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The asylum of Vaka Dalbhya, where a king’s realm was poured into the fire, and Yayata, where the river ran milk
The next place on the bank was loud with the chanting of the Vedas before Balarama could see it. That sound is the surest sign of an inhabited asylum, and this one belonged to Vaka of Dalbhya’s line, an ascetic who had dried up his own body with austerities and who had once, in a towering rage, taken the kingdom of Dhritarashtra, son of Vichitravirya, and offered it into the fire as though a kingdom were a handful of grain. Balarama bathed in the tirtha there. Standing in the water, the son of Rohini was told the history of the fire pit at that spot, and it runs as follows.
Long before, the Rishis who lived in the forest of Naimisha undertook a sacrificial session that was to last twelve years. Within that long session a particular rite called the Vishvajit was completed, and when it was over the sages set out for the country of the Panchalas to ask the king there for the fee that a finished sacrifice requires. They wanted twenty-one calves of good condition. Vaka Dalbhya, foremost among those Brahmins and a man of great energy, called them together before they set out and told them to divide his own animals among themselves, since he intended to go to some great king and ask for more. Then he went to Dhritarashtra and asked him for a few head of cattle. He had chosen his moment badly. In those days the cows of that excellent king were dying for no reason anyone could name, one after another, with no disease to point to and no remedy to apply, and a king watching his herds go down like that is in no condition to hear a request. Dhritarashtra answered him in front of the assembled court. Wretch of a Brahmin, he said, take these dead animals if you like them. The words went into the sage the way a splinter goes into a hand. He was a man who knew what the law required of a king toward a Brahmin who came asking, and he stood there turning the sentence over. What a cruel thing to have said to me, he thought, and in the open court. Then the rage came up in him, and he set his mind on the destruction of King Dhritarashtra.
He did not curse. He did something slower and more thorough. He cut the flesh from those dead animals, kindled a fire on a tirtha of the Sarasvati, and began to pour the pieces in as oblations for the ruin of Dhritarashtra’s kingdom. That is the whole of it. A man of rigid vows, sitting by a river with a fire in front of him, feeding a dead cow into it piece by piece, and the realm of a living king going into the flame with every piece. The rite was performed in the proper order and with the proper words, and as soon as it was properly begun the kingdom started to fail. It went down the way a great forest goes down in front of men with axes, not all at once, but visibly, day after day, a clearing where there had been trees. Calamity followed calamity. The realm lost its prosperity and then began to lose its life. The king saw it happening to him and could not account for it. He consulted the Brahmins of his court and made great efforts to relieve the country of the affliction, and nothing he did made the smallest difference, and the kingdom went on wasting. His spirit failed. The Brahmins around him were in grief. When it became plain that he could not save his own realm by any means known to him, he put the question to his counselors, and it was they who remembered the thing he had forgotten, the morning in court, the dead cows, the sentence he had thrown at a man who had come to ask. The Muni Vaka is pouring your kingdom into the fire with the flesh of those animals, they told him. That is why the wasting is so great, and the whole of this calamity is the fruit of his penance. Go to the bank of the Sarasvati, find him beside a pool of water there, and make your peace with him.
The king went. He found the ascetic where they had said he would be, and he fell at his feet and touched them with his head and joined his hands and said what was left for him to say. I make my peace with you, holy one, forgive the wrong I did you. I am a fool and without understanding, a wretch who was governed by greed. You are my refuge and you are my protector. Be gracious to me. There is no argument in it and no bargaining, and Vaka, seeing him in that state, sunk in grief and lamenting aloud, was moved to pity and released the kingdom. He let his anger go. He lit the fire again and poured the oblations that set the realm free, and when the kingdom was out of danger he took the cattle he had been given in those bad days, which were a great many, and went back to the forest of Naimisha with a satisfied mind. Dhritarashtra, who was a generous man and a righteous one whatever he had said on a bad morning, returned to his prosperous capital with a satisfied mind of his own.
That same tirtha holds a second history. Brihaspati, the preceptor of the gods, had also poured flesh into the fire there, for the destruction of the Asuras and the prosperity of the dwellers in heaven, and the Asuras began to waste under it exactly as the kingdom had wasted, until the gods, who wanted victory in battle, came and finished them. Balarama heard both accounts standing in the same water. He gave the Brahmins there what the occasion asked for and gave it in the proper manner, horses and elephants, carriages drawn by mules, costly gems, a great deal of wealth and a great deal of grain, and then that mighty-armed one of great energy went on to the tirtha called Yayata.
That is where the Sarasvati flowed milk and clarified butter at the sacrifice of the high-souled Yayati, the son of Nahusha. The river gave what a river does not have to give, because the man performing the sacrifice was what he was, and Yayati, best of men, went to heaven from that spot with a satisfied heart and obtained many regions of merit. Later he performed a second sacrifice at the same place, and the river did something quieter and stranger. She had seen the greatness of his heart and the steadiness of his devotion to her, and she gave every Brahmin invited to that sacrifice whatever he had wished for in his own mind and told nobody. She gave it to each man where he sat. Houses, beds, food of the six kinds of taste, and much else besides, arriving in front of men who had not spoken a word of request aloud. The Brahmins took the whole of it for the king’s munificence and praised him for it and pronounced their blessings on him, and the king was praised for gifts he did not know he had made. The gods and the Gandharvas were gratified by the abundance of that sacrifice and men who saw it were filled with wonder. From there Balarama went on, that master of his senses, restrained and pure in heart, who carries the palm on his banner and who was always giving away the best of what he had, toward the tirtha with the violent current, the one called Vasishthapavaha.
A key to reading this (which Dhritarashtra, and what the fee was for): The source names this king in plain words as the son of Vichitravirya, which makes him the blind Kuru king of the main story, and the chronology of the pilgrimage does not sit comfortably with that. Nothing has been adjusted here. The Vishvajit is a particular rite completed inside the twelve-year session, and the fee the sages go to collect is the dakshina, the payment owed to the officiating priests when a sacrifice is finished, which is why they arrive at a court asking for calves. Yayata takes its name from Yayati, the king whose story of borrowed youth was told at length in the Galava episode.
