existent Being before you were even born. Take her beautiful lotus-like right hand with the invocation of the marital hymns. And Skanda married her duly, and Brihaspati, who is learned in hymns, performed the prayers and the oblations that were needed. She who is called Shashthi, Lakshmi, Asa, Sukhaprada, Sinivali, Kuhu, Saivritti and Aparajita is known among men as Devasena, the wife of Skanda. When Skanda had been bound to Devasena in indissoluble matrimony, the goddess of prosperity took a body of her own and began to serve him diligently. And because Skanda won his celebrity on the fifth lunar day, that day is called Shripanchami, the auspicious fifth; and because he attained the object of his life on the sixth, that lunar day is held to be of great moment.

A key to reading this (children, mothers and dates): The kumaras born from the thunderbolt wound are the grahas, the seizers, the powers that were held to carry off infants and unborn children; the next scene gives the full rule for pacifying them. Their being called Skanda’s children is why he is worshiped in Indian households by parents who want a child and by parents who want a sick child spared. Shiva and Ashiva mean the benign and the malign, the two classes the Mothers divide into. Bhadrashakha, the auspicious branch, is Skanda’s goat-faced sixth head, and Shishu, the infant, is the son the seven mothers get from him. Shripanchami and Shashthi, the fifth and sixth lunar days, are still Skanda’s days, and Devasena is still called Shashthi, which is why Skanda is Shashthipriya, the one who loves the sixth. The epic gives four reasons in one breath for calling a son of Agni the son of Rudra, and does not choose between them.

The gist: The boys and girls born from the thunderbolt wound become the powers that steal children, and take Vishakha for their father; the fire Tapa’s daughters ask to be the mothers of the world and are divided into the kind and the unkind; the seven mothers of Shishu are named. Then the great rishis, six days after his birth, offer the child the throne of Indra. He asks what the work involves, listens, and refuses it, and Indra, who admits that he has already been beaten and that two lords would mean civil war in heaven, asks him instead to take command of the armies of heaven. Skanda accepts on his own terms, for the destruction of the Danavas and the good of cows and Brahmins. Shiva garlands him with a wreath made by Vishvakarma, four reasons are given for calling him the son of Rudra, and Indra gives him Devasena, the woman he rescued on the mountain, as Brahma had promised.

Six disowned wives adopted and set in the sky as the Krittikas, the law of the powers that afflict children, the march of Mahadeva, a head sixteen yojanas wide, and the names of Kartikeya

When those six women, the wives of the seven rishis, heard that fortune had smiled on Mahasena and that he had been made the leader of the celestial forces, they came to his camp. They were virtuous women of high religious merit and their husbands had disowned them, and they lost no time in going to the commander of the armies of heaven and putting their case to him. We have been cast out by our godlike husbands, son, without any cause at all. Some people spread a rumor that we gave birth to you. Believing that story, our husbands grew indignant and banished us from our sacred places. It is for you to save us from this infamy now. We wish to adopt you as our son, so that eternal bliss may be secured to us by that favor, mighty being; repay us in that way what you owe us. Ladies of faultless character, Skanda answered, become my mothers accordingly. I am your son, and you shall have everything you desire. Then Shakra had something to say, and when Skanda asked him what it was and told him to speak it out, Vasava explained an awkward vacancy in the sky. The lady Abhijit, the younger sister of Rohini, has gone into the woods to perform austerities out of jealousy over her seniority, and I am at a loss to find a substitute for the fallen star. May good luck attend you; consult Brahma about filling the place of that great asterism. Dhanishtha and the other asterisms had been created by Brahma, and Rohini had been serving as one of them, so their number was already full. On Shakra’s advice, Krittika was given a place in the heavens, and that star, presided over by Agni, shines there as though it had seven heads. Vinata also came to Skanda. You are as a son to me, she said, and entitled to offer me the funeral cakes. I want to live with you always, my son. Be it so, and all honor to you, Skanda said. Guide me with a mother’s affection, and you shall live with me always, honored by your daughter-in-law.

Then the great Mothers came and opened a harder negotiation. The learned have described us as the mothers of all creatures, they said, and we wish to be your mothers; honor us. You are all as mothers to me, Skanda said, and I am your son; tell me what I can do to please you. And out came what they had come for. The ladies Brahmi and Maheshvari and the rest were appointed the mothers of the world in ages gone by. We wish them dispossessed of that dignity, great god, and ourselves installed in their place, so that the world worships us instead of them. And restore to us those of our children of whom they deprived us on your account. You shall not recover what has once been given away, Skanda answered, though I can give you other offspring if you like. Their counterproposal was worse. We wish to live with you and take different shapes and eat up the progeny of those mothers and of their guardians. Grant us that favor. I can grant you children, Skanda said, though the thing you have just spoken about at such length is a very painful one. May you prosper. All honor to you, ladies; be pleased to give those children your protecting care instead. We shall protect them as you wish, Skanda, the Mothers said; may you prosper. Yet we desire to live with you always. And he found them the middle way that has governed the nurseries of the world ever since. Until children of the human kind reach their youth in the sixteenth year of their age, he said, you shall afflict them in your various forms, and I shall confer on you a fierce and inexhaustible spirit, and with that you shall live happily and be worshiped by everyone. Then a fiery and powerful being came out of Skanda’s body for the purpose of devouring the offspring of mortals, and fell to the ground senseless and hungry, and at Skanda’s bidding that genius of evil took a terrific form. Good Brahmins know it by the name of Skandapasmara.

