Mahabharata · Chapter 1a · Part 3 of 4 · Kacha and Devayani, Sharmishtha, and Yayati’s old age

About 80 minutes

The written genealogy from Daksha to Puru: the ten sons of Prachetas, the children of Manu, Pururavas who brought down Urvashi, Nahusha who rode on the backs of sages, and the father who asked five sons for their youth

Vaishampayana lowered his voice the way a reciter does when he moves from story to record. Hear now, king, the genealogy as it is written down, the one that is sacred and that serves all three ends of a life, duty, wealth and pleasure. It is the line of the royal sages: Daksha the lord of creation, Manu the son of the Sun, Bharata, Ruru, Puru and Ajamidha. I will give you the lines of the Yadavas too, and of the Kurus, and of the king of the Bharata house. To recite these names is itself an act of merit; the man who hears them gains wealth, fame and length of days. And every one of the men I have just named shone in his own splendor and matched the great rishis in power.

Prachetas had ten sons, all of them given to austerity, all of them possessed of every virtue. In the old time the earth had been smothered under poisonous plants and enormous trees past counting, and human beings could scarcely live; those ten burned all of it away with fire that came out of their mouths. After the ten a further son was born, Daksha, and it is from Daksha that every creature has descended, which is why he is called the Grandfather. Daksha, the muni born of Prachetas, joined himself to Virini and begot a thousand sons of rigid vows, each one like himself, and Narada taught those thousand the excellent philosophy of Sankhya as the road to liberation. Then, Janamejaya, the lord of creation, wanting creatures, begot fifty daughters, and he made every one of them his appointed daughter, so that the sons they bore would count as his own for the performance of every rite. Ten of those daughters he gave to Dharma, thirteen to Kashyapa, and twenty-seven to Chandra, and those twenty-seven are all engaged to this day in marking time. Kashyapa, the son of Marichi, begot on the eldest of his thirteen wives the Adityas, the gods of tremendous energy who have Indra at their head, and among them Vivasvat, the Sun. Of Vivasvat was born the lord Yama, and after Yama, Martanda begot another son gifted with great intelligence, who was named Manu. Manu was full of wisdom and devoted to virtue, and he became the founder of a line. Every human being has been born in Manu’s race, and that is why they are called Manavas; Brahmanas, Kshatriyas and all the rest descend from Manu and are all, for that reason, Manavas. In a later age, king, the Brahmanas joined with the Kshatriyas. Those sons of Manu who were Brahmanas gave themselves to the study of the Vedas. Manu begot ten other children: Vena, Dhrishnu, Narishyanta, Nabhaga, Ikshvaku, Karusha, Sharyati, a daughter named Ila as the eighth, Prishadhra the ninth and Nabhagarishta the tenth, and all of them took up the way of life of Kshatriyas. Beyond these Manu had fifty other sons on earth, but we have heard that they all perished quarreling with one another.

Of Ila was born the learned Pururavas, and we have heard it said that Ila was both his mother and his father. The great Pururavas held sway over thirteen islands of the sea, and though he was a human being he was always surrounded by companions who were more than human. Drunk with power, Pururavas quarreled with the Brahmanas, and caring nothing for their anger he robbed them of their wealth. Seeing this, Sanatkumara came down from the region of Brahma and gave him good counsel, and Pururavas rejected it. Then the wrath of the great rishis rose, and that avaricious monarch, who had lost his reason to power, was destroyed on the instant by their curse. Yet it was this same Pururavas who first brought the three kinds of sacrificial fire from the region of the Gandharvas, and brought from there the Apsara Urvashi as well. The son of Ila begot upon Urvashi six sons, Ayu, Dhimat, Amavasu, Dridhayu, Vanayu and Shatayu. Ayu, it is said, begot four sons on the daughter of Svarbhanu: Nahusha, Vriddhasharma, Rajingaya and Anena. Of all the sons of Ayu, king, Nahusha was gifted with the greatest intelligence and prowess, and he ruled his wide kingdom righteously. He supported evenhandedly the Pitris, the gods, the rishis, the Brahmanas, the Gandharvas, the Nagas, the Rakshasas, the Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas, and he crushed every robber band with a heavy hand. But he made the rishis pay him tribute and carry him on their backs like beasts of burden, and conquering the very gods by the beauty of his person, his austerity, his prowess and his energy, he ruled as though he were Indra himself. Nahusha begot six sons, all of sweet speech, among them Yati, Yayati, Sanyati, Ayati and Dhruva. Yati took up austerity and became a muni like Brahma himself. Yayati became a monarch of great prowess and virtue; he ruled the whole earth, performed sacrifices without number, worshipped the Pitris with deep reverence, honored the gods always, brought the whole world under his sway and was never once defeated by an enemy. The sons of Yayati were all great bowmen, resplendent with every virtue, and they were born, king, of his two wives, Devayani and Sharmishtha. Of Devayani were born Yadu and Turvasu; of Sharmishtha, Druhyu, Anu and Puru.

After Yayati had ruled his people virtuously for a long time, a hideous decrepitude fell upon him and destroyed the beauty of his body. Wrapped in that old age, Bharata, the monarch spoke to his sons Yadu, Puru, Turvasu, Druhyu and Anu. Dear sons, he said, I wish to be a young man again and to satisfy my appetites in the company of young women. Help me in this. His eldest son, born of Devayani, asked him what it was he needed, whether it was his youth he wanted back. Take my decrepitude, son, Yayati told him. With your youth I would enjoy myself. During a great sacrifice I was cursed by the muni Ushanas, who is Shukra. I would enjoy myself with your youth. Let any one of you take this old age of mine, and rule my kingdom with my body, while I take my pleasure in a renewed one. Take my decrepitude, my sons. Not one of his sons would accept it. Then his youngest, Puru, said: enjoy yourself once more, king, with a renewed body and your youth returned. I will take your decrepitude, and I will rule your kingdom at your command. So addressed, the royal sage transferred his old age by the power of his austerities into that noble son, and with the youth of Puru he became a young man, while Puru, wearing the monarch’s age, ruled the kingdom.

A thousand years went by, and Yayati, that tiger among kings, remained as strong and as powerful as a tiger. He enjoyed the companionship of his two wives for a long time, and in the gardens of Chitraratha, the king of the Gandharvas, he enjoyed as well the company of the Apsara Vishvachi. And after all of it the great king found his appetites unsatisfied. Then he remembered the truths set down in the Puranas. One’s appetites are never satisfied by enjoyment; like sacrificial butter poured into a fire, they flame higher with every indulgence. A man might enjoy the whole earth with its wealth, its diamonds and gold, its animals and women, and still he would not be satisfied. Only when a man commits no sin against any living thing in thought, word or deed does he attain a purity like that of Brahman. When a man fears nothing, when nothing fears him, when he wishes for nothing and injures nothing, then he attains the purity of Brahman. Seeing this, and convinced that appetites are never satisfied, the wise monarch stilled his mind by meditation and took his old age back from his son. He returned Puru his youth, though his own appetites were unsatisfied still, installed him on the throne and said to him: you are my true heir, you are my true son, through whom my race will continue; in the world my line will be known by your name. Then, Vaishampayana went on, that tiger among kings, having seated his son Puru on the throne, went away to the mountain of Bhrigu to give himself to austerity, and having gathered great ascetic merit over long years he yielded at last to the influence of Time, which nothing escapes. He left his human body by the vow of fasting, and ascended to heaven with his wives.

A key to reading this (why Yayati’s story is told twice): Vaishampayana gives Yayati here in the compressed manner of a genealogy: the curse, the five sons, Puru’s yes, the thousand years, the throne. In the very next breath Janamejaya asks how any of it happened, and the same story opens out in full over the scenes that follow, with Kacha and Devayani, Sharmishtha, the well and Shukra’s curse. The first telling is a register; the second is the story. Both belong to this text. Note also that the text says two things of Pururavas side by side, that the rishis’ curse destroyed him and that he was the one who brought the three sacrificial fires and Urvashi to earth. Both are kept as written.

The gist: Vaishampayana recites the written genealogy: the ten sons of Prachetas and then Daksha, whose fifty daughters went to Dharma, Kashyapa and Chandra; from Kashyapa the Adityas and Vivasvat, from Vivasvat Yama and Manu, from whom all human beings descend; Manu’s ten children and Ila, from Ila Pururavas, who brought down the fires and Urvashi and died by the Brahmanas’ curse; among his six sons Ayu, among Ayu’s four sons Nahusha, who harnessed sages to his litter and ruled like Indra; and Nahusha’s son Yayati, cursed with old age by Shukra, refused by four sons and accepted by the youngest, Puru, who learned after a thousand years that enjoyment never satisfies desire, gave Puru the kingdom, and went from the mountain of Bhrigu to heaven.