The gist: Balarama reaches the asylum of Vaka Dalbhya, where a sage insulted in open court answered by pouring a king’s realm into a fire with the flesh of the dead cows he had been offered, and where the same sage gave the realm back when the king came and fell at his feet. Brihaspati destroyed the Asuras at that tirtha by the same method. Further on lies Yayata, where the Sarasvati ran milk and butter at Yayati’s sacrifice and silently gave the invited Brahmins everything they had only wished for, letting the king take the credit. Balarama gives his gifts and goes on toward Vasishthapavaha.
Vasishthapavaha, where the river was made to choose between two sages and was cursed to run with blood
Janamejaya stopped the recital there. Why is the current of the tirtha called Vasishthapavaha so rapid, he said, and for what reason did the foremost of rivers bear Vasishtha away? What, lord, was the cause of the dispute between Vasishtha and Vishvamitra? I have asked you, and you have great wisdom, so tell me the whole of it. I am never satisfied with hearing you.
A great enmity arose between Vishvamitra and Vasishtha, Vaishampayana said, out of their rivalry in ascetic austerities, and nothing else. The high abode of Vasishtha stood in the tirtha called Sthanu on the eastern bank of the Sarasvati, and directly across the water, on the opposite bank, was the asylum of the intelligent Vishvamitra. That arrangement is the whole engine of the story. Two men of enormous power, each of whom could see the other’s fire at evening, each of whom knew to the day how long the other had been sitting. The place itself was old and holy before either of them came to it. Sthanu, which is a name of Mahadeva, had practised the most severe penances at that spot, and the sages still speak of those fierce feats. Having performed a sacrifice there and worshiped the river Sarasvati, Sthanu established the tirtha, and it has been called Sthanu-tirtha since. It was in that same tirtha, in the old days, that the celestials installed Skanda, the slayer of the enemies of the gods, in the supreme command of their army. To that tirtha the great Rishi Vishvamitra brought Vasishtha by the force of his austerities, and the manner of the bringing is what Janamejaya had asked about.
Every day the two ascetics challenged each other, in earnest, on the question of whose penances stood higher. Vishvamitra burned at the sight of Vasishtha’s energy. He was devoted to the performance of his own duties and he kept to them, and the resolution he formed while keeping to them was this: the Sarasvati shall quickly bring that foremost of ascetics to me by the force of her current, and once he has been brought here I shall kill him, and there will be no doubt about it. Having settled that, the great Rishi, with his eyes red in anger, called the river to mind. Being remembered in that way by such a man, she was thrown into agitation at once, and she came. She came to a Rishi of great energy and great wrath, and she stood in front of him pale and trembling with her hands joined, afflicted like a woman who has lost her powerful husband, and she asked him what there was that she could do for him. He was full of rage and he did not soften it. Bring Vasishtha here without delay, he said, so that I may kill him.
The river heard the sentence and understood the position she had been put in. She trembled exceedingly, lotus-eyed, her hands still joined, like a creeper shaken by wind. Seeing the great river in that state, the ascetic said it again and added the words that took her last refuge away: bring Vasishtha into my presence, and have no scruple about it. So she went to Vasishtha and told him exactly what the intelligent Vishvamitra had said. She was in terror of both of them. She knew the power of Vasishtha, which had no rival on earth, and she knew the temper of the man who had sent her, and she trembled again and again with her whole mind fixed on the curse that either of them might pronounce on her. Whatever she did next, one of these two would have cause to destroy her. Vasishtha, foremost of men and righteous in his soul, looked at her standing there pale and sunk in anxiety, and he said the thing that solved it.
Save yourself, foremost of rivers, he said. You of the rapid current, bear me away, or Vishvamitra will curse you. Do not feel any scruple about it. The compassion in that was not lost on her. Hearing it, the river began to consider what course would be best, Kauravya, and the thought that arose in her mind was that Vasishtha was showing her great compassion and that it was proper for her to serve him. Then she watched the two banks and waited for her moment. She saw that best of Rishis on her bank engaged in the silent recitation of mantras, and she saw the son of Kushika on the other side engaged in his homa, both of them occupied, both of them with their attention inward, and she thought, this is my opportunity. That foremost of rivers then threw her current at one of her own banks and washed it away, and in washing it away she carried Vasishtha off with it.
He praised her while he was being borne along. From the lake of the Grandsire you have taken your rise, Sarasvati, he said, and this whole universe is filled with your excellent waters. Wending through the firmament, goddess, you give your waters to the clouds. All the waters are you. Through you we exercise our faculty of thought. You are Pushti and Dyuti, you are Kirti and Siddhi and Uma, you are Speech and you are Svaha, and this whole universe depends on you, and it is you who dwell in all creatures in four forms. Praised in that way by the great Rishi, the river carried the Brahmin swiftly toward the asylum of Vishvamitra and announced the arrival, over and over, to the man who had demanded it.
Vishvamitra saw Vasishtha delivered in front of him and filled with rage began hunting about for a weapon to kill the Brahmin with. That was the moment the river had been dreading, and she acted while he was still searching. Rather than witness a Brahmin’s slaughter and be the instrument of it, she took Vasishtha up again and bore him quickly back to her eastern bank. She had obeyed the words of both men. She had brought Vasishtha as she was ordered, and she had saved him as he had asked, and in doing both she had deceived the son of Gadhi, which she knew when she did it. Vishvamitra watched that best of Rishis carried away out of his reach and turned his wrath on her. Since you have gone away and deceived me, foremost of rivers, he said, let your current be changed into blood, the kind that Rakshasas find acceptable. Cursed by the intelligent Vishvamitra, the Sarasvati flowed for a whole year carrying blood mixed with her water. The gods and the Gandharvas and the Apsaras saw the river reduced to that condition and were filled with great sorrow. For that reason the tirtha came to be known on earth as Vasishthapravaha, and in time the foremost of rivers recovered her own proper condition.