What follows is the register of those powers, king, because a household that knows their names knows what to do about them. Vinata is the terrible Shakuni graha. She whom the learned call Putana Rakshasi is the graha named Putana, and that fierce and hideous Rakshasa is also called the pishacha Shita Putana, the spirit who causes women to miscarry. Aditi is also known as Revati, and her evil spirit is called Raivata, and that terrible graha afflicts children too. Diti, the mother of the Daityas, is also called Mukhamandika, and that terrible creature is very fond of the flesh of little children. Those male and female children who are said to have been begotten by Skanda are spirits of evil and destroy the unborn in the womb; the kumaras among them are known as the husbands of those very ladies, and children are seized unawares by these cruel spirits. Surabhi, whom the wise call the mother of the bovine kind, is ridden by the evil spirit Shakuni, who in her company devours children on this earth. Sarama, the mother of dogs, habitually kills human beings while they are still in the womb. She who is the mother of all trees lives in a karanja tree; she grants boons, her face is placid, she is always well disposed toward all creatures, and people who want children bow down to her where she sits in that tree. These eighteen evil spirits, fond of meat and wine, and others of the same kind, take up their abode in the lying-in room for ten days without fail. Kadru enters a pregnant woman’s body in a subtle form and destroys the child there, and the mother gives birth to a serpent. The mother of the Gandharvas takes the child away, and for that reason a woman’s conception turns out to be abortive. The mother of the Apsaras removes the child from the womb, and for that reason such conceptions are called stationary by the learned. The daughter of the Divinity of the Red Sea nursed Skanda, and she is worshiped under the name Lohitayani on kadamba trees. Arya does among female beings what Rudra does among male ones; she is the mother of all children and is worshiped separately for their welfare. These are the spirits that preside over the destinies of young children. Until children reach their sixteenth year these spirits exercise their influence for evil, and after that they exercise it for good. The whole body of male and female spirits I have described is always called by men the spirits of Skanda. They are propitiated with burnt offerings, ablutions, unguents, sacrifices and other offerings, and above all by the worship of Skanda himself, and when they are honored and worshiped with due reverence, king, they give men whatever is good for them, and valor, and long life.

And now, having bowed down to Maheshvara, I shall describe the spirits that influence the destinies of men after their sixteenth year. The man who sees gods while he sleeps, or while he is awake, soon goes mad, and the spirit that causes those hallucinations is called the celestial spirit. When a man sees his dead ancestors while he is sitting at ease or lying in his bed, he soon loses his reason, and the spirit that causes that illusion of the senses is called the ancestral spirit. The man who shows disrespect to the Siddhas and is cursed by them in return runs mad, and the influence that brings it about is called the Siddha spirit. The spirit by whose influence a man smells sweet odors and tastes various tastes when there is nothing to smell or taste anywhere near him, and is soon tormented by it, is called the Rakshasa spirit. The spirit by whose action the celestial musicians blend their existence into the constitution of a human being and drive him mad in no time is called the Gandharva spirit. The spirit by whose influence men are perpetually tormented by Pishachas is called the Paishacha spirit. When the spirit of the Yakshas enters a man’s system by some accident, he loses his reason immediately, and that is the Yaksha spirit. The man whose mind has been demoralized by vices runs mad quickly, and his illness must be remedied by the methods the Shastras prescribe. Men also go mad from perplexity, from fear, and from the sight of hideous things, and there the remedy lies in quieting their minds. There are three classes of these spirits: some are frolicsome, some gluttonous, some sensual. They go on tormenting men until the age of seventy, and after that fever is the only evil spirit that afflicts a living being. And all these spirits keep away from those who have subdued their senses, who are self-restrained and clean in their habits, who fear god and are free from laziness and contamination. I have described to you, king, the evil spirits that shape the destinies of men, and you, who are devoted to Maheshvara, are never troubled by them.

When Skanda had bestowed these powers, Svaha came to him and asked for her own. You are my natural son, she said; I want you to grant me an exquisite happiness. What sort of happiness do you wish to enjoy? Skanda asked. I am the favorite daughter of Daksha, she said, and my name is Svaha, and from my youth I have been in love with Hutashana, the eater of oblations; and that god, my son, does not understand what I feel. I wish to live with him forever. And Skanda gave her the one gift that could not be taken away again. From this day, lady, every oblation that men of virtuous character who do not swerve from the path of virtue offer to their gods or to their ancestors, with the purifying hymns chanted over it by Brahmins, shall be offered through Agni coupled with the name of Svaha; and in that way, excellent lady, you will always live in company with the god of fire. Svaha was greatly pleased at being honored like this, and joined to her husband Pavaka she honored her son in return. Then Brahma, the lord of all creatures, said to Mahasena: go and visit your father Mahadeva, the conqueror of Tripura. Rudra coalescing with Agni, and Uma with Svaha, have combined to make you invincible for the well-being of all creatures. The seed of the high-souled Rudra that was cast into Uma was thrown back upon this hill, and from it the twins Mujika and Minjika came into being; a portion of it fell into the Blood Sea, another into the rays of the sun, another upon the earth, and so it was distributed into five portions. Learned men ought to remember that those various fierce-looking followers of yours who live on the flesh of animals were produced from it. Be it so, said Mahasena, and with a son’s love he honored his father Maheshvara. Men who want wealth should worship those five classes of spirits with the sunflower, and they must be worshiped for the relief of disease as well. The twins Mujika and Minjika, begotten by Rudra, must always be respected by anyone who wants the welfare of little children, and anyone who wants children born to him must worship those female spirits who live on human flesh and are produced in trees. All the Pishachas, in this way, are divided into countless classes.