The disciple the gods sent: Kacha at Shukra’s door for the science of raising the dead, and the two deaths he came back from because Devayani asked

Janamejaya wanted the marriage explained. Tell me, he said to the ascetic before him, how our ancestor Yayati, who stands tenth from the lord of creatures, came to win the daughter of Shukra, a woman no man was supposed to be able to obtain. I want it in detail. And tell me, one after another, of the kings who founded the dynasties. Vaishampayana answered that Yayati had the splendor of Indra himself, and that the whole of it, how Shukra and how Vrishaparva each gave him a daughter with the proper rites, and how the union with Devayani in particular came about, began a long way back, in a war. The gods and the Asuras had fought again and again for the sovereignty of the three worlds and everything in them. The gods, wanting victory, installed Brihaspati, the son of Angiras, as the priest who would conduct their sacrifices. Their opponents installed the learned Ushanas in the same office. Between those two Brahmanas there was always a loud and boastful rivalry, and between their two armies there was an imbalance that no amount of courage could correct. Every Danava the gods cut down on the field was raised again by Shukra through the power of his knowledge, and came back up out of the dust and returned to the fighting. The Asuras killed celestials in the same numbers, and Brihaspati, open-minded and generous as he was, could do nothing with the bodies, because he did not know the science called Sanjivani, the raising of the dead, which Kavya of great energy knew perfectly. The gods counted their losses and understood that they were losing a war they could not lose by arms.

So they went, anxious and half afraid of the learned Ushanas, to Kacha, the eldest son of Brihaspati, and they paid court to him. Be kind to us, they said, and do us a service we regard as very great. That knowledge which lives in Shukra, a Brahmana of immeasurable prowess, make it your own as fast as you can. You will find him at the court of Vrishaparva. He always protects the Danavas and never protects us, who are their opponents. You are junior to him in age, which means you may revere him without shame, and you may also pay court to Devayani, that high-souled Brahmana’s favorite daughter. There is nobody else who can win over both of them. Gratify Devayani by your conduct, your liberality, your sweetness and your general behavior, and the knowledge will follow. Kacha said, so be it, and went to the capital of the chief of the Asuras. He found Shukra there and stood before him. Accept me as your disciple, he said. I am the grandson of the Rishi Angiras and the son of Brihaspati. My name is Kacha. If you become my preceptor I will keep the vow of a Brahmachari for a thousand years. Command me, Brahmana. Shukra said he was welcome, and that the speech was accepted, and that he would be treated with regard, because to regard the son is to regard Brihaspati. Kacha took the vow he had named and set about conciliating the two people in that house. He was young, and he could sing and dance and play several kinds of instruments, and with these he pleased Devayani, who was young herself. He brought her flowers and fruit and served her with an alacrity that never slackened, and when the two of them were alone she attended on him in turn with her songs and her sweetness while he kept his vow. Five hundred years of that vow went by in this fashion.

Then the Danavas worked out what he had come for. They had no compunction whatever about killing a Brahmana, and they were furious. One day they found him in a lonely part of the woods tending his preceptor’s cattle, and out of hatred for Brihaspati, and to keep the science of reviving the dead from traveling home in his head, they killed him there. They hacked the body into pieces and fed the pieces to jackals and wolves. At dusk the cattle came back to the fold without the man who herded them, and Devayani saw them come and went to her father. Your evening fire is lit, she said, and the sun has gone down, and the cattle have come home without the one who tends them. Kacha is nowhere to be seen. It is plain that he is lost or that he is dead, and I tell you truly, I will not live without him. Shukra said he would revive him simply by saying, let this one come. He had recourse to the science, and summoned, Kacha came tearing his way out of the bodies of the wolves that had eaten him and stood before them with a glad heart. Asked what had delayed him, he told Bhargava’s daughter the whole of it. I was dead, he said. I was coming home carrying sacrificial fuel and kusha grass and logs of wood, and I sat down under a banyan, and the cattle had been brought together and were standing in the shade of that same banyan. The Asuras saw me and asked who I was. They heard me answer that I was the son of Brihaspati, and the moment I said it they killed me and hacked me into pieces and gave what was left to jackals and wolves, and went home glad. Summoned by the high-souled Bhargava, I have come back to you fully revived. On another day, at Devayani’s asking, he went into the woods for flowers, and the Danavas saw him again. They killed him again, and this time they pounded him into a paste and mixed the paste into the water of the ocean. When he did not return the girl went to her father a second time, and the Brahmana summoned him a second time with the aid of his science, and Kacha came and told them everything exactly as it had happened.

A key to reading this (one teacher with four names, and the science everything turns on): Shukra, Ushanas, Kavya and Bhargava are all the same man in this story, the teacher of the line of Bhrigu who served as priest to the Asuras and was Devayani’s father. Sanjivani is the science that brings the dead back to life, and the whole war rested on the single fact that the Asuras’ priest had it and the gods’ priest did not. Janamejaya asked how Yayati came to marry Shukra’s daughter, and the answer begins here.

The gist: The gods were losing a war they could not lose by arms, because the Asuras’ priest Shukra raised his dead with the Sanjivani science and Brihaspati could not. To break that imbalance they sent Brihaspati’s son Kacha to Shukra as a disciple under a thousand-year vow, and he served both the teacher and the teacher’s daughter Devayani. Five hundred years in, the Danavas worked out why he had come. They killed him twice, feeding him first to wolves and then grinding him to paste and stirring him into the ocean, and both times Devayani’s insistence brought Shukra’s science down on the problem and Kacha walked back in alive.

The third death, which arrived inside the teacher himself in a cup of wine: a faint voice from within, the science handed over, and the permanent prohibition of wine for Brahmanas

The third time the Asuras killed him, burned him, reduced him to ashes, and gave the ashes to the preceptor himself, stirred into his wine. Devayani came to her father again. Kacha was sent to gather flowers, she said, and there is no sign of him anywhere. It is plain that he is lost or that he has died, and I tell you truly, I would not live without him. Shukra said, daughter, the son of Brihaspati has gone to the region of the dead. Revived by my science, he is killed again and again. What am I to do? Do not grieve and do not cry. One like you should not grieve for anything mortal. Through my prowess you are worshipped three times a day at the ordained hours of prayer by Brahmanas, by the gods with Indra among them, by the Vasus, by the Ashvins, by the Asuras, by the whole universe. It is impossible to keep him alive, since every time I revive him he is killed. Devayani answered him. Why should I not grieve, father, for one whose grandfather is old Angiras himself, whose father is Brihaspati, an ocean of ascetic merit, who is the grandson of a Rishi and the son of a Rishi too? He was a Brahmachari and an ascetic himself, always wakeful, skilled in everything. I will starve, and follow the road Kacha has gone. The handsome Kacha is dear to me, father. That speech reached the great Rishi Kavya where nothing else had, and he cried out in anger. The Asuras mean to injure me, he said, since they kill the disciple who lives under my roof. These followers of Rudra want to strip me of my character as a Brahmana by making me a partner in their crime. This crime has a terrible end. The sin of killing a Brahmana would burn Indra himself.

Then, pressed by Devayani, he began to summon the young man who had gone into the jaws of death, and the answer came from an impossible direction. Kacha, called by the science and terrified of what the answer would cost his teacher, replied faintly from inside his teacher’s stomach. Be gracious to me, lord. I am Kacha, who worships you. Treat me as you would your own beloved son. By what road, Brahmana, Shukra asked, did you get into my stomach, where you are now? I will leave the Asuras this very moment and go over to the gods. Kacha said, by your grace my memory has not failed me, and I recall everything as it happened. My ascetic merits are not destroyed, which is why I am able to bear a pain that is close to unbearable. Kavya, the Asuras killed me and burned me and ground me to powder and served me to you in your wine. While you are alive, Brahmana, the art of the Asuras will never defeat the science of a Brahmana. Shukra turned to his daughter. What good can I do you now? Kacha gets his life back only with my death. He is inside me, and there is no way for him to come out except by ripping my stomach open. Both evils will burn me like fire, Devayani said. The death of Kacha and your own death are one and the same thing to me. If Kacha dies my life goes with him, and if you die I will not be able to carry my life either. Then Shukra spoke to the voice inside him. Son of Brihaspati, you are already crowned with success, since Devayani regards you so well. Accept the science I will impart to you today, unless you happen to be Indra wearing the shape of Kacha. Nobody comes out of my stomach alive. A Brahmana, however, must not be killed. So take the science, and come into life as my son, and when you are out of my body, possessed of what I have given you and revived by me, take care that you act with grace.