A key to reading this (the names, and a rite told twice): Sthanu is a name of Mahadeva, which is how the tirtha got its own name. The son of Kushika and the son of Gadhi are both Vishvamitra, since Gadhi was the son of Kushika, and the source uses the two patronymics interchangeably in the space of a few lines. The tirtha is likewise given in two forms here, Vasishthapavaha and Vasishthapravaha, and they are one place. Worth marking as well: this passage puts the installation of Skanda as commander of the celestial army at Sthanu-tirtha. The epic tells that investiture more than once and the details are not the same in every telling.
The gist: Two ascetics living on facing banks challenged each other daily over their penances until Vishvamitra decided to have the river deliver his rival to him for killing. The Sarasvati, caught between two men who could each curse her, is told by Vasishtha himself to save herself and carry him. She waits until both sages are occupied, washes away her own bank, and takes him. He praises her as she carries him. When Vishvamitra starts looking for a weapon she carries Vasishtha back to the eastern bank, and for that deception she is cursed to run with blood for a year, which is how the tirtha got its name.
The Rakshasas who drank at the cursed ghat, the sages who came on pilgrimage, and the new branch called Aruna
Cursed in anger by the intelligent Vishvamitra, Vaishampayana said, the Sarasvati went on flowing through that auspicious and excellent tirtha with blood in her current. A ghat that had been used for bathing and for the evening prayer now turned the stomach of anyone who came to it. The water that gods and Gandharvas had stepped into had changed color, and the change did not lift with the season or the year. What arrived instead were Rakshasas. Many of them came, Bharata, and they settled there and lived happily on the blood that flowed, and no ascetic frightened them off, and no vow bound them, and a curse laid on a river who had done nothing wrong became for them a windfall they had not asked for and did not intend to give up. Thoroughly gratified with that blood, cheerful and free of anxiety of any kind, they danced and laughed on that bank like people who have earned their way into heaven. It went on for a full year. The gods and the Gandharvas and the Apsaras grieved over the sight and none of them undertook to break the curse.
After some time had passed, sages possessed of the wealth of asceticism came to the Sarasvati on a journey through her tirthas. Those foremost of Munis had bathed in all of them and obtained great happiness by it, and they were looking for more merit, which is the appetite that keeps a pilgrimage moving. At last they came to the tirtha where the Sarasvati ran a bloody current. They arrived at that frightful place, highly blessed men on an ordinary morning of their journey, and they saw water mixed with blood and innumerable Rakshasas drinking it. A pilgrim who has bathed his way down a holy river for months has a settled idea of what the next ghat will look like, and this one broke it. What they did not do was leave. Those ascetics of rigid vows made great efforts to rescue the Sarasvati from that condition. They invoked the foremost of rivers where they stood and asked her their question. Tell us the reason, auspicious lady, why this lake in you has been afflicted with such distress. When we have heard it we shall make our effort to restore it. Trembling as she spoke, the Sarasvati told them everything that had happened, and they heard out the whole account, the rivalry, the order, the impossible choice, the deception, the sentence. Seeing her afflicted with grief, and understanding that no fault in it had been hers, the ascetics answered her. We have heard the reason. We have heard of your curse, sinless lady. Every one of us will exert himself. Having said that to the foremost of rivers, they consulted among themselves and agreed on it in plain terms: all of us shall free the Sarasvati from her curse.
Then those Brahmins worshiped Mahadeva, lord of the universe and protector of all creatures, with penance and vows and fasts and many kinds of abstinence and painful observance, and by that they emancipated the divine Sarasvati, foremost of rivers. The water ran clean again, and the bank where it ran looked like an ordinary bank of the Sarasvati once more. And the moment it did, the consequence that nobody in the story had planned for arrived at the ascetics’ feet. The Rakshasas who had made their home on that bank were left with nothing to eat. Afflicted with hunger, they came to the very Munis who had taken their food away and sought protection from them, and with joined hands they said it again and again. All of us are hungry. We have swerved from eternal virtue. That our behavior is sinful is not a thing we chose. Through the absence of your grace, through our own evil acts, and through the sexual sins of our women, our demerits increased and we became Brahma-Rakshasas. In the same way, among Vaishyas and Shudras and Kshatriyas, those who hate Brahmins and injure them become Rakshasas. Best of Brahmins, make some arrangement for our relief. You are competent to relieve all the worlds. There is a strangeness in the picture that the source does not comment on and does not need to. Creatures who had spent a year drinking the blood of a cursed river were standing with their hands joined in front of the men who had purified it, admitting in open speech that they had fallen away from virtue, and asking those men for a way to live.
The ascetics heard them out and praised the great river, and then, with rapt minds, they made the arrangement that had been asked for. What they settled on was a ruling about food, which assigned these creatures a portion that no careful household would want to keep anyway, so that the relief of one party cost the other nothing. Food that has been sneezed over, food in which there are worms and insects, food that has been mixed with the leavings of other dishes, food with hair in it, food with tears in it, food that has been trodden upon, all of that shall be the portion of these Rakshasas. The learned man who knows this shall carefully avoid such food, and whoever takes it shall be considered to have eaten the food of Rakshasas. Having purified the tirtha in this way, the ascetics then asked the river herself to complete the relief of those creatures. Understanding the view of those great Rishis, that foremost of rivers, bull among men, caused her body to assume a new shape called Aruna, a fresh branch of her own water. The Rakshasas bathed in it and cast off their bodies there and went to heaven. When all this became known, the chief of the celestials, Indra of a hundred sacrifices, came and bathed in that foremost of tirthas himself, and was cleansed of a grievous sin.