Now hear the origin of the bells and the standards of Skanda, king. Airavata, the elephant of Indra, had two bells named Vaijayanti, and the keen-witted Shakra had them brought and gave them to Guha with his own hands; Vishakha took one of those bells and Skanda the other, and the standards of both Kartikeya and Vishakha were red. That mighty god Mahasena was pleased with the toys the gods had given him. Surrounded by hosts of gods and Pishachas, seated on the Golden Mountain, he looked splendid in all the grandeur of his prosperity, and that mountain covered with fine forests looked grand in his company, the way the Mandara hill with its excellent caves shines under the rays of the sun. The White Mountain was decked with whole tracts of woodland covered in blossoming santanaka flowers, with forests of karavira, parijata, jana and ashoka trees, with wild country overgrown with kadamba, and it was full of herds of celestial deer and flocks of celestial birds. The rumbling of the clouds served for musical instruments and sounded like the murmur of a troubled sea, and celestial Gandharvas and Apsaras danced to it. A great sound of joy went up from the merriment of all creatures. The whole world, with Indra in the middle of it, seemed to have moved to the White Mountain, and everyone there kept looking at Skanda with satisfaction in their faces and never grew tired of doing it.

When that adorable son of the fire god had been anointed as leader of the celestial army, the grand and happy lord Hara rode with Parvati in a chariot bright as the sun to a place called Bhadravata. His chariot was drawn by a thousand lions and managed by Kala, and the maned beasts flitted through blank space, seeming about to devour the sky, growling fearfully and striking terror into every creature that moves. That lord of all animals, seated in the chariot with Uma, looked like the sun with flames of lightning lighting up masses of cloud with Indra’s bow across them. In front of him went the adorable lord of riches, riding on the backs of human beings, with his attendant Guhyakas in the beautiful chariot Pushpaka, and Shakra on Airavata with the other gods brought up the rear of Mahadeva as he marched at the head of the celestial army. The great Yaksha Amogha with his attendants, the Jambhaka Yakshas and other Rakshasas decorated with garlands of flowers, had the right wing, and many gods of wonderful fighting power marched in that division with the Vasus and the Rudras. Terrible Yama marched with him in the company of Death, with hundreds of terrible diseases following behind, and behind Yama was carried the sharp-pointed and well-decorated trident of Shiva, which is called Vijaya. Varuna, the adorable lord of waters, came slowly after the trident with his terrible noose, surrounded by numerous creatures of the water. After the trident Vijaya came the Pattisa of Rudra, guarded by maces and balls and clubs and other excellent weapons, and after the Pattisa the bright umbrella of Rudra and the water pot that the Maharshis serve, which went on in the company of Bhrigu and Angiras and the others. Behind all of these rode Rudra in his white chariot, reassuring the gods with the display of his powers. Rivers and lakes and seas followed him, and Apsaras, rishis, celestials, Gandharvas and serpents, stars, planets and the children of the gods, and many women who walked scattering flowers as they went. The clouds marched, having made their obeisance to the god who carries the Pinaka bow, and some of them held a white umbrella over his head while Agni and Vayu busied themselves with two hairy fans, the emblems of royalty. Behind him came the glorious Indra with the royal sages, singing the praise of the god whose emblem is the bull. Gauri, Vidya, Gandhari, Keshini and the lady called Mitra went in Parvati’s train with Savitri, and with them all the Vidyas, the presiding deities of every branch of knowledge that the learned have created. The Rakshasa spirit who carries to the different battalions the commands that Indra and the other gods obey without question advanced in front of the army as its standard-bearer, and that foremost of Rakshasas named Pingala, the friend of Rudra, who is always busy in the places where corpses are burned and who is agreeable to everyone, marched along merrily, at one moment ahead of the army and at the next falling behind it, his movements never certain. Virtuous actions are the offerings with which mortals worship the god Rudra, who is also called Shiva, the omnipotent, armed with the Pinaka, who is Maheshvara and is worshiped in many forms.

The son of Krittika, respectful to Brahmins, followed that lord of the gods with the celestial forces around him, and Mahadeva said these weighty words to Mahasena: command the seventh army corps of the celestial forces, and command it carefully. Very well, my lord, Skanda said; I shall command the seventh corps. Tell me quickly if there is anything else to be done. You shall always find me in the field of action, Rudra said. By looking to me and by devotion to me you will attain great welfare. With that Maheshvara took him in his arms and dismissed him, and after Skanda had been dismissed, great king, prodigies of every kind broke out to disturb the composure of the gods. The firmament with its stars was ablaze and the whole universe fell into confusion; the earth quaked and gave out a rumbling sound and darkness covered the world. Shankara with the estimable Uma, and the celestials with the great Maharshis, were much exercised in mind at this terrible catastrophe, and while they stood in that confusion a fierce and mighty host appeared in front of them, armed with every kind of weapon, looking like a mass of clouds and rocks. Those terrible and countless beings, speaking different languages, moved toward the place where Shankara and the celestials stood, and hurled into the ranks of the celestial army flights of arrows in all directions, masses of rock, maces, shataghnis, prasas and parighas. The celestial army was thrown into confusion by that shower and its ranks wavered. The Danavas made havoc of their soldiers and horses and elephants and chariots and arms, and the celestial troops seemed about to turn their backs on the enemy, and numbers of them fell, slain by the Asuras, like great trees in a forest burned in a fire. The dwellers in heaven fell with their heads cut from their bodies, and having no one to lead them in that fearful battle they were slaughtered by the enemy. Then Purandara, the slayer of Vala, seeing them unsteady and hard pressed by the Asuras, tried to rally them. Do not be afraid, heroes, he said; may success attend your efforts. Take up your arms and resolve on manly conduct and no more misfortune will meet you, and you will defeat these wicked and terrible-looking Danavas. May you be successful. Fall upon the Danavas with me.