Kacha received the science, ripped the stomach open, and came out like the moon on the fifteenth evening of the bright fortnight. He looked at what was left of his preceptor lying there like a heap of penances, and he used the knowledge he had just been given to raise him. Then he worshipped him and said, the one who pours the nectar of knowledge into the ears of a man who had none, as you have poured it into mine, I hold to be both my father and my mother. Remembering a service that size, who could be ungrateful enough to injure him? Those who acquire knowledge and then injure their preceptor, who is always to be worshipped, who is the giver of knowledge, who is the most precious of all precious things on earth, are hated here and go in the end to the regions of the sinful. Shukra stood there having been deceived while under the influence of wine, remembering the total loss of consciousness that drink brings with it, looking at the handsome young man he had swallowed without knowing it, and he decided to reform the manners of Brahmanas once and for all. The high-souled Ushanas rose from the ground in anger and set a limit. Any wretched Brahmana who from this day cannot resist the temptation and drinks wine shall be held to have lost his virtue, shall be reckoned to have committed the sin of killing a Brahmana, and shall be hated in this world and the next. I set this limit to the conduct and the dignity of Brahmanas everywhere. Let the honest hear it, let Brahmanas hear it, let those who respect their superiors hear it, let the gods hear it, let the three worlds hear it. Then he called in the Danavas, whom fate had deprived of good sense, and told them what they had accomplished. You fools, he said, know that Kacha has obtained what he wanted. He will live with me from now on. Having got the valuable knowledge of reviving the dead, this Brahmana has become in prowess the equal of Brahma himself. Bhargava cut his speech short there. The Danavas went home astonished, and Kacha, having stayed with his preceptor for a full thousand years, asked leave and made ready to return to the abode of the celestials.

A key to reading this (the will that will later reshape a king): Three times in this story Devayani tells her father that she will not live without Kacha, and three times that one sentence is what brings him back. The same will is about to take hold of a king’s entire life, so it is worth watching here. And the prohibition Shukra lays down on this night comes out of no debate in any school; it comes out of what happened to him, since wine is the reason he swallowed a Brahmana without knowing it.

The gist: The third time, the Asuras burned Kacha and stirred his ashes into Shukra’s wine, so that when the summons came the answer arrived from inside his teacher’s stomach. Shukra faced two deaths, the disciple’s or his own, and Devayani told him the two were the same to her. He taught Kacha the Sanjivani science, Kacha cut his way out and used it at once to revive him, and out of having swallowed a Brahmana while insensible Shukra laid a permanent prohibition of wine on all Brahmanas, told the Danavas they had lost, and kept Kacha beside him until the full thousand years were done.

A request made at the gate on the morning of departure: Kacha says that the body she came out of was also the body he came out of, and two curses are spoken face to face

A thousand years is a long apprenticeship even for the son of a god, and Kacha served every day of it. After he had cut his way out of his teacher and then raised that teacher from a heap of ash and bone, the hermitage of the Asuras settled into a quiet it had not known before. The Danavas had gone home baffled. A new rule about wine had been laid down in anger and would outlast everyone who heard it. And Kacha simply stayed, carrying firewood and water, tending the fires, keeping the vow he had come with, letting the science he had swallowed settle in him the way a seed settles in ground. Brihaspati’s son had been sent into the house of his father’s rival to steal nothing and to learn everything, and he had done it without once lying and without once striking back. When the last day of the thousand years came he bowed at Shukra’s feet and asked leave to go home to the gods, and the leave was given. He had his bundle. He had the road he had come by. He was one step from taking it when Devayani came and stood in front of him.

She did not begin with the request. She began with his lineage, which was her way of reminding him that they were not strangers and never had been. Grandson of Angiras, she said, there is no hiding what you are. It shows in your conduct, in your birth, in your learning, in your austerities, in the way you carry yourself with people who have no power over you. My father honors the great Rishi Angiras. I have honored your father the same way all my life. Knowing that, you of ascetic wealth, listen to one thing. Remember how I behaved toward you through all the years of your vow. Remember who came looking when you did not come back at evening. The vow is finished now. It is right that you should turn your heart toward me. Take my hand in the proper way, with the mantras spoken over it.

Kacha put his palms together before he answered, which was itself an answer. You are to be honored by me exactly as your father is honored, he said, and if I am truthful, more than he is. You of faultless features, you are dearer than his own life to Bhargava. As my teacher’s daughter you have been an object of my reverence every day I have lived in this house. As Shukra is always deserving of my regard, so are you, Devayani. It does not become you to say what you have just said. She did not step aside. You are the son of the son of my father’s teacher, she answered, so by your own reasoning you are equally an object of my regard and my worship, and that has not stopped me. Kacha, when the Asuras killed you, and killed you again, and killed you a third time, remember today what I felt for you. Remember my friendship, remember my affection, remember the devotion I never hid. Having remembered it, virtuous one, understand that to abandon me when I have done no wrong is not a thing you are permitted to do. I am devoted to you. That is the whole of my case.

It was the hardest place he had stood in during the entire thousand years, and he had stood inside his teacher’s stomach. Do not push me down a road that is a sin for me to walk, he said. You of the beautiful brows, be gracious to me. Large-eyed one, you whose face is as handsome as the moon, you are a greater object of regard to me than my own preceptor, and here is why I say what I am saying. The place where you once resided, the body of Kavya, has also been my dwelling. I came out of it as you came out of it. By that path you are truly my sister. The days we have spent together have been happy days, and there is a perfect good understanding between us, and I would not damage it now by pretending to a different one. I ask your leave to return to my own home. Bless me, so that the journey goes safely. When I come up in your conversation, remember me as one who did not transgress virtue. And attend on your father with a single heart, as you always have. Devayani heard him out, and when she spoke again her voice had changed. I asked, she said, and if you truly refuse to make me your wife, then, Kacha, this knowledge of yours will bear no fruit.

He did not flinch from it and he did not pretend it had not happened. I refused you only because you are my preceptor’s daughter, he said, and for no fault in you, and my preceptor laid no command on me in this matter either. Curse me if it pleases you. I have told you what the conduct of a Rishi has to be. I did not deserve your curse, Devayani, and you have given it to me anyway. You have acted out of passion and not out of any sense of duty, and so your own wish will not be fulfilled: no son of a Rishi will ever accept your hand in marriage. You have said my knowledge will bear no fruit. Let that stand. But it will bear fruit in the man I teach it to. Then that first of Brahmanas turned and went, quickly, without looking back at the house where he had spent ten centuries, and made his way to the abode of the chief of the celestials. The gods saw him coming with Indra at their head. They worshipped him first and spoke afterward, which was the correct order. You have done us a benefit past reckoning, they told him. What you have achieved is a wonder. Your fame will never die. From today you will be a sharer with us in the offerings of sacrifice.

A key to reading this (two curses, and the question that starts getting answered here): Janamejaya had asked how Yayati, a Kshatriya, came to marry Devayani, the daughter of a Brahmana. The answer begins in this scene. After Kacha’s curse no son of a Rishi could take her hand, and everything that follows in this chapter walks out through that closed door. Devayani’s curse is the narrower of the two: the science will not work for Kacha himself, and the gods still get what they sent him for, because it works for whoever he teaches. Kacha’s argument that she is his sister rests on residence rather than on blood, which is why it sounds strange at first hearing. He is saying that the body Devayani originated from is the body he was born out of a second time, and that this is close enough to count.

The gist: His thousand-year vow completed, Kacha takes his teacher’s leave and is stopped at the gate by Devayani, who asks him to marry her. He refuses twice, the second time on the ground that he was born a second time out of the body she came from, which makes her his sister. She curses him: his hard-won science will bear no fruit. He answers that she acted from passion rather than duty and curses her in return, that no Rishi’s son will ever marry her, adding that the science will work for anyone he teaches. He reaches the world of the gods, where Indra and the celestials honor him and make him a sharer in their sacrificial offerings.

A mix-up of clothes on a lakeshore opens a quarrel about whose house outranks whose: Devayani thrown down a dry well, and the king who pulled her out by the right hand

Kacha reached heaven carrying the one thing the gods had spent a thousand years trying to get, and the welcome he received was enormous. The celestials learned the science of revival from him, decided their purpose was accomplished, and went in a body to the god of a hundred sacrifices. The hour for showing your strength has come, they told him. Slay your enemies, Purandara. Maghavat said, so be it, and set out with the gods behind him. On the road something caught his eye and stopped him. There was a lake in the pleasure gardens of the Gandharva Chitraratha, and a group of young women were playing in the water, their clothes left in a heap on the bank. Indra took the form of wind and passed over that heap, and when he had finished with it nobody could have said which garment belonged to which girl. A little later the women came up out of the water and walked to the bank and took whatever came to hand. That is how Sharmishtha, the daughter of Vrishaparva, put on the garment of Devayani, having no idea it was not her own. Two girls, one borrowed robe, and a quarrel that was never really about the robe at all.