A key to reading this (whose account it is, and what Aruna is): The explanation of how these creatures became Rakshasas is spoken by the Rakshasas about themselves, not delivered as a verdict by the sages, and the source puts it in their mouths. It has been left there. The list that follows is a catalogue of ritual impurity in food as that age reckoned it, and its practical point is a rule of avoidance for the householder. Aruna is not a separate river; it is a new branch that the Sarasvati brings out of her own body, and bathing in it is what finally releases the Rakshasas.
The gist: Rakshasas settle on the cursed stretch and feast on the blood for a year while the gods look on and do nothing. Sages on a tirtha journey arrive, ask the river what has been done to her, hear the whole story, and free her by worshiping Mahadeva with penance and fasting. The Rakshasas, starving now, take refuge with those same sages, who assign them the portion of food that ritual impurity has spoiled and then ask the river to finish the work. She brings out a new branch called Aruna, the Rakshasas bathe in it and go to heaven, and Indra bathes at the same tirtha and is cleansed of a grievous sin.
Neither Wet Nor Dry, Neither Night Nor Day: The Treaty Indra Broke, and the Head That Would Not Stop Calling
Janamejaya had been listening to the merits of a river, and he stopped the recitation on a single word. The guilt of killing a Brahmin, he said. You have told us that Indra washed it away at that confluence. Tell us how the king of the gods came to carry such a thing in the first place, and how water could take it off him. Vaishampayana answered that the story went back a long way, to a time when the gods had an enemy they could not reach. His name was Namuchi. He was an Asura, and he was clever enough to understand that the danger to him was specific: it was Vasava, and Vasava alone, who would eventually come for him. So Namuchi did something no army could answer. He went into a ray of the sun and sat there. A ray of the sun is not a fortress that can be broken or a cave that can be dug out. It is light. There is nothing in it to strike, nothing in it to besiege, and no gate in it to force. Indra stood below it with the thunderbolt in his hand and had no use for the thunderbolt at all.
What Indra did instead was patient and cold. He offered friendship. He climbed up to that ray and spoke to the Asura as one great being to another, and he swore an oath, and the oath was built with the care of a man building a trap. Best of Asuras, he said, my friend, we will not kill you with anything wet, and we will not kill you with anything dry. We will not kill you in the night, and we will not kill you in the day. We swear this to you by truth itself. Namuchi weighed it. Every avenue of harm he could think of ran through one of those four doors, and Indra had just sealed all four with the strongest word a god possesses. So Namuchi came down out of the light and walked in the world again, a free creature under a guarantee, and for a while nothing happened at all. That waiting is the part of the story that most people forget. The oath was not broken in a burst of temper. It was kept, day after day, until the day that was not a day arrived.
One morning Indra saw a fog. He went out into it and gathered up the foam that rides on moving water, and with that foam he cut off Namuchi’s head. The text says only those two things, the fog and the foam, and it leaves the reader to put them together with the four sealed doors. What it does not leave open is the consequence. The head came off, and the head did not fall. It rose, and it followed him. Wherever Indra went, that head went a little behind him and a little to the side, close enough to be heard clearly, and it called out the same two words without stopping. Slayer of a friend, it said. Wretch. Indra was the lord of heaven and could travel anywhere in three worlds, and there was nowhere in the three worlds where the voice thinned out. A punishment that can be outrun is a punishment with an end. This one moved at his own speed. He endured it, and then he could not endure it, and he went to the Grandsire and stood in front of him and told him everything, and the telling came out in grief rather than in the voice of a king.
Brahma did not argue with him about the oath, and did not excuse it either. He gave him a procedure. Perform a sacrifice, he said, and then bathe with the proper rites in the Aruna, which is the crossing that carries people over the fear of sin. The sages have made that water holy. There is something about the place that you should know. The river was there long before anyone could find it, hidden at its own site, and it stayed hidden until the divine Sarasvati came to the Aruna and poured herself in and filled it. Where those two run together the ground is as sacred as ground gets. Sacrifice there, give away a great deal, and go under the water, and what you are carrying will come off you. Indra did all of it. He performed sacrifice after sacrifice in that house of the Sarasvati, he gave until the giving was worth remembering, he completed the rites that had been prescribed, and then he went down into the Aruna. He came up clean. The sin born of a Brahmin’s death was off him, and the lord of heaven went back to heaven with a light heart. The head fell into the same stream. That detail is easy to read past and it is the point of the whole episode: the water did not take a side. Namuchi, who had been cheated out of a guaranteed life by a form of words, obtained many eternal regions there, the kind that grant whatever is wished for in them, and the voice stopped because the one who owned it had been paid.
Ages later Baladeva came to that same confluence on his way along the river, and he bathed where Indra had bathed and gave away what a man of his standing gives, and the merit of it was considerable. From there he went on to the great crossing that belongs to Soma. Soma performed the Rajasuya sacrifice at that spot in the old days, and the Hotri at that sacrifice, the one who called the gods down into it, was the great and deep-minded Atri, first among Brahmins. Sacrifices of that size change the weather of the world around them. When this one ended, the gods on one side and the Danavas, the Daityas and the Rakshasas on the other fell into a war so large that it kept its own name afterward, and the name it kept was that of the Asura Taraka. In that war Skanda killed Taraka. In that same hour the destroyer of the Daityas, Mahasena, was given command of the armies of heaven, which is the appointment Janamejaya is about to ask him to explain in full. A giant ashvattha tree stands in that crossing. Kartikeya, whom people also call Kumara, lives under its shade in person, and has not left.
A key to reading this (names, and one silence): Vasava, Shakra and the slayer of Vala are all Indra. Mahasena, Kartikeya and Kumara are all Skanda. The Aruna is a form the Sarasvati took on for the sake of the sages, which is why bathing at the meeting of the two counts as bathing in her. One thing the source declines to spell out, and this telling declines with it: fog belongs to neither day nor night, and the foam of water is neither wet nor dry. The text says that Indra saw a fog and used foam, and stops there. How an oath can be kept to the letter and broken through the middle is left where the epic left it, with the reader.