The dwellers in heaven were reassured by that speech from Shakra and rushed at the Danavas again under his leadership, and the thirty-three crores of gods and all the powerful Marutas and the Sadhyas with the Vasus came back to the charge. The arrows they discharged in their anger drew a great quantity of blood from the Daityas and from their horses and elephants, and those sharp arrows passed through their bodies and fell to the ground, looking like so many snakes dropping down the side of a hill. The Daityas, pierced by them, fell fast on every side like detached masses of cloud, and the Danava host, struck with panic at that charge, wavered under the shower of weapons. All the gods gave loud vent to their joy with their arms ready to strike, and the celestial bands struck up various airs. So that encounter went on, fearful to both sides, until the whole field was covered with blood and strewn with the bodies of gods and Asuras together. And then the gods were worsted all at once, and the terrible Danavas made great havoc of the celestial army again; the drums of the Asuras struck up, their shrill bugles were sounded, and the Danava chiefs yelled their terrific war cry. Then one powerful Danava came out of that terrible Daitya army with a huge mass of rock in his hands, looking like the sun peering out from behind dark clouds. The celestials saw that he was about to hurl it at them and fled in confusion, and Mahisha pursued them and threw the hillock after them, and the falling of that mass of rock crushed ten thousand warriors of the celestial army to the ground and they breathed their last. That act struck terror into the gods, and Mahisha with his attendant Danavas fell on them the way a lion falls on a herd of deer, and when Indra and the other celestials saw him coming they fled and left their arms and their colors behind them. Mahisha, enraged at that, went straight for the chariot of Rudra and took hold of its pole with his hands. When Mahisha in his fit of rage had seized the chariot of Rudra, the whole earth groaned and the great rishis lost their senses, and Daityas of huge proportions, looking like dark clouds, grew boisterous with joy, believing that the victory was theirs. And the adorable god, even in that plight, did not think it worth his while to kill Mahisha in battle; he remembered that Skanda was to deal the deathblow to that evil-minded Asura. The fiery Mahisha looked with satisfaction at the prize he had secured and sounded his war cry over it, to the great alarm of the gods and the joy of the Daityas.

When the gods were in that predicament, the mighty Mahasena came to their rescue, burning with anger, looking grand as the sun. That lordly being was clad in blazing red and decked with a wreath of red flowers, and cased in armor of gold he rode in a gold-colored chariot bright as the sun, drawn by chestnut horses. At the sight of him the army of the Daityas lost heart on the spot. And the mighty Mahasena discharged a bright Shakti for the destruction of Mahisha; the missile cut off Mahisha’s head, and he fell to the ground and died. That head, massive as a hill, fell across the entrance to the country of the Northern Kurus and barred it for a length of sixteen yojanas, though the people of that country pass the gate easily now. Gods and Danavas alike saw Skanda hurl that Shakti again and again on the field and saw it come back into his hands after killing thousands of the enemy’s soldiers, and the terrible Danavas fell in large numbers to the arrows of the wise Mahasena. Panic took them, and the followers of Skanda set about killing them by thousands and eating them and drinking their blood, and joyously they exterminated the Danavas in no time at all, the way the sun destroys darkness, or fire destroys a forest, or the wind drives away the clouds. So the famous Skanda defeated all his enemies, and the gods came to congratulate him, and he in turn paid his respects to Maheshvara, and that son of Krittika looked grand as the sun in the full blaze of his glory. When the enemy had been completely defeated and Maheshvara had left the field, Purandara embraced Mahasena and said to him: this Mahisha, whom the favor of Brahma had made invincible, has been killed by you. Best of warriors, the gods were like grass to him. Strong-limbed hero, you have taken a thorn out of the side of the celestials. You have killed in battle hundreds of Danavas equal in valor to Mahisha who were hostile to us and used to harass us, and your followers have devoured them by hundreds. You are invincible in battle, mighty being, like the lord of Uma, and this victory shall be celebrated as your first achievement, and your fame will never die in the three worlds, and all the gods will yield you their allegiance. Having said that to Mahasena, the husband of Sachi left the place with the gods and with the permission of the adorable three-eyed god. Rudra went back to Bhadravata and the celestials went back to their own abodes, and Rudra said to the gods as they went: you must render your allegiance to Skanda exactly as you render it to me. So that son of the fire god, having killed the Danavas, conquered the three worlds in one day and was worshiped by the great rishis.

Good and adorable Brahmin, Yudhishthira said when the story was finished, I wish to know the different names by which that high-souled being is celebrated through the three worlds. And the worshipful Markandeya of high ascetic merit, addressed that way by the Pandava in that assembly of rishis, gave him the names. Agneya, the son of Agni. Skanda, the cast off. Diptakirti, of blazing fame. Anamaya, always hale. Mayuraketu, whose banner is the peacock. Dharmatman, the virtuous-souled. Bhutesha, the lord of all creatures. Mahishardana, the slayer of Mahisha. Kamajit, who has subdued desire, and Kamada, who fulfills it. Kanta, the handsome. Satyavak, truthful in speech. Bhuvaneshvara, lord of the universe. Shishu, the child. Shighra, the quick. Shuchi, the pure. Chanda, the fiery. Diptavarna, the bright-complexioned. Shubhanana, of the beautiful face. Amogha, who cannot be baffled. Anagha, the sinless. Rudra, the terrible. Priya, the favorite. Chandranana, whose face is the moon. Diptashakti, who wields the blazing lance. Prashantatman, of tranquil soul. Bhadrakrit, the doer of good. Kutamahana, the shelter of even the wicked. Shashthipriya, the true favorite of Shashthi. Pavitra, the holy. Matrivatsala, who reveres his mother. Kanyabhartri, the protector of virgins. Vibhakta, diffused over the universe. Svaheya, the son of Svaha. Revatisuta, the child of Revati. Prabhu, the lord. Neta, the leader. Vishakha, reared by Vishakha. Naigameya, sprung from the Veda. Suduschara, difficult to propitiate. Suvrata, of excellent vows. Lalita, the beautiful. Balakridanakapriya, who is fond of toys. Khacharin, the ranger of the skies. Brahmacharin, the chaste. Shura, the brave. Sharavanodbhava, born in a forest of heath. Vishvamitrapriya, the favorite of Vishvamitra. Devasenapriya, the lover of Devasena. Vasudevapriya, the beloved of Vasudeva. And Priyakrit, the doer of agreeable things. These are the divine names of Kartikeya, and whoever repeats them secures fame and wealth and salvation.