Devayani spoke first. Daughter of the Asura chief, she said, why are you taking my clothes, you who are my own disciple? You have no good conduct in you, and nothing good will come to you. Sharmishtha answered at once, with nothing held back and nothing weighed. Your father, she said, sits on the lower seat and praises my father with his eyes cast down, whether my father is sitting at his ease or stretched out at full length, exactly the way a chanter of praises does when he has been hired for the work. You are the daughter of a man who sings the fame of others, a man who asks for charity, a man who accepts alms. I am the daughter of a man who is adored, a man who gives and who has never in his life taken anything as a gift. Beggar woman, you are welcome to beat your breast, to use foul words, to swear enmity against me, to lose your temper as far as you like. An alms taker’s daughter weeps tears of anger for nothing. If I chose I could do you harm, and you could do none to me. You want a quarrel. Understand, though, that I do not count you as my equal.

Devayani heard that and her anger went past holding, and she began pulling at the garment Sharmishtha was wearing. Sharmishtha shoved her into a well that stood nearby and walked home in a fury, satisfied that the girl at the bottom of it was dead. Some time after she had gone, Yayati the son of Nahusha came to that spot. The king had been out hunting. The pair of horses harnessed to his car and the spare horse that ran beside them were all worn out, and the king himself was thirsty. He saw a well and went to it and found it dry. He looked down into it anyway, and there at the bottom was a girl whose splendor was like a fire burning. He spoke to her gently, soothing her before he questioned her. Who are you, he said, with nails as bright as burnished copper and earrings set with celestial gems? Something has shaken you badly. Why are you weeping down there in your distress? How did you come to fall into this well with its cover of creepers and long grass? Slender one, tell me truly whose daughter you are. Devayani answered him. I am the daughter of Shukra, she said, the one who brings back to life the Asuras the gods have killed, and he does not know what has happened to me. This is my right hand, king, with its nails bright as burnished copper. Take it and raise me. I know you are well born, that your conduct is good, that your prowess is great and your fame is wide. It is fitting, then, that you should lift me out of this well. The king understood that he was speaking to a Brahmana’s daughter, took hold of that right hand, and drew her up out of the pit. He looked at her a moment longer, said a few courteous words, and rode back to his capital.

When the son of Nahusha had gone, Devayani stood there in the grief of what had been done to her, and her maid Ghurnika found her. Ghurnika, she said, go quickly, waste no time, tell my father everything exactly as it happened. I am not going back into Vrishaparva’s city. Ghurnika did as she was told and ran to the mansion of the Asura chief, where she found Kavya, and her own anger had so clouded her that she came straight out with it. Great Brahmana, she said, I am telling you that Devayani has been ill used in the forest by Sharmishtha, the daughter of Vrishaparva. Kavya heard how his daughter had been treated and went out with a heavy heart to look for her in the woods, and when he found her he held her against him and spoke in a voice grief had closed up. Daughter, he said, whatever weal or woe falls on people comes from their own faults. I think you have a fault somewhere, and this is how it has been expiated. Devayani heard him out and answered. Call it a penalty, or do not call it one, she said. Either way, listen to me carefully, and hear the whole of what Sharmishtha the daughter of Vrishaparva said to me. She really did say that you are nothing more than a hired chanter of the Asura king’s praises. With her eyes red she said these piercing, pitiless things to me, over and over: you are the daughter of a man who chants the praise of others for a fee, a man who asks for charity, a man who accepts alms, and I am the daughter of a man who receives adoration, a man who gives, a man who has never accepted anything as a gift. Father, if I am truly the daughter of a hired chanter, of a man who begs and takes, then I must go and offer her my adoration in the hope of her favor. I have already told her as much.

Shukra gave her his answer. Devayani, he said, you are no daughter of a hired adorer, nor of one who asks for alms, nor of one who accepts gifts. You are the daughter of a man who adores nobody and whom all the world adores. Vrishaparva himself knows this. Indra knows it. King Yayati knows it too. That inconceivable Brahma, that Godhead nothing can stand against, is my strength. The self created one was pleased with me and said that I am forever the lord of everything that exists on Earth or in Heaven. I tell you truly, it is I who pour down the rain for the good of all creatures, and I who nourish the annual plants that keep every living thing alive. With such sweet words, and with such weight behind them, the father worked to calm a daughter who was pressed down by sorrow and gripped by anger.

A key to reading this (the right hand, and what the quarrel is actually about): The text is precise that Yayati lifted Devayani by her right hand, and she is precise in asking him to take that hand. Grasping the right hand is the gesture of marriage, and Devayani will build her claim on this king out of that one moment later in the story. The quarrel itself has nothing to do with clothing. Shukra is the priest of the Asuras and Vrishaparva is their king, so the priest sits lower and praises while the king gives, and Sharmishtha throws that arrangement in the daughter’s face. Shukra’s reply inverts it: the man who makes the rain fall is the one who holds the real lordship. Kavya, Ushanas and Shukra are three names for the same sage.

The gist: Indra, on his way to attack the Asuras, turns into wind and mixes up the clothes left on a lakeshore, and Sharmishtha puts on Devayani’s garment by mistake. The quarrel that follows is about rank, the priest’s house against the king’s house: Sharmishtha calls Devayani the daughter of a man who takes alms, then shoves her into a dry well and goes home believing she is dead. Yayati, thirsty from a hunt, finds her at the bottom, asks who she is, takes her right hand, pulls her out, and rides home. Devayani sends her maid Ghurnika to her father and refuses to enter the city again, and Shukra, who first tells her to look for the fault in herself, listens to the insult and answers that her father is the man whom all the world adores, the one whose strength brings down the rain.

The girl from the well and her father’s lesson: anger shed like a snake’s skin, and yet Shukra walks in on Vrishaparva to say he is leaving, until Sharmishtha comes out of the palace in a palanquin with a thousand maids

Devayani had come up out of the well with a king’s hand around her wrist and had gone straight to her father with the whole story, the robe, the insult, the shove, the long hours at the bottom of a dry shaft. Shukra heard her out. The first thing he said to her was about forgiveness. Understand this, Devayani, he told her: the person who pays no attention to the cruel speech of others has already conquered everything. The wise say the true charioteer is the one who never slackens his grip on the reins. In the same way the true man is the one who masters his rising anger without riding it. Whoever quietly subdues his anger as it rises has won every contest already. Whoever can shed his anger the way a snake sheds its skin, by reaching for forgiveness, deserves to be called a human being. The one who holds his anger in, who ignores the evil words of others, who does not grow angry even when there is cause, that one gains all four of the things we live for: virtue, wealth, desire, and release. Set two people side by side, one who performs a sacrifice every month for a hundred years without tiring, and one who never once feels wrath at anything, and the one without wrath stands higher. Boys and girls quarrel, he said, because they cannot yet tell right from wrong. The wise do not imitate children.

His daughter did not contradict a word of it. She also did not accept it. Father, she said, I too know the difference between anger and forgiveness and what each of them can do. But when a pupil behaves with disrespect, a teacher who truly wants that pupil’s good must never forgive it. So I no longer wish to live in a country where bad behavior is prized. A wise person who wants what is good should not live among the sinful, among people who speak ill of good conduct and good birth as a habit. One should live, and this has been called the best of all dwelling places, where good conduct and purity of birth are recognized and honored. The cruel words of Vrishaparva’s daughter are burning my heart the way men who want a fire burn dry wood. In all three worlds I can think of nothing more miserable for a person than to have no fortune of his own and to have to honor enemies who have it. The learned have said that for such a person death itself would be better. She was asking, without asking, for something specific: that her father act.

And Kavya, the foremost of Bhrigu’s line, the man who had just delivered a lecture on shedding anger like a skin, found that anger had come to him. He went to where Vrishaparva sat and spoke without weighing his words. Sinful acts, king, do not bear fruit at once the way the earth does. Slowly and secretly they uproot the ones who commit them. The fruit falls on the doer himself, or on his son, or on his grandson. Sins must bear fruit. Like heavy food they are never digested. You killed the Brahmana Kacha, grandson of Angiras, a virtuous man who knew the precepts of religion and attended to his duties, while he was living under my roof. For that killing, and for the mistreatment of my daughter as well, know this, Vrishaparva: I am leaving you and your kin. I cannot stay with you after this. Do you take me for a raving liar, Asura chief? You make light of your offense and make no attempt to correct it. Vrishaparva’s answer was immediate and complete. Son of Bhrigu, I have never once accused you of falsehood or of a lack of virtue. Virtue and truth live in you. Be kind to me. If you really leave us and go, Bhargava, we will walk into the depths of the ocean. There is nothing else left for us to do. Shukra did not soften. Go into the depths of the ocean or fly off in every direction, he said, I care little either way. What I cannot bear is my daughter’s grief. She is dear to me above everything. My life depends on her. See to it that she is pleased. As Brihaspati always seeks the good of Indra, so I have always sought yours through my austerities. The king laid everything he had on the floor between them. Bhargava, you are the absolute master of whatever the Asura chiefs possess in this world, their elephants, their cattle, their horses, and this humble self of mine. Then, said Shukra, if it is true that I am lord of all the wealth of the Asuras, go and satisfy Devayani.