The gist: Janamejaya asks how Indra came to carry the guilt of killing a Brahmin. The answer is a treaty. Namuchi hid inside a ray of the sun where no weapon could reach him, so Indra befriended him and swore not to kill him with anything wet or dry, by night or by day. Then Indra found a fog, took up the foam of water, and cut off his head. The head chased him through three worlds calling him a friend killer, until Brahma sent him to the place where the Sarasvati had poured herself into the hidden Aruna. Indra sacrificed, gave, bathed, and came up clean, and the head fell into the same water and won eternal regions of its own. Balarama bathes at that confluence and moves on to the crossing of Soma, where Soma held the Rajasuya with Atri as Hotri, where the war named for Taraka was fought, where Skanda killed Taraka and took command of the armies of heaven, and where a giant ashvattha still shelters Kumara.
Six Mothers, a Mountain Turned to Gold, and the Question Answered in Four Bodies at Once
Janamejaya would not let the river carry the story any further. You have given us the merits of the Sarasvati, he said, and now give us Kumara. He wanted it exactly: when the investiture happened, where it happened, by what method, who performed it, who did the actual rites, and how the commander of heaven went on to cut the Daityas to pieces. Vaishampayana told him the curiosity suited a man born in Kuru’s line, and began at the beginning, which is not a birth in any ordinary sense. The vital seed of Maheshvara came out of him and fell into a blazing fire. Agni eats everything that exists; that is his entire nature and his entire office. He could not burn this. What happened instead was that the seed began to work on him. The carrier of offerings filled up with an energy and a brilliance that belonged to something else, and he found that he could not hold it inside himself for very long. At Brahma’s command he carried it to the Ganga and put it into her, a seed with the brightness of the sun in it. She could not hold it either. She set it down on the beautiful breast of Himavat, the mountain the gods themselves worship, and there the son of Agni started to grow, and his energy began to cover the worlds.
Six women found him. They were the Krittikas, and they saw a child lying on a clump of heath with fire in his face, and every one of the six wanted a son, and all six said the same three words in the same breath. This child is mine. This child is mine. He understood what was going on in those six minds, and he solved it in the most direct way available to him: he grew six mouths and drank from all six of them at once. The goddesses stood there in astonishment at what they had just been shown. And because the Ganga had laid him on the summit of Himavat, the mountain changed. It turned to gold, and it was beautiful, and the whole Earth grew beautiful along with the growing child, and mountains have produced gold from that day because of him. At first they called him Gangeya, after the river that carried him. Then the six gave him the name that stuck, and he was Kartikeya. He grew into a person as pleasant to look at as Soma himself, full of self restraint and austerity and power, lying on that golden clump of heath while Gandharvas and ascetics praised him. Celestial women who knew the music and dance of heaven came in thousands and danced in front of him. The Ganga waited on him. The Earth took a lovely shape and held him in her lap. Brihaspati, the priest of the gods, did the rites that follow a birth. The four Vedas took visible form and came to him with folded hands, and the science of arms came too, in its four divisions, bringing every weapon and every kind of arrow with it.
One day the child saw his father. The god of gods, the lord of Uma, was sitting with the daughter of Himavat in the middle of a swarm of ghostly creatures, and the boy saw the whole company at once. They were thin and strange and hard to look at, wearing ornaments and marks that sat wrong on them. Some had the faces of tigers, some of lions, some of bears, some of cats, some of makaras. Some had faces like scorpions. Others had the faces of elephants and camels and owls, and others of vultures and jackals, and others of cranes and pigeons and kurus. Many had bodies taken from dogs and porcupines and iguanas and goats and sheep and cattle. Some looked like mountains and some like oceans. Some stood with discs and maces raised. Some were dark as heaps of antimony and some white as snow peaks. In that company, monarch, the seven Matris were present, and so were the Sadhyas, the Vishvedevas, the Maruts, the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Siddhas, the Danavas and the birds. The self born and adorable Brahma came with his sons. Vishnu came, and Shakra came, all of them to look at a child whose glory had no fading in it. Narada came at the head of the foremost gods and Gandharvas, Brihaspati at the head of the celestial sages and the Siddhas, and the fathers of the universe came too, those first ones who are called the gods of the gods, and the Yamas and the Dharmas with them.
Then the child walked toward the lord of the gods, who sat holding the trident and the Pinaka. Four beings watched him take those steps, and the same thought went through all four minds at the same instant. Shiva wondered which of them he would honor first. So did the daughter of Himavat. So did the Ganga, and so did Agni. Each one of the four was quietly certain of the answer. He will come to me. The child read all four expectations as easily as he had read the minds of the Krittikas, and he took recourse to his yoga and did something the assembled worlds had never watched anyone do. In one instant he became four. The three forms that stood behind him were Sakha and Vishakha and Naigameya. The form called Skanda, wonderful to look at, went to the place where Rudra was sitting. Vishakha went to the divine daughter of Himavat. Sakha, which is the Vayu form of Kartikeya, went to Agni. Naigameya, a child of fiery splendor, went to the Ganga. The four were identical and all four blazed, and they walked calmly to the four who were waiting for them. The gods and the Danavas and the Rakshasas roared at the sight, and the hair stood up on every body present.
Rudra and the goddess Uma and Agni and the Ganga went together to the Grandsire and bowed, and then they asked for something on the boy’s behalf. Lord of the gods, they said, for our happiness, give this youth some sovereignty that suits him and that he would want. Brahma thought about it, and the thing he was weighing was inventory. He had already handed out every kind of dominion there was. The high souled celestials, the Gandharvas, the Rakshasas, the ghosts, the Yakshas, the birds and the snakes all held what they held because he had given it to them long before, and there was no unclaimed territory left in three worlds. So he looked at the boy again and concluded that the boy had a full right to the whole of it. After that moment of reflection, the Grandsire, who never stops calculating the welfare of the gods, made him generalissimo over every living creature, and ordered the chief celestials and the other formless beings to attend on him. Then the gods took the youth with them, with Brahma at the front, and came to Himavat. The place they chose was the bank of the holy and divine Sarasvati, first among rivers, who rises out of Himavat and who is famous through all three worlds at Samanta-panchaka. There on that bank, which has every merit a place can have, the gods and the Gandharvas sat down, and every desire any of them had brought with them was already satisfied.