And now, valiant scion of Kuru’s race, Markandeya said, I shall pray with due devotion to that unrivaled, mighty, six-faced and valiant Guha whom gods and rishis worship, going through his other titles of distinction; listen to them. You are devoted to Brahma, begotten of Brahma, versed in the mysteries of Brahma. You are called Brahmashaya and you are the foremost of those who possess Brahma. You are fond of Brahma, austere as the Brahmins are austere, versed in the great mystery of Brahma, the leader of the Brahmins. You are Svaha and you are Svadha, the holiest of the holy, invoked in hymns and celebrated as the six-flamed fire. You are the year, the six seasons, the months, the half months, the solar declinations and the quarters of space. You are lotus-eyed and your face is a lily. You have a thousand faces and a thousand arms. You are the ruler of the universe, the great Oblation, the animating spirit of all the gods and the Asuras, the great leader of armies. You are Prachanda, the furious; you are the Lord, the great master, the conqueror of your enemies. You are Sahasrabhu of a thousand forms, Sahasratushti content a thousand times over, Sahasrabhuk who devours everything, Sahasrapad of a thousand legs, and you are the earth itself. You have infinite forms and a thousand heads and great strength. According to your own inclination you have appeared as the son of Ganga, of Svaha, of Mahi or of Krittika. Six-faced god, you play with the cock and take whatever forms you please. You are Daksha, Soma, the Marut, Dharma, Vayu, the prince of mountains and Indra, for all time. You are mighty, the most eternal of all eternal things, the lord of all lords. You are the progenitor of Truth, the destroyer of the children of Diti, the great conqueror of the enemies of the celestials. You are virtue in person, and being yourself both vast and minute you know the highest and the lowest points of virtuous action and the mysteries of Brahma. Foremost of all gods and high-souled lord of the universe, this whole creation is overspread with your energy. I have prayed to you here according to the best of my power, and I salute you, who have twelve eyes and many hands. The rest of your attributes are past my power to comprehend. The Brahmin who reads this story of the birth of Skanda with due attention, or relates it to Brahmins, or hears it narrated by the twice-born, attains wealth, long life, fame, children, victory, prosperity and contentment, and the companionship of Skanda hereafter.

A key to reading this (a sky, a sickroom and a battle order): The six disowned wives become the Krittikas, the cluster the Greeks called the Pleiades, put into the sky to fill the place left vacant by Abhijit, the star that walked out of the lunar mansions; Skanda is called Kartikeya after them. The register of grahas that follows is a nursery text before it is a mythology: the epic is naming the recognized dangers of infancy and the ten days after a birth, giving them mothers and husbands and worship, and fixing sixteen as the age after which they turn benign, and it names the whole class after Skanda because the boy took them into his household. The Shakti is the spear that comes back to the hand, Skanda’s own weapon; yojana is a distance of several miles, so a head sixteen yojanas across is a head that closes a mountain road. In the marching order, the lord of riches is Kubera, Pushpaka is the flying chariot, the Pattisa is a long-bladed halberd and the Pinaka is Shiva’s bow. Mahisha, the buffalo Asura whose death is Skanda’s first feat here, is the same demon whose killing the Devi Mahatmya later gives to the Goddess; the Mahabharata’s telling is this one.

The gist: The six wives their husbands would not take back come to Skanda, are adopted as his mothers, and are set in the sky as the Krittikas. Vinata and the great Mothers ask to live with him too, and the Mothers ask for the right to eat other people’s children; Skanda talks them down to a law instead, which is that they may afflict the young until the age of sixteen and must protect them after it, and he gives the whole register of those powers by name, with the spirits that take men after sixteen and up to seventy. Svaha asks to be joined to Agni forever and gets her name attached to every oblation ever poured. Then Mahadeva rides out for Bhadravata with the whole of heaven in column behind him, gives Skanda the seventh corps, and the Danavas attack. Mahisha crushes ten thousand gods with a rock and lays hands on Rudra’s own chariot, and Rudra lets him, because this kill belongs to the boy. Skanda’s Shakti takes Mahisha’s head off and the head falls across the road to the Northern Kurus, sixteen yojanas wide. Indra names it his first achievement, and Markandeya closes with the names of Kartikeya.

Satyabhama’s question and Draupadi’s answer: no charm, no herb, only the woman who wakes first and sleeps last

The men had settled into their seats, the Brahmins and the five sons of Pandu, and Markandeya’s stories were still hanging in the air of the hermitage, when two women came in laughing. Draupadi and Satyabhama had not seen each other in years. They sat down at their ease, and the talk between them ran the way talk runs between friends who share two royal houses, the Kurus and the Yadus, with all the old stories those houses carry. Satyabhama, the daughter of Satrajit, the wife Krishna favored above the others, waited until no one was near, and then asked the question she had been holding. How do you do it, daughter of Drupada? Five husbands, men as strong and handsome as the guardians of the world, and they obey you. They are never angry with you. They watch for your bidding. Tell me the reason. Is it a vow you keep, or austerity, or some incantation, or a drug slipped into the bathwater at the right time of the month? Is it a science, or the pull of a young face, or a formula recited, or an offering into the fire, or collyrium, or some other preparation? Tell me the blessed thing, Krishna, by which Krishna will be obedient to me forever.