He went to his daughter and told her all of it, and Devayani answered at once with a demand that was really a test. Bhargava, if you are truly the lord of the Asura king and of all his wealth, then let the king himself come and say so to my face. Vrishaparva came. Devayani of the sweet smile, he said, whatever you desire I am willing to give, however hard it may be to grant. She had her answer ready. I want Sharmishtha, with a thousand maids, to wait on me. And she must follow me to wherever my father gives me away in marriage. The king turned to a maidservant standing in attendance. Go and bring Sharmishtha here quickly, he said. Let her also carry out what Devayani wishes. The maid went to the princess and delivered the message with its edge showing: rise and follow me, gentle Sharmishtha, and do good to your relatives, for at Devayani’s urging the Brahmana is on the point of abandoning his disciples, and you, sinless one, must do what Devayani wants. Sharmishtha’s reply gave nothing away and asked for nothing. I will gladly do what Devayani wishes. Shukra is calling me at Devayani’s urging. Neither Shukra nor Devayani must leave the Asuras because of any fault of mine.

So at her father’s command she came out of his excellent mansion in a palanquin, with a thousand maidens around her, and went up to the girl she had pushed into a well. With my thousand maids I am your waiting-maid, she said, and I will follow you wherever your father gives you away. Devayani made her say it twice. I am the daughter of a man who chants your father’s praises, who begs and accepts alms, she said. You are the daughter of the one who is worshipped. How can you be my waiting-maid? Sharmishtha answered without heat. One must contribute by every means to the happiness of one’s afflicted kin. Therefore I will follow you wherever your father gives you away. When the princess had bound herself with those words, Devayani turned to Shukra. Best of excellent Brahmanas, I am satisfied. Now I will enter the Asura capital. Now I know that your science and your power are not futile. The Brahmana of great renown, hearing his daughter speak so, entered the Asura city with gladness in his heart, and the Danavas worshipped him with great reverence, which was the price, and they knew it.

A key to reading this (why a king kneels to a beggar): The Asuras have the army and the capital; Shukra has only his austerities and the science of reviving the dead. Yet it is the king who bends. His threat to walk into the ocean is a plain statement of fact, since in the war with the gods the Asura side survives only because Shukra brings its dead back to life. Devayani understands this leverage exactly, which is how a Brahmana’s daughter can demand a king’s daughter as her servant and get her. The text has Sharmishtha accept the demand herself, and the reason it gives is the protection of her clan, with no mention of fear.

The gist: Shukra teaches Devayani that forgiveness outranks anger; she answers that a teacher must never forgive a disrespectful pupil and that she will not live among the Asuras any longer. Shukra confronts Vrishaparva over the killing of Kacha and the insult to his daughter and announces that he is leaving. The king declares that everything he owns, himself included, belongs to Shukra, comes in person to ask Devayani her price, and hears it: Sharmishtha as her waiting-maid with a thousand maids, to follow her wherever she is married. Sharmishtha accepts for the sake of her kin, and Shukra reenters the Asura capital content.

The same woods a second time: a princess kneading the feet of the girl who owns her, a thirsty king who walks in on the scene, and the single sentence Shukra attaches to his blessing

Time passed, and the woods forgot nothing. Devayani came back to them for no reason except pleasure, and she came back with an escort that made the point of her new position without anyone having to say it aloud. Sharmishtha walked with her, and behind Sharmishtha walked the maids, and they all reached the same clearing and scattered through it as girls do when nobody is watching them. They drank the honey out of flowers. They ate fruit, and bit into other fruit and dropped it half eaten in the grass, and the afternoon went soft and slow around them. Devayani lay back at her ease in the middle of it, the loveliest of them by a distance nobody would have argued with, smiling at whatever was being said, and at her feet sat the daughter of the Asura king, kneading them gently, one and then the other, because that was now her work. Into this clearing, hot and out of breath and following a deer he had lost, came Yayati the son of Nahusha, for the second time in his life at exactly the wrong moment. He had come looking for water. What he found was two thousand young women in celestial ornaments with flower honey in them, and one of them reclining like a queen while a second one held her feet.

He asked the obvious question, which was who they were. Devayani answered him with a genealogy that doubled as a warning. Listen, best of men, she said. I am the daughter of Shukra, who guides the Asuras. This one beside me is my waiting maid, and she goes where I go. Her name is Sharmishtha and her father is Vrishaparva, king of the Asuras. Yayati had been raised in courts and knew what he was being told, and he asked the second question anyway, because curiosity is stronger than caution. How does the daughter of the Asura chief, a girl with those eyebrows and that complexion, come to be your maid? Everything comes out of Fate, Devayani said. Know that this too is the work of Fate, and do not marvel at it. Then she turned the interrogation around on him, and her reading of him was exact. Your features and your clothes are a king’s, she said. Your speech is as clean and correct as the Vedas. Tell me your name, where you come from, and whose son you are. He told her. While I kept the vow of Brahmacharya the whole of the Vedas came in through my ears. I am called Yayati. I am a king’s son and a king. She asked what had brought him. Lotuses, fishing, hunting? Thirst, he said. I chased deer until my throat closed and I came here looking for water, and I am very tired, and I will leave the moment you tell me to.

She did not tell him to. With my two thousand girls, she said, and with my waiting maid Sharmishtha, I am the one waiting on your word. Prosperity to you. Be my friend and my lord. A less careful man would have heard an invitation. Yayati heard a cliff edge. Beautiful one, he said, I am not worthy of you. You are Shukra’s daughter and you stand far above me, and your father would not give you even to a great king. Devayani had the argument ready, and it was a good one. Brahmanas have been joined with Kshatriyas before this, she said, and Kshatriyas with Brahmanas. You are the son of a Rishi and you are a Rishi yourself. Marry me, son of Nahusha. He held his ground on the only point that mattered to him. The four orders came out of one body, he said, and yet their duties and their purity are not equal, and the Brahmana truly stands highest of all. Then she played the piece she had been holding since the day he pulled her out of the ground. No man has ever touched this hand of mine except you, she said. That is why I have taken you for my lord. What other man is going to touch a hand that a Rishi has already taken?

What Yayati said next is the frankest sentence in the episode, and it explains the whole of his conduct. The wise know, he said, that a Brahmana is to be avoided more carefully than a furious snake full of poison, or a fire with its flames already spreading. Devayani asked him why he would say such a thing. His answer was arithmetic. The snake kills one man, he said. The sharpest weapon in the world kills one man. An angry Brahmana destroys whole cities and whole kingdoms. That is why I fear him more than either, and that is why I cannot marry you unless your father gives you to me with his own hands. Devayani let the fear stand and simply routed around it. You are chosen, she said. And it is settled that you will accept me if my father bestows me. You have nothing to be afraid of in accepting a poor creature who is given to you, since you are not the one asking for me. A maid was sent running to Shukra with the whole account of what had happened, and Shukra came, and Yayati worshipped him and then stood with his palms joined, waiting to be told what he was allowed to do.

Father, Devayani said, this is the son of Nahusha. He took hold of my hand when I was in distress. I bow to you. Give me to him. I will marry nobody else in this world. Shukra gave his answer without a pause, which suggests he had already made up his mind on the walk over. You have been accepted as her lord by this daughter of mine, he told Yayati. I bestow her on you. Take her as your wife, son of Nahusha. Yayati, who had spent the last hour explaining how much a Brahmana’s anger frightened him, asked for exactly the protection a careful king would ask for. I want a boon, Brahmana, he said, that the sin of producing a mixed caste should not touch me for doing this. Shukra absolved him on the spot. I release you from that sin, he said. Ask whatever boon you want. Do not be afraid of the marriage. Keep this slender-waisted Devayani virtuously and be happy in her company. And then, in the same even tone, he added the one sentence that the rest of Yayati’s life would break on. This other girl, Vrishaparva’s daughter Sharmishtha, is always to be treated with respect by you. But you shall never summon her to your bed. Yayati walked around the Brahmana in reverence, and the marriage was performed by the rites the scriptures lay down. He received Devayani as a treasure out of Shukra’s hands, and with her Sharmishtha and the two thousand maids, and he was honored by Shukra himself and by the Asuras, and with the Bhargava’s leave he rode home in high spirits to a capital that people compared to the city of Indra. He installed Devayani in the inner apartments. Then, at Devayani’s direction, he had a separate mansion put up for Sharmishtha near the artificial woods of Ashoka trees in his gardens, and he settled her there with a thousand maids around her, and had every arrangement made for her food and her clothing, and honored her in that fashion.