A key to reading this (one story told twice): The Mahabharata gives the birth and the investiture of Kumara on two separate occasions, and the details do not line up between them. The version from the Vana Parva is already on this site, in chapter 14, part 2, and readers who have met Skanda there will notice differences here in who carries the seed, who names him and what he is given. What you have just read is the Shalya Parva telling, kept as it stands, with no attempt made to smooth it against the other. The two are worth reading side by side. The gap between them is a record of how many mouths this story passed through before it reached the book.
The gist: Janamejaya interrupts the river to ask for the investiture of Kumara. The seed of Maheshvara falls into fire, Agni can neither burn it nor hold it, the Ganga cannot hold it either, and it comes to rest on Himavat, where the child grows. Six Krittikas each claim him and he takes six mouths to drink from all six, and his heat turns the mountain to gold, which is why mountains have carried gold ever since. He is Gangeya first and then Kartikeya. The Vedas and the science of arms come to him on foot. Shiva, Uma, the Ganga and Agni each expect to be honored first, so he splits into four in one instant, sending Skanda to Rudra, Vishakha to Uma, Sakha to Agni and Naigameya to the Ganga. The four ask Brahma for a sovereignty worthy of him, and Brahma, having already given everything else away, makes him commander over all creatures and orders the gods to serve him. They carry him to the bank of the Sarasvati at Samanta-panchaka for the ceremony.
Water From Golden Jars, and an Army That Arrived Wearing Bells: The Crowning of Kartikeya
Brihaspati gathered every article the scriptures list for an investiture and poured the libations into the blazing fire himself. Himavat produced a seat, and it was worth the occasion, covered over with costly gems, and Kartikeya was placed on it. The gods carried in everything auspicious that a ceremony of this size requires, with the right rites said over each of them and the right mantras. Then the guests came, and the list of who came is the real measure of what was happening on that riverbank. Indra came and Vishnu came, both of them formidable. Surya and Candramas came. Dhatri and Vidhatri came, and Vayu, and Agni, and Pushan, and Bhaga, and Aryaman, and Ansa, and Vivaswat, and Rudra of the deep mind, and Mitra. The eleven Rudras came as a body, and the eight Vasus, and the twelve Adityas, and the twin Ashvinis, and the Vishvedevas, and the Maruts, and the Sadhyas. The Pitris came. The Gandharvas came with the Apsaras, and the Yakshas and the Rakshasas and the Pannagas after them.
Celestial sages arrived beyond counting. The Vaikhanasas came and the Valakhilyas came, and with them the sages who live on nothing except air and the sages who live on the rays of the sun. The descendants of Bhrigu came, and the descendants of Angiras, and many high souled Yatis, and all the Vidyadharas, and everyone who had ever completed the work of asceticism and reached the far side of it. The Grandsire came. Pulastya came, and Pulaha of enormous austerity, and Angiras, Kasyapa, Atri, Marichi, Bhrigu, Kratu, Hara, Prachetas, Manu and Daksha. The Seasons came in person, and the Planets, and all the lights of the sky. Every river came in an embodied form. The eternal Vedas came, and the Seas, and the various tirthas, and the Earth, and the Sky, and the four quarters with the four points between them, and all the Trees. Aditi the mother of the gods came, and Hri, Sri, Swaha, Sarasvati, Uma, Sachi, Sinivali, Anumati and Kuhu, the day of the new moon and the day of the full moon, and the wives of the dwellers in heaven. Himavat came, and Vindhya, and Meru of the many summits, and Airavata with his whole following. The divisions of time came as guests: Kala, Kashtha, the Fortnight, the Seasons, Night and Day. Ucchaisravas came, first among horses, and Vasuki the king of snakes, and Aruna, and Garuda, and the Trees, and the herbs that die back every year, and the adorable god Dharma. Kala came, and Yama, and Mrityu, and the followers of Yama walked in behind them. Vaishampayana stopped the roll there himself, saying that he was leaving out many other gods who were present for fear of letting the list run away with him, and that every one of them had come for the same purpose, to see this youth made commander.
They filled golden jars with the holy water of the Sarasvati, packing in the other sacred things the rite calls for, and they poured it over his head, and the terror of the Asuras became the generalissimo of the armies of heaven. Brahma poured. Kasyapa of the great energy poured. Everyone named in the roll poured, and everyone left out of the roll poured, exactly the way the gods once poured water over the head of Varuna, lord of the waters, when they gave him his dominion. Then the gifts began, and the first came from Brahma, who was pleased, and who gave Skanda four companions of great might, fast as the wind, perfected in austerity, able to increase their own energy whenever they chose. Their names were Nandisena, Lohitaksha, Ghantakarna and Kumudamalin. The lord Sthanu gave one, and one was enough: a being of terrible momentum who could spin a hundred illusions at once and raise his own strength at will, the great destroyer of Asuras, who in the war between the gods and the Asuras went into a rage and killed fourteen million Daityas of savage reputation with his bare hands. After that the gods signed over the celestial host itself, invincible, packed with divine troops, built to break the enemies of heaven, its soldiers shaped like Vishnu. And the gods with Vasava at their head, and the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, the Rakshasas, the Munis and the Pitris, all shouted the same word together. Victory.