Draupadi did not answer the question. She answered the woman who had asked it, and she did it by refusing the premise. You have asked me, Satyabhama, about the practices of wicked women, she said. How am I to tell you about the path that wicked women follow? It does not become you to press this question, or to doubt me afterward; you are intelligent, and you are Krishna’s favorite wife. Then she told her what a charm actually does. From the hour a husband learns that his wife deals in spells and drugs, he begins to dread her like a snake coiled in his bedroom. A frightened man has no peace, and a man with no peace has no happiness. No husband was ever made obedient by his wife’s incantations. She went on, and the list grew darker as it went. We hear of terrible diseases sent by enemies; people who want a man dead send poison disguised as an ordinary gift, and the man who takes the powder by tongue or by skin is soon dead. Women have given men dropsy and leprosy, premature old age, impotence, idiocy, blindness, deafness. Those women walk the road of sin, and sometimes they injure their husbands by these means. A wife should never do her lord the least harm. Now, illustrious lady, hear how I behave toward the high-souled sons of Pandu.

What followed was a portrait of a life, and there was no magic anywhere in it. I put vanity aside, she said. I keep desire and anger in check. I serve the sons of Pandu with devotion, and their other wives too. I restrain jealousy, I serve from the depth of my heart, and I feel no degradation in any service I perform. I am always afraid of saying something evil or false, of looking or sitting or walking improperly, of letting a glance betray what is in my heart, and in that fear I serve the sons of Pritha, warriors who blaze like the sun and fire, handsome as the moon, of fierce energy, able to kill an enemy with a look. No one else pleases my heart, god or man or Gandharva, young or jeweled, rich or beautiful. I do not bathe, eat, or sleep until my husband has bathed, eaten, and slept, and until our attendants have as well. When he comes home from the field, the forest, or the town, I rise at once and greet him with water and a seat. I keep the house, everything in it, and the food that is to be served clean and in order. I look after the rice with care and serve the meal at the proper hour. I do not speak in anger or in a fretful voice, and I do not imitate wicked women. I keep idleness far away and do what is pleasing. I do not laugh except at a joke. I do not linger at the house gate, nor in the places for answering nature’s calls, nor in the pleasure garden attached to the house. I keep away from loud laughter, from high passion, from anything that could give offense. Being apart from my lords never pleases me; when my husband leaves home for a relative’s sake, I give up flowers and every fragrant paste and take up penance. Whatever my husband does not drink, does not eat, does not enjoy, I renounce too.

Then the household widened out beyond the bedroom and the kitchen, and the picture became something closer to the accounts of a kingdom. The duties my mother-in-law taught me toward relatives, she said, and the duties of alms, of worship, of offerings to the dead, of cooking food in the pots on auspicious days for the ancestors and for honored guests, of serving those who deserve our regard, and everything else I know: all of this I carry out day and night without idleness. With humility and the approved rules I serve my meek and truthful lords, who are ever observant of dharma, and I treat them as venomous snakes who can be provoked by a trifle. I hold that the eternal virtue of a woman rests on regard for her husband. The husband is the wife’s god and her refuge; she has no other. How could a wife do her lord the least injury? In sleeping, in eating, in adorning anyone, I never act against my lord’s wishes, and, guided by my husbands, I never speak ill of my mother-in-law. My husbands have become obedient to me, blessed lady, because of my diligence, my readiness, and the humility with which I serve my elders. Every day I personally wait on Kunti, the revered and truthful mother of heroes, with food and drink and clothing. In food and dress I never put myself before her, and I never rebuke that princess, who is as forgiving as the Earth. And then the numbers came, the ones she had once carried in her head. Eight thousand Brahmins fed daily off gold plates in Yudhishthira’s palace. Eighty thousand Snataka Brahmins, householders, entertained with thirty serving women assigned to each. Ten thousand ascetics who had drawn up their seed, their pure food carried to them on gold. All those reciters of the Veda I worshiped with food, drink, and clothing, drawn from the stores only after a share had been set aside for the Vishvadevas. Kunti’s son kept a hundred thousand well-dressed serving women, bracelets on their arms and gold at their throats, garlanded and perfumed with sandal, all of them skilled in singing and dancing. I knew every one of those girls by name and by face, what they were, what they had been, and what they did not do. He kept another hundred thousand who fed the guests every day with gold plates in their hands. While he lived at Indraprastha a hundred thousand horses and a hundred thousand elephants followed in his train. Those were Yudhishthira’s possessions when he ruled the earth. But it was I, lady, who fixed their numbers and framed the rules for them, and I who had to hear every complaint about them. I knew what the maids of the palace and every other class of attendant, down to the cowherds and shepherds of the royal establishment, did and did not do. Of all the Pandavas I alone knew the king’s income and expenditure, and what the whole of his wealth came to. Those bulls of the Bharatas laid on me the burden of everyone who had to be fed, and paid court to me for it, and that load, too heavy for any mean-hearted person to lift, I bore day and night, giving up my ease, and loving them the whole while. While my husbands pursued dharma, I alone watched over their treasury, which was as inexhaustible as Varuna’s ever-filled vessel. Bearing hunger and thirst, I served the Kuru princes day and night until my nights and days became the same. I woke before everyone and went to bed after everyone. That, Satyabhama, has always been my charm for keeping my husbands obedient. That is the great art I have always known. I have never practiced the charms of wicked women, and I never wish to.

Satyabhama had come looking for a recipe and had been handed a ledger, and she understood the rebuke inside the answer. She bowed to the princess of Panchala before she spoke. I have been at fault, princess, daughter of Yajnasena, she said. Forgive me. Between friends, talk in jest comes up on its own, without any thought behind it.

A key to reading this (names and numbers): Krishna is also Draupadi’s own name, the dark one, which is why Satyabhama’s last sentence turns on the two of them: tell me, Krishna, how Krishna may be obedient to me. Satyabhama is Satrajit’s daughter and Krishna’s wife; Yajnasena is another name of Drupada. The scene sits inside Krishna’s visit to the Pandavas in the Kamyaka forest, with Markandeya’s stories just concluded. A Snataka is a Brahmin who has finished his studies and entered the householder’s life; the yatis are celibate ascetics; the Vishvadevas are the gods to whom the first portion of food is offered before anything leaves the storehouse. The eight thousand, the eighty thousand, the ten thousand, and the hundred thousands belong to the years of the Rajasuya at Indraprastha, which Draupadi is remembering from a hut in the forest.