A key to reading this (the sentence everything later breaks on): The heaviest line in this scene is the one Shukra drops in almost casually at the end: treat Sharmishtha with respect, and never call her to your bed. Every disaster in the next four scenes comes out of that one prohibition and what Yayati does with it. Two smaller things are worth knowing. The numbers shift inside the source itself: Sharmishtha arrived in the previous scene with a thousand maids, here Yayati sees two thousand girls and Devayani says two thousand, and at the end a thousand are settled around Sharmishtha again. Those are the figures Ganguli gives and they have been left as they stand. And the hand is not a small thing. Yayati took Devayani by the right hand to haul her out of a dry well, and in her reckoning that grip already married them, which is why her whole argument rests on it.

The gist: Devayani returns to the same woods, now with Sharmishtha serving her, and Yayati stumbles in again looking for water. She tells him who she is, offers herself, and he refuses on the ground of rank, explaining that an angry Brahmana is more dangerous than a snake or a fire and that he will only take a bride her father hands him. Devayani sends for Shukra, who bestows her, absolves Yayati of the sin of a mixed marriage, and attaches one condition: Sharmishtha is to be honored and never summoned to his bed. The marriage is performed, and Yayati brings Devayani, Sharmishtha and the two thousand maids home, lodging Sharmishtha in a mansion of her own beside the Ashoka woods.

A son asked for in the Ashoka grove: the three arguments Sharmishtha brought that Yayati had no answer to

In the capital the years went the way years go for a man who has everything arranged. Yayati lived with Devayani in the inner apartments and the days came and went like the days of a god in his own heaven. Her season came, she conceived, and she bore a fine son. Near the artificial woods of Ashoka in the royal gardens stood another mansion, and in it lived Vrishaparva’s daughter with a thousand maids around her and every arrangement made for her food and her garments, which is to say that she was housed, fed, clothed, attended, and left alone. A thousand years turned over in that garden. At the end of them Sharmishtha came into her womanhood and knew that her season had arrived, and she sat with the arithmetic of it. Her season had come and she had chosen no husband. Devayani had become a mother. Her own youth was going to pass through her hands and leave nothing behind. She worked it out the way a woman works out a thing she has already decided: the one Devayani chose is the one she would choose, that king should give her a son, and the only question left was whether a man so careful of virtue would agree to hear her alone.

The Ashoka grove stood at the far end of the gardens, a long walk from the inner apartments where Devayani’s days were arranged around her, and that distance was the whole point of the address. A mansion had been raised there and furnished well. A thousand maids came with it. Sharmishtha, whose father ruled the Danavas and whose word had once carried across a court of Asuras, woke every morning inside an arrangement made for her rather than by her, and every article of it, the food, the garments, the attendants at the door, arrived as the courtesy a king extends to a woman who belongs to his wife. Honor of that kind has a floor and a ceiling, and she had been living in the space between them for ten centuries. What pressed on her now was narrower than pride and harder to argue with. A season arrives when it arrives and leaves when it leaves, and no rank and no thousand maids can hold it open for a woman while she waits for her position to improve. She had the run of a garden she could not walk out of by any door that counted, and she had a body keeping its own calendar, and the two had finally come due in the same week.

She was still turning it over when Yayati came wandering into the Ashoka wood with nothing in particular on his mind, saw her standing there, and stopped where he was without a word. There was nobody in the garden to see either of them. Sharmishtha came forward with her palms joined and said what she had been rehearsing. No one is permitted to look upon the women who live in the inner apartments of Soma, of Indra, of Vishnu, of Yama, of Varuna, and of you. You know already that I am handsome and that I am well born. I am asking you, king. My season has come. See that it does not go to waste. Yayati answered her carefully. He knew the honor of her birth, he said, since she came from the proud race of the Danavas, and she was gifted with beauty, and he could not see the speck of a fault anywhere in her. Then he told her the obstacle. At the time of his union with Devayani, Ushanas had laid a command on him, that the daughter of Vrishaparva was never to be summoned to his bed. Sharmishtha had an answer ready, and it came out of the law books rather than out of her longing. It has been said, she told him, that a lie is not sinful on five occasions: in the course of a joke, in the matter of women who are sought, at a marriage, in peril of immediate death, and when a man stands to lose his whole fortune. A man who declines to speak the truth when he is questioned does not fall by that alone. And then she turned his own promise over and showed him its underside. Devayani and I were both called here as companions, for the same purpose, in the same train. So when you said you would confine yourself to one of us only, that was itself a lie you spoke.

A king, Yayati said, has to be a model in the eyes of his people, and the monarch who speaks an untruth walks straight into his own destruction. For his own part he did not dare to speak one even with the greatest loss standing in front of him. Sharmishtha moved to her second line. A woman may look on her friend’s husband as her own, she said. A friend’s marriage is her own marriage. You were chosen by my friend, and by that you are as much my husband as hers. Something in him gave way at that, and he answered with the thing he had always been proudest of: it was his standing vow to grant whatever anyone asked of him, and since she was asking, let her say what he was to do. She said it plainly. Absolve me from sin. Protect my virtue. Let me become a mother by you and practice in this world the highest virtue there is. And she finished with the argument that left him nothing to hold. A wife, a slave and a son can earn no wealth for themselves; whatever they earn belongs to the one who owns them. I am Devayani’s slave. You are Devayani’s master and lord. That makes you my master and lord exactly as much as you are hers. I am asking you. Fulfill my wish. The king went through it and found every piece of it true. He honored her by protecting her virtue, and they were together for a while, and they took an affectionate leave of each other and each went back to where they had come from. In due course the lotus eyed woman bore a son with the brightness of a child of the gods and eyes like the petals of a lotus.

A key to reading this (what the text says and what it does not): Sharmishtha argues here, and the source treats what she says as argument rather than as seduction. She builds on three supports: the five occasions on which a lie is held excusable, the usage by which a friend’s husband counts as one’s own, and the rule that a wife, a slave and a son own nothing, so that whatever they earn belongs to the one who owns them. Yayati cannot get past any of the three, and the text says outright that the king found every piece of it true. The condition Shukra attached to the marriage breaks here, and everything that follows in this chapter stands on that break.

The gist: Years pass in the capital and Devayani bears her first son. A thousand years later, in the mansion by the Ashoka grove, Sharmishtha comes into her season and decides in private that she will ask for a son from the man her friend chose. Yayati wanders into the grove; she asks him with joined palms; he cites the command Shukra laid on him. She answers with three arguments: the five excusable lies, a friend’s husband being her own by usage, and the rule that a slave’s earnings belong to her owner, which makes Devayani’s lord her lord too. The king finds all of it true, honors her by protecting her virtue, and in due course she bears a son with the brightness of a child of the gods.

Three boys in the park who raised their fingers at a king, and the curse that took Yayati’s youth away in the middle of a sentence

When Devayani heard that the child had been born, jealousy went through her, and Sharmishtha became the subject of her unpleasant thinking. She went to her and asked what sin this was that she had committed by giving way to lust. Sharmishtha answered without hesitating. A Rishi had come to her, a man of virtuous soul, fully conversant with the Vedas, capable of granting boons, and she had asked him for the fulfillment of wishes founded on virtue. She would never have sought a sinful fulfillment of her desires. The child was his. Devayani said that in that case it was all right, and then asked, in the tone of a woman leaving a door open, for the Brahmana’s lineage and name and family, since she would like to hear them. In asceticism and energy, Sharmishtha said, that Rishi was as resplendent as the sun, and after seeing him there had been no need to make any such inquiries. If that is true, Devayani said, and if you really got your child from so superior a Brahmana, then I have no cause for anger. They talked a little more, they laughed, and they separated, and Devayani walked back to the palace carrying the information Sharmishtha had given her. In the years that followed Yayati begot two sons on Devayani, Yadu and Turvasu, who were like Indra and Vishnu, and Sharmishtha the daughter of Vrishaparva became by that royal sage the mother of three in all, Druhyu, Anu and Puru.