Then they came forward one by one. Yama gave two who looked like Death himself, Unmatha and Pramatha. Surya, pleased, gave two of his own followers, Subhraja and Bhaswara. Soma gave Mani and Sumani, who resembled the summits of Kailasa and always wore white garlands and white unguents. Agni gave two heroes who grind hostile armies down, Jwalajihbha and Jyoti. Ansa gave five: Parigha, Vata, Bhima of the terrible strength, and Dahati and Dahana, both of them savage. Vasava gave two armed with the thunderbolt and the club, Utkrosa and Panchaka, who had killed more of Shakra’s enemies than anyone had counted. Vishnu gave three, Chakra and Vikrama and Sankrama. The Ashvinis gave Vardhana and Nandana, who had mastered every science. Dhatri gave five, Kunda, Kusuma, Kumuda, Damvara and Adamvara. Tvashtri gave Chakra and Anuchakra. Mitra gave Suvrata and Satyasandha, learned and austere and pleasant to look at, able to grant boons, famous in all three worlds. Vidhatri gave Suprabha and Subhakarman. Pushan gave Panitraka and Kalika, masters of illusion. Vayu gave Vala and Ativala, wide mouthed and strong. Varuna, who holds to truth, gave Ghasa and Atighasa, whose mouths were like the mouths of whales. Himavat gave Suvarchas and Ativarchas. Meru gave Kanchana and Meghamalin. Manu gave Sthira and Atisthira. Vindhya gave Uschrita and Agnisringa, who fight with boulders. Ocean gave Sangraha and Vigraha, both carrying maces. Parvati gave Unmada, Pushpadanta and Sankukarna. Vasuki the snake king gave two snakes, Jaya and Mahajaya. The Sadhyas, the Rudras, the Vasus, the Pitris, the Seas, the Rivers and the Mountains all sent commanders of troops carrying lances and battle axes and wearing ornaments of every description. After them came the rank and file, and their names run on: Sankukarna, Nilkumbha, Padmai, Kumud, Ananta, Dwadasabhuja, Krishna, Upakrishnaka, Ghranasravas, Kapiskandha, Kanchanaksha, Jalandhama, Akshasantarjana, Kunadika, Tamobhrakrit, Ekaksha, Dwadasaksha, Ekajata, Sahasravahu, Vikata, Vyaghraksha, Kshitikampana, Punyanaman, Sunaman, Suvaktra, Priyadarsana, Parisruta, Kokonada, Ajodara, Gajasiras, Skandhaksha, Satalochana, Jwalajibha, Karala, Sitakesa, Jati, Hari, Krishnakesa, Jatadhara, Chaturdanshtra, Ashtajihva, Meghananda, Prithusravas, Vidyutaksha, Dhanurvaktra, Jathara, Marutasana, and so on through more than a hundred more, down to the last of them, Kunchaka. The Grandsire added many others besides, mighty and high souled, devoted to austerity and respectful of Brahmins. Some were young men, some were old, and some, Janamejaya, were very small children. They arrived in thousands.
Their faces were not made on any single plan. Some had the faces of tortoises and some of cocks, and some had faces that were simply very long. Some wore the faces of dogs and wolves and hares and owls and asses and camels and hogs. Some had human faces, and some the faces of sheep and jackals, and some the terrible faces of makaras and porpoises. Some had the faces of cats and some of biting flies, and some of the mongoose and the crow, and some of mice and peacocks and fish and goats and buffaloes, and some of bears and tigers and leopards and lions, and some of elephants and crocodiles, and some of Garuda and the rhinoceros, and some of cows and mules. Some carried huge stomachs on thin legs and some the reverse, and the eyes of some were like stars. Some were dressed in white. Some wore snakes for clothing and snakes for ornaments, and some wore the hides of great elephants or the skins of black deer. The mouths of some sat on their shoulders, and of others on their stomachs, their backs, their cheeks, their calves, their flanks, and on parts of the body that have no name for holding a mouth. Some had many arms and some many heads, and the arms of some were like trees, and the heads of some grew at the loins. Some had five tufts of hair, some two, some three, some seven, some feathers, some crowns, some heads polished bald, some matted locks. They loved fighting more than anything else, and the best of the gods could not have beaten them. They spoke every kind of language, and since they were fluent in all the provincial dialects they could talk to each other without difficulty, and they did, at length, while they played and jumped around him. The ones who came last brought the heaviest gear. Some had noses on their raised arms and faces like tigers and asses, with eyes in their backs, blue throats and arms like spiked clubs. Some carried Sataghnis and discs, some short heavy clubs, some swords and mallets, some bludgeons, some lances and scimitars, some maces and Bhusundis, some spears. They watched the installation of Kartikeya from every side, wearing rows of small bells that rang as they moved, and then they danced. Some of them had come down from heaven, some in from the air, some up from the Earth, and all of them moved at the speed of the wind. The gods had ordered them into his service and they had come. Thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions, stood around the high souled Kartikeya and did not leave.
A key to reading this (a list that means to be long): This section is mostly names, and the length is doing the work. A boy whose rank has to be confirmed by every category of existence in turn, gods and sages and rivers and mountains and seasons and units of time and death itself, is a boy whose rank cannot afterward be questioned by anyone. Every companion given by name in the source is given by name here. The long roll of rank and file at the end runs past a hundred and fifty names in the original, and a substantial run of it is carried here with a pointer to its final name, Kunchaka. Vaishampayana himself breaks off his guest list partway through, saying he will not name the rest for fear of the list growing, so shortening a catalogue is a move the text already makes on its own account.
The gist: On the bank of the Sarasvati, Brihaspati pours the libations and Himavat provides a gem covered seat, and everything that exists arrives to watch: gods, sages, rivers in bodily form, mountains, seasons, goddesses, the divisions of time, and Death with his followers. Sarasvati water is poured over Kartikeya’s head from golden jars, the way it was once poured over Varuna, and he becomes commander of the armies of heaven. Then every god gives him named companions, starting with Brahma’s four and Sthanu’s single fighter who killed fourteen million Daityas with his hands, and running through Yama, Surya, Soma, Agni, Ansa, Vasava, Vishnu, the Ashvinis and the rest to Vasuki’s two snakes. Behind them comes a host with faces and mouths and limbs assembled from every creature there is, fluent in all the dialects of the world, carrying every weapon there is, and they put on rows of bells and dance around their new general in the thousands and the millions.