The gist: Alone with Draupadi, Satyabhama asks how five husbands stay devoted to one woman, and whether the secret is a vow, a drug, a spell, or a cosmetic. Draupadi throws the question out: a husband who suspects charms fears his wife like a snake in his bed. Her real answer is a working day: eating, bathing, and sleeping only after her husbands and their servants have done so, serving Kunti with her own hands, and running the entire establishment of Indraprastha, whose income, expenditure, staff, and complaints only she knew. Waking first and sleeping last is her charm. Satyabhama asks to be forgiven for the jest.

Draupadi’s counsel to Satyabhama, a farewell from Krishna’s chariot, and midnight in Hastinapura for a blind king: the prince who sleeps on the bare ground

Having refused the question, Draupadi answered it anyway, in her own terms. I will show you a way to win your husband’s heart that has no deceit in it, she told Satyabhama. Follow it properly, dear friend, and you will draw your lord away from the other women. In all the worlds, including the world of the gods, there is no god equal to the husband. When he is pleased with you, you may have anything you desire from him; when he is angry, you may lose all of it. Children come from him, and every article of enjoyment. Fine beds and seats, robes, garlands, perfumes, great fame, and heaven itself hereafter, all come to a wife from her husband. Happiness here is never had by easy means; the chaste woman gets her good along with her grief. So adore Krishna with friendship and love, and bear whatever the body has to bear. Then she got practical, because the counsel was meant to be used. Offer him handsome seats, excellent garlands, every kind of perfume, and prompt service, so that he comes to think, she truly loves me. When you hear his voice at the gate, get up and stand ready inside the room. The moment he enters your chamber, honor him with a seat and water for his feet. If he orders a maidservant to do something, get up and do it yourself; let Krishna see the temper of your mind and know that you adore him with your whole heart. Whatever he says in front of you, do not repeat, even if it does not need concealing, because if one of your co-wives carried it to Vasudeva he might be irritated with you. Feed, by every means you have, those who are dear and devoted to him, and always seek his good; keep away from those who are hostile to him, who work against him or wish him harm, and from anyone given to deceit. In the presence of men put aside excitement and carelessness, keep your inclinations hidden behind silence, and do not linger or talk in private even with your own sons, Pradyumna and Samba. Make friends only with women who are well born, sinless, and devoted to their lords; shun the ones who are hot-tempered, who drink, who are gluttonous, thievish, wicked, or fickle. Conduct like this brings a good name and prosperity, it disarms hostility, and it leads to heaven. So worship your husband, decked in costly garlands and ornaments, anointed with unguents and the finest perfumes.

By then Keshava had finished. He had talked over many pleasant things with the illustrious sons of Pandu and with the Brahmins led by Markandeya, taken his leave of them, climbed onto his chariot, and called for Satyabhama. She embraced the daughter of Drupada, and what she said at the parting was meant to be carried into the forest and kept there. Do not be anxious, Krishna, and do not grieve. You have no reason to spend your nights awake; you will surely get back the earth, which your husbands, who are all the equals of gods, will conquer. Women of your disposition and your auspicious marks, dark-eyed one, never suffer misfortune long. I have heard that you will enjoy this earth with your husbands in peace, cleared of every thorn. You will see the earth ruled by Yudhishthira, daughter of Drupada, after Dhritarashtra’s sons have been killed and every act of their enmity avenged. The wives of the Kurus who were so drunk on pride that they laughed at you on your way into exile, you will soon see helpless and in despair. Count everyone who injured you in your affliction as already gone to Yama’s house. Then she gave her the news a mother in exile would most want. Your brave sons are well, and they have become skilled in arms: Prativindhya, Yudhishthira’s son; Sutasoma, Bhima’s; Shrutakarman, Arjuna’s; Shatanika, Nakula’s; and Shrutasena, whom Sahadeva fathered. Like Abhimanyu they are all living at Dvaravati, and they are happy there. Subhadra looks after them cheerfully and with her whole soul, exactly as you would; she delights in them as you do, grieves in their griefs and rejoices in their joys. Pradyumna’s mother loves them with her whole heart. Keshava and his sons, Bhanu and the others, watch over them with special affection. My mother-in-law sees to their food and clothing. The Andhakas and the Vrishnis, Rama and all the rest, hold them dear; their love for your sons is the love they have for Pradyumna. With these true and kind words said, Satyabhama walked around the queen of the Pandavas, keeping her on the right, and mounted Krishna’s chariot. The chief of the Yadavas comforted Draupadi with a smile, sent the Pandavas back, and set out for his own city behind fast horses.

Janamejaya wanted to know what came next. While the sons of Pritha were passing their days in the forest, exposed to winter and summer, wind and sun, what did they do, Brahmin, once they reached the lake and the woods called Dvaita? Vaishampayana told him. When the sons of Pandu came to that lake they chose a dwelling far from the habitations of men, and they began to roam the delightful woods, the lovely mountains, and the river valleys around it. Once they had settled there, venerable ascetics learned in the Veda came often to see them, and the Pandavas always received them with great respect. One day a Brahmin came to the Kaurava princes who was known across the earth for his powers of speech. He talked with the Pandavas a while and then, as it pleased him, went on to the court of the royal son of Vichitravirya. The old king received him with respect, gave him a seat, and asked for news, and the Brahmin began to talk about the sons of Dharma, of the Wind, and of Indra, and about the twins, all of them fallen into deep misery, emaciated and worn thin by wind and sun. He talked about Krishna too, overwhelmed by suffering and utterly helpless, though she had heroes for husbands. Hearing him, the son of Vichitravirya was struck with grief at the thought of princes of royal blood swimming in a river of sorrow. His inmost self ached; he shook with sighs; and he quieted himself only with a great effort, remembering that all of it had come from his own fault.