Then came the day in the park. Devayani walked with Yayati into a solitary part of the king’s great garden and found three children there of celestial beauty, playing with the total trust of children who have never been looked at by a stranger. She asked in surprise whose they were, so handsome, so like the children of the gods, and added that in splendor and in beauty she thought they looked like him. She did not wait for his answer. She turned to the boys and asked them directly: what is your lineage, who is your father, tell me truly, I want to know all of it. The three of them raised their forefingers and pointed at the king, and named Sharmishtha as their mother. Having said it, they ran at him to take hold of his knees, and in front of Devayani the king did not dare to touch them. The boys went away weeping toward their mother, and the king stood there thoroughly ashamed. Devayani had watched their faces when they saw him, and the affection in them told her everything. She turned on Sharmishtha and asked how she had dared to do her this injury while living dependent on her, and whether she had no fear of going back to that Asura way of hers. Sharmishtha did not give an inch. Everything I told you about a Rishi is perfectly true, she said. I have acted rightly and by the precepts of virtue, and that is why I have no fear of you. When you chose the king for your husband, I chose him too. A friend’s husband is by usage one’s own husband. You are the daughter of a Brahmana and you deserve my worship and my regard. Do you not know that I hold this royal sage in higher esteem still?

Devayani heard that and stood up. You have wronged me, king, she said, and I will not live here any longer. She went out with her eyes full of tears, moving fast, headed for her father, and Yayati followed her in real fear, working to talk her temper down. Her eyes stayed red and she did not stop and she did not say one word to him the whole way, and she came at last to Ushanas the son of Kavi and stood in front of him after her salutations, with Yayati saluting Bhargava immediately behind her. Father, she said, virtue has been beaten by vice. The low have risen and the high have fallen. Sharmishtha the daughter of Vrishaparva has offended me again. Three sons have been begotten upon her by this king Yayati, and I, being luckless, have only two. Son of Bhrigu, this king is famous for knowing the precepts of religion, and I am telling you, Kavya, that he has left the straight road. Shukra heard her out and turned to the king. Since you have made vice your beloved pursuit while knowing the precepts of religion perfectly well, he said, invincible decrepitude will paralyze you. Yayati answered him with the law, as he had answered Sharmishtha with it. The daughter of the Danava king asked me to make her season fruitful. I did it from a sense of virtue and from no other motive. Those who know the Vedas say that the man who is solicited by a woman in her season and does not grant her wish is called a slayer of the embryo. The man who is asked in secret by a woman full of desire and in her season, and does not go in to her, loses virtue and is called by the learned a killer of the embryo. For those reasons, son of Bhrigu, and out of anxiety to avoid sin, I went in to Sharmishtha. Shukra’s reply put the fault somewhere else entirely. You are dependent on me. You should have waited for my command. Having acted falsely in the matter of your duty, son of Nahusha, you are guilty of the sin of theft. The curse landed while he was still speaking. Yayati’s youth came off him and old age closed over him in the same moment, and he said, son of Bhrigu, I have not had my fill of my youth or of Devayani, so be gracious to me and let decrepitude keep away. I never speak an untruth, Shukra said. You are attacked by decrepitude even now. If you wish it, though, you are competent to transfer this decrepitude to another. Then command it also, Yayati said, that whichever son of mine gives me his youth shall have my kingdom and shall win both virtue and fame. Think of me, Shukra said, and you may pass this old age to whomever you like. The son who gives you his youth becomes your successor on the throne, and he will have long life, wide fame, and many children after him.

A key to reading this (what the curse actually lands on): Shukra’s curse does not settle on the act Devayani came to complain about. Yayati defends himself out of the law books, with the doctrine that a man who refuses a woman in her season is reckoned a killer of the embryo, and Shukra never contradicts it. His objection is obedience: the king was dependent on him and moved without waiting for his command, and Shukra gives that failure the name of theft. The other thing decided in this scene is the tally of sons. Devayani has two, Yadu and Turvasu. Sharmishtha has three, Druhyu, Anu and Puru. Old age has to go onto the shoulders of one of those five, and the kingdom travels with it.

The gist: Devayani hears of the birth and questions Sharmishtha, who says the father was a Rishi as bright as the sun, and the matter passes off in laughter. Devayani goes on to bear Yadu and Turvasu, Sharmishtha to bear Druhyu, Anu and Puru. One day in the park Devayani finds three boys playing and asks them their lineage; they raise their forefingers at the king and name Sharmishtha as their mother, and in front of Devayani the king does not dare to touch them. Sharmishtha holds her ground when challenged, and Devayani walks out in tears to her father. Shukra curses Yayati with decrepitude, laying the fault on his having acted without waiting for his teacher’s word, and then allows one opening: the old age can be passed to another, and the son who gives his youth will inherit the throne, long life, fame and many children.

A father comes home old and puts the same question to five sons: four refusals, four curses spoken in the same breath as the refusal, and a youngest son who says yes without arguing

Yayati came back to his capital in the chariot he had left it in, and the man who stepped down from it was not the man the city had watched ride away. Shukra’s sentence had settled into his body on the road. His hair had gone white. The skin of his face had gathered into folds. The arms that had drawn a bowstring back to the ear the previous season now shook under their own weight, and the walk from the chariot to the hall took him longer than the whole ride had. He did not call his counselors and he did not call his priests. He called his eldest son, Yadu, who was also the most accomplished of his children, and he put it to him plainly. Dear child, he said, the curse of Kavya, whom men also call Ushanas, has brought decrepitude on me, and wrinkles, and white hair. I have not yet had my fill of youth. Take this weakness of mine, Yadu, and take my old age with it. I will live in your youth for a while. When a full thousand years have gone by I will give your youth back to you and take my weakness and my old age onto myself again.

Yadu had an answer ready, and it came out as a list. There is no end to what is inconvenient about old age, he said, and it begins with drinking and eating. White hair on the head. A mind with no cheer left in it. Nerves gone slack. Wrinkles over the whole body. Limbs that lose their shape and then their strength. Flesh that wastes. The inability to do any work at all. Defeat at the hands of friends and companions, which is the last humiliation of the four. These are what old age brings, and so I will not take it, and that is my decision. You have many sons, and some of them are dearer to you than I am. You know the precepts of virtue better than any of us. Ask another son of yours to take your old age. Yayati heard him out. You came out of my own heart, he said, and you will not give me your youth. Your children, therefore, shall never be kings.

He turned to the next. Turvasu, take this weakness of mine and my old age with it, he said, and let me live in your youth. When a thousand years have passed I will hand your youth back and take my weakness and my old age from you. Turvasu did not bother with a catalogue. I have no liking for old age, father, he said. It takes away appetite and it takes away enjoyment, it takes strength and it takes beauty of person, it takes the intellect, and in the end it takes life itself. The answer his father gave him was longer than the one Yadu had received and a great deal colder. You came out of my own heart, and you will not give me your youth. Your race, Turvasu, shall die out. You will be king over people whose practices are impure and whose precepts are impure, among whom men of low blood beget children on women of high birth, who live on meat, who are mean, who take the wives of their betters without hesitating, whose behavior is the behavior of birds and beasts, who are sinful and are not Aryan.

Sharmishtha’s son Druhyu was next, and the offer was made to him in the same words with one addition, that the old age being offered destroyed complexion and beauty of body along with everything else. Druhyu answered like a young prince who had thought about what he would lose. A man in the grip of old age can take no pleasure in elephants, he said, or in chariots, or in horses, or in women, and even his voice goes hoarse in his throat. I do not want your old age. You came out of my own heart, his father told him, and you refuse me your youth, and so the desires you hold dearest will never be fulfilled. You will be a king in name only, and the country you are king of will have no roads for horses or chariots or elephants to travel, none for good carriages, none for asses or goats or bullocks, none for palanquins, and men will get from place to place in it by rafts and by floats and by swimming. Then it was Anu’s turn. Anu, take my weakness and my old age, the king said, and I will live a thousand years in your youth. Anu’s objection was a priest’s objection. The old always eat like children, he said, and they are always unclean, and they cannot pour libations into the fire at the proper hours. I do not want to take your old age. You came out of my own heart, said Yayati, and you will not give me your youth, and you find so many faults in old age. Old age will come down on you, then. Your children, Anu, will die as soon as they reach their youth. And you will not be able to perform the fire sacrifices at all.

Four sons had been asked and four had refused, and the king turned last to the youngest child in the house. You are my youngest, Puru, he said, and you shall be first of them all. The curse of Kavya, whom men also call Ushanas, has brought old age on me, and wrinkles, and white hair, and I have not yet had my fill of my own youth. Take this weakness and this decrepitude. Let me live some years in your youth, and when a thousand of them have gone I will give your youth back and take my old age onto myself again. Puru answered with his head down, and the answer took only a moment. I will do as you command me, he said. I will take your weakness and your old age. Take my youth, and enjoy the pleasures of life in whatever way you please. Covered over with your old age, grown old myself, I will go on living as you order me to live, with my youth in your keeping. Yayati looked at him for a while. I am satisfied with you, Puru, he said, and being satisfied I tell you this, that the people of your kingdom shall have every desire of theirs fulfilled. Then the great ascetic turned his mind to Kavya, and the white hair and the folded skin and the shaking arms went out of his own body and into the body of his son.