The roll of the mothers, and the gifts the gods brought the new commander
There is a point in any long recital where the reciter stops carrying the story forward and begins simply to name, and Vaishampayana reached it here. The host that had gathered around the new commander of the celestial armies held more than gods and more than warriors born of fire and mountain. It held mothers, in bands, in thousands, every one of them a slayer of foes, and Janamejaya was about to hear them called over one at a time. Listen now to the large bands of the mothers, Vaishampayana said, and listen to the names of those illustrious ones, because the mobile and immobile universe is pervaded by them. Nothing that grows and nothing that stays still stands outside them. The list that follows is long enough that a listener’s attention will sag somewhere in its middle, and that is precisely the reason it is given whole. Each of these names belonged to someone who walked into battle behind Skanda.
The roll opens with Prabhavati, Vishalakshi, Palita, Gonasi, Shrimati, Bahula, Bahuputrika, Apsujata, Gopali, Brihadambalika, Jayavati, Malatika, Dhruvaratna, Bhayankari, Vasudama, Sudama, Vishoka, Nandini, Ekacuda, Mahacuda, Cakranemi, Uttejani, Jayatsena, Kamalakshi, Shobhana, Shatrunjaya. After them are called Shalabhi, Khari, Madhavi, Shubhavaktra, Tirthanemi, Gitapriya, Kalyani, Kadrula, Amitashana, Meghasvana, Bhogavati, Subhru, Kanakavati, Alatakshi, Viryavati, Vidyujjihva, Padmavati, Sunakshatra, Kandara, Bahuyojana, Santanika, Kamala, Mahabala, Sudama, Bahudama, Suprabha. Then come Yashasvini, Nrityapriya, Shatolukhalamekhala, Shataghanta, Shatananda, Bhagananda, Bhamini, Vapushmati, Candrashita, Bhadrakali, Samkarika, Nishkutika, Bhrama, Catvaravasini, Sumangala, Svastimati, Vriddhikama, Jayapriya, Dhanada, Suprasada, Bhavada, Jaleshvari, Edi, Bhedi, Samedi, Vetalajanani. The recital gathers pace through Kanduti, Kalika, Devamitra, Lambasi, Ketaki, Citrasena, Bala, Kukkutika, Shankhanika, Jarjarika, Kundarika, Kokalika, Kandara, Shatodari, Utkrathini, Jarena, Mahavega, Kankana, Manojava, Kantakini, Praghasa, Putana, Khashaya, Curvyuti, Vama, Kroshanatha. It goes on through Taditprabha, Mandodari, Tunda, Kotara, Meghavasini, Subhaga, Lambini, Lamba, Vasucuda, Vikatthani, Urdhvavenidhara, Pingakshi, Lohamekhala, Prithuvaktra, Madhurika, Madhukumbha, Pakshalika, Manthanika, Jarayu, Jarjaranana, Khyata, Dahadaha, Dhamadhama, Khandakhanda, Pushana, Manikundala. Toward the end stand Amogha, Lambapayodhara, Venuvinadhara, Pingakshi, Lohamekhala, Shasholukamukhi, Krishna, Kharajangha, Mahajava, Shishumaramukhi, Shveta, Lohitakshi, Vibhishana, Jatalika, Kamacari, Dirghajihva, Balotkata, Kaledika, Vamanika, Mukuta, Lohitakshi, Mahakaya, Haripindi, Ekakshara, Sukusuma, Krishnakarni. And the last of them called over are Kshurakarni, Catushkarni, Karnapravarana, Catushpathaniketa, Gokarni, Mahishanana, Kharakarni, Mahakarni, Bherisvanamahasvana, Shankhakumbhasvana, Bhangada, Gana, Sugana, Bhiti, Kamada, Catushpatharata, Bhutirtha, Anyagocara, Pashuda, Vittada, Sukhada, Mahayasha, Payoda, Gomahishada, Suvishana, Pratishtha, Supratishtha, Rocamana, Surocana, Naukarni, Mukhakarni, Sasira, Stherika, Ekacakra, Megharava, Meghamala, and Virocana.
Their forms refused to agree with one another. Some had nails grown long and teeth grown large, with lips that pushed forward out of the face. Others stood straight-limbed and sweet-featured, young, decked in ornaments that caught whatever light was going. All of them carried the merit of long austerity, and that merit gave them the power to assume any form they wished, so that one of them could be terrible at dawn and lovely by evening and nobody had grounds to call it a disguise. There was little flesh on their limbs. Their complexions ran fair and their bodies gave off a light like gold. Some were dark the way a rain cloud is dark. Some were the color of smoke. Some carried the brightness of the sun in its first hour, and those were counted the most blessed. Their hair fell long and their robes were white. A few wore their braids tied up above the head. A few had tawny eyes. A few wore girdles so long that the ends trailed behind them as they moved. Some had long stomachs, some long ears, some long breasts. Some had coppery eyes set in coppery skin, and the eyes of others were green.
What they could do was easier to set down than what they looked like. They granted boons. They traveled wherever they wished to be and arrived there. They were cheerful, all of them, always, which is an odd thing to be able to say about an army. Their strength was enormous and it came from many sources, because the nature of a different god had gone into each of them. Some partook of the nature of Yama, some of Rudra, some of Soma, some of Kuvera, some of Varuna, some of Indra, some of Agni. Some had the nature of Vayu, some of Kumara himself, some of Brahma, some of Vishnu, some of Surya, some of Varaha. Their features were charming and delightful and their beauty was of the kind the asuras have. In voice they resembled the kokila. In prosperity they resembled the Lord of Treasures. In battle their energy was the energy of Shakra and their splendor was the splendor of fire, and they put terror into their enemies as a matter of routine. They could take any form. In fleetness they matched the wind. Their might, their energy and their prowess lay past the reach of anyone