What the blind king said then was a lament, and it turned into a confession, and then into a fear. How can it be, he said, that Yudhishthira, the eldest of my sons, truthful, pious, virtuous in everything he does, a man without an enemy, who once slept on beds of soft Ranku deerskin, now sleeps on the bare ground? Once he was wakened every morning by Sutas and Magadhas and other singers chanting his praises in sweet voices; now that prince of the Kurus, Indra’s equal, is wakened from the bare earth in the small hours by a crowd of birds. How does Vrikodara, wasted by wind and sun and full of wrath, sleep on the bare ground in front of the princess of Panchala, he who was never made to bear such a lot? The intelligent Arjuna, who cannot endure pain, obedient to Yudhishthira’s will yet feeling himself pierced all over by the memory of his wrongs, surely does not sleep at night. Seeing the twins and Krishna and Yudhishthira and Bhima sunk in misery, Arjuna sighs like a serpent of fierce energy and lies awake in his anger. The twins, who are like two blessed gods of heaven, deserving of bliss and drowned in woe, surely spend their nights in restless wakefulness, held back from vengeance by virtue and truth. The mighty son of the Wind, equal to the Wind himself in strength, surely sighs and swallows his wrath, bound by his elder brother in the bonds of truth. Superior in battle to every warrior, he lies quiet on the ground now, restrained by virtue and truth, burning to kill my sons, biding his time. The cruel words Duhshasana spoke after Yudhishthira was cheated at dice have sunk deep into Vrikodara’s heart, and they are consuming him the way a burning bundle of straw consumes a bundle of dry wood. The son of Dharma never acts sinfully; Dhananjaya always obeys him; but Bhima’s wrath, fed by a life of exile, grows like a fire helped by the wind. That hero, burning with such rage, wrings his hands and breathes hot, fierce sighs, as if he were burning up my sons and grandsons with his breath. The wielder of Gandiva and Vrikodara, when they are angry, are Yama and Kala themselves; scattering shafts like thunderbolts they wipe out the ranks of an enemy in battle. Alas, Duryodhana and Shakuni and the Suta’s son and wicked Duhshasana, when they robbed the Pandavas of their kingdom with dice, saw only the honey and never noticed the terrible fall beneath it.

Then the fear reached for philosophy, and found no comfort there either. A man who has acted rightly or wrongly expects the fruit of his acts; but the fruit confounds him and paralyzes him completely; how, then, is a man to be saved? The soil may be properly tilled and the seed sown and the rain god may shower in season, and still the crop may fail; we often hear this said, and how could the saying be true unless, as I think, everything here depends on Destiny? The gambler Shakuni behaved deceitfully toward the son of Pandu, who always acts honestly, and out of affection for my wicked sons I acted the same way. That is why the hour of destruction has come for the Kurus. Perhaps what must be must be. The wind, urged or not, will blow. The woman who has conceived will give birth. Darkness will be dispelled at dawn and the day will vanish at evening. Whatever we or others earn, whether it is spent or not, brings misery when its time comes; why, then, are people so anxious to earn wealth? And if what is acquired is the result of fate, then it should be protected so that it is not divided, not lost little by little, not allowed to flow out all at once, because unprotected it may break into a hundred fragments. But whatever our possessions are, our acts in this world are never lost. Look at Arjuna’s energy: from the forest he went into Indra’s own house, mastered the four kinds of celestial weapons, and came back into this world. What man, having gone to heaven in his human body, wants to come back? He would never have done it, except that he sees countless Kurus at the point of death, hunted by Time. The bowman is Arjuna, who can draw the bow with his left hand as well as his right. The bow he draws is Gandiva, of fierce impetus. And he has those celestial weapons besides. Who is there who could bear the energy of those three together? The son of Subala heard all this and went to Duryodhana, who was sitting with Karna, and repeated every word of it in private. And Duryodhana, who had little sense, was filled with grief at what he heard.

A key to reading this (names): Pradyumna and Samba are Krishna’s sons, Pradyumna by Rukmini and Samba by Jambavati; “Pradyumna’s mother” in Satyabhama’s speech is Rukmini, and Bhanu is another of Krishna’s sons. The mother-in-law Satyabhama mentions is Devaki; Rama is Balarama. Draupadi’s five sons, Prativindhya, Sutasoma, Shrutakarman, Shatanika, and Shrutasena, spent the exile at Dvaravati (Dwarka) with Abhimanyu. The royal son of Vichitravirya is Dhritarashtra. Ranku is a deer whose skin made bedding for kings; Sutas and Magadhas are the court singers of genealogies and praise. Arjuna’s return from Indra’s world with the celestial weapons is chapter 12 on this site; the words of Duhshasana that Dhritarashtra recalls were spoken in the dice hall of chapter 11.

The gist: Draupadi gives Satyabhama the honest version of the charm she asked for: the husband is the wife’s god, so rise when you hear his voice at the gate, do the maidservant’s work yourself, keep his words to yourself, feed his friends, and stay clear of his enemies. At the parting Satyabhama comforts Draupadi and tells her that her five sons are safe and trained at Dwarka; Krishna smiles and drives away. The story then follows a talkative Brahmin from Dvaitavana to Hastinapura, where his report of the Pandavas’ misery sets Dhritarashtra lamenting at night: his eldest son wakened by birds instead of singers, Bhima grinding his hands, Arjuna sleepless with his new weapons, and the dice players who saw only the honey. Shakuni carries the whole lament to Duryodhana and Karna.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vana Parva, Markandeya-samasya sub-parva. This part follows K. M. Ganguli, sections CCVII to CCXXXIV (207-234); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.