A key to reading this (five sons, two mothers, and curses that hardened into geography): Yadu and Turvasu are Devayani’s sons. Druhyu, Anu and Puru are Sharmishtha’s, and Puru is the youngest child in the house. Succession in this chapter is settled by the answer given rather than by the order of birth, because Shukra had already fixed the terms: whichever son handed over his youth would inherit the throne, and would have long life, wide fame and many descendants. The four curses do double work in the epic. They are a father speaking in anger, and they are also the text’s own account of why the later map looks the way it does. The line of Yadu, in which Krishna is eventually born, never holds the imperial throne, and the reason given here is Yadu’s refusal. The regions and the customs assigned to Turvasu, Druhyu and Anu point toward the places their descendants later occupy. The language of the curse against Turvasu is kept as the source gives it, because it belongs to a furious old man in a hall and not to the narrator.

The gist: Aged by Shukra’s curse, Yayati comes home and asks each of his five sons the same thing, that one of them take his old age for a thousand years and lend him his youth. Yadu, Turvasu, Druhyu and Anu each refuse, each with his own reasoning, and each collects a curse in the same breath as the refusal: Yadu’s children will never be kings, Turvasu’s race will die out, Druhyu will be a king in name over a roadless country, and Anu’s children will die as they come into their youth. Puru, the youngest, agrees without arguing, and Yayati fixes his mind on Kavya and moves his old age into his son’s body.

A thousand years that went by in one breath: Vishvachi in Alaka and on Meru, and the sentence with which Yayati handed the youth back, that appetite fed is appetite enlarged, the way fire is enlarged by butter

The exchange took effect the moment Yayati thought of Kavya, and what came over the king was relief so complete it felt like a second birth. He went back to the pursuits he loved, each one in its proper season, as far as desire went and as far as strength allowed, and he arranged his days so that every pleasure yielded the most it could yield. Understand, though, what the record says about those years, because the record is careful. In all of it he never once acted against the precepts of his religion, which is what a king owes the office he holds. The gods he satisfied with sacrifices and the ancestors with the offerings due to them. The poor he satisfied with gifts, and the excellent Brahmanas by granting whatever they came to ask for. Anyone entitled to the rites of hospitality got food and drink at his door. The Vaishyas he satisfied with protection and the Shudras with kindness, and criminals he held down with punishments proportioned to what they had done. Section by section he kept his people content, and he guarded them virtuously, the way a second Indra would have guarded them. He had the prowess of a lion, he had youth, and he had within reach every object a man could want. By every measure available he was happy. One thing alone put a splinter in it, and the splinter never worked its way out: a thousand years is a number, and numbers end.

He knew the mysteries of time. The small divisions, the kalas and the kashthas by which the hours are counted out, ran in his head the way a musician keeps a cycle, and he spent each moment at the exact rate it was worth. Through those years the celestial woman Vishvachi went with him. Some seasons they passed in the garden of Indra, where every flowering happens at once and nothing waits its turn. Some they passed in Alaka, the city of the lord of treasures, and some on the northern summit of Meru, where the air itself is said to be different. It is worth stopping on that picture for a moment. The man on the mountain with an Apsara beside him and a thousand years of borrowed youth on his body was the same man who had once stood at the mouth of a dry well in a hunting forest, thirsty, and had reached down and taken a Brahmana girl by the right hand because there was no other way to get her out. Everything that followed, the marriage, the warning, the second woman in the house near the Ashoka grove, the three boys who pointed at him when they were asked who their father was, the curse that turned his hair white in an afternoon, had brought him here. And here the count was running down.

When he saw that the thousand years stood full, the king sent for Puru. What he said to him is the center of the whole chapter, and he said it plainly. With your youth, he told his son, I have enjoyed the pleasures of life, each in its season, to the full extent of my desire and the limit of my power. Learn this from it. Our desires are never gratified by indulgence. Fed, they flare up the way fire flares when the sacrificial butter goes into it. Suppose one man owned everything this earth produces, all her paddy and her barley, her silver and her gold and her gems, her animals and her women, that man would still not be content. The thirst for enjoyment is therefore a thing to be given up. Real happiness belongs to those who have thrown off the thirst for worldly objects, and the wicked and the sinful find it the hardest thing in the world to throw off. It does not weaken as life weakens. It is the fatal disease of a human being, and it is called by its right name only at the end. My own heart has been fixed on these objects for a full thousand years, and my thirst has increased every day of them and has not once abated. So I will cast it off now. I will fix my mind on Brahma and spend what is left of my days in the forest, among the innocent deer, with no heart for anything the world keeps. And I am satisfied with you, Puru. Prosperity be yours. Take back this youth of yours, and take the kingdom with it. Of all my sons you are the one who did me the greatest service.

Then Nahusha’s son took back his decrepitude, and Puru took back his own youth, and the wrinkles and the white hair went where they had come from. Yayati’s intention was to install this youngest son on the throne, and at that the four orders, with the Brahmanas at their head, came before him and put the objection that anybody in the kingdom would have put. How can you bestow the kingdom on Puru, they asked, passing over your eldest son Yadu, who was born of Devayani and is therefore the grandson of the great Shukra? Yadu is your eldest. Turvasu was born after him. Of Sharmishtha’s sons the first is Druhyu, then Anu, and then Puru. By what reasoning does the youngest deserve the throne while all his elder brothers stand there? We put this before you. Conform to virtuous practice.

Yayati answered them without raising his voice, and the answer is a definition rather than a defense. Hear from me, he said, why my kingdom should not go to my eldest. My commands were disobeyed by my eldest son, Yadu. The wise hold that a man who disobeys his father is no son of his. The son who does what his parents bid, who seeks their good, who is agreeable to them, that one is the best of sons. I was disregarded by Yadu, and by Turvasu as well. By Druhyu and by Anu I was disregarded a great deal. By Puru alone was my word obeyed, and by him I was much regarded. The youngest shall therefore be my heir. He took my decrepitude onto his own body. Puru is my friend, and he did the thing that was agreeable to me. Shukra himself, the son of Kavi, laid it down that whichever of my sons obeyed me would be king after me and would bring the whole earth under his sway. I ask you, then, let Puru be installed. The people gave way at once, and their reply has its own dignity: it is true, O king, that a son who is accomplished and who seeks the good of his parents deserves prosperity even when he is the youngest, so Puru, who did this good thing, deserves the crown, and since Shukra himself has commanded it we have nothing further to say. So the son of Nahusha, addressed by a contented people, put Puru on the throne, performed the ceremonies that initiate a man into the life of the woods, and not long after walked out of his own capital with Brahmanas and ascetics for company. From the five brothers came five peoples. The sons of Yadu are known as the Yadavas. Those of Turvasu came to be called the Yavanas, those of Druhyu the Bhojas, and those of Anu the Mlechchhas. The progeny of Puru are the Pauravas, and it is among the Pauravas, Janamejaya, that you were born, to rule a thousand years with your passions wholly in your own control.

A key to reading this (five names that start here): In a single closing paragraph the epic lays down half of its own map. Yadu’s line becomes the Yadavas, into which Krishna and Balarama will be born. Turvasu’s becomes the Yavanas, Druhyu’s the Bhojas, Anu’s the Mlechchhas, and Puru’s the Pauravas, out of whom come Kuru and eventually the king who is sitting and listening to this account. The curses the four elder brothers took in the previous scene travel forward inside those names. Vishvachi is an Apsara and not a wife; Devayani and Sharmishtha are both in Hastinapura through these thousand years. Kalas and kashthas are the smallest units by which time is measured, and saying that Yayati knew them is the text’s way of saying he spent every instant deliberately.

The gist: Wearing Puru’s youth, Yayati enjoys a thousand years without once stepping outside his religion, discharging every obligation he owes gods, ancestors, Brahmanas, guests and subjects, and ranging with the Apsara Vishvachi from Indra’s garden to Alaka to the summit of Meru. When the term runs out he calls Puru, hands back both the youth and the kingdom, and tells him that appetite is never satisfied by indulgence, that it flares like fire fed with butter, and that it is the fatal disease of a human being. The four orders object that the youngest is being raised over four elder brothers, and Yayati replies that a son who disobeys his father is no son. Puru is installed, Yayati leaves for the forest, and the five brothers become the Yadavas, Yavanas, Bhojas, Mlechchhas and Pauravas.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Adi Parva (Adivansavatarana and Sambhava sub-books). This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections LIX-XCV (59-95); 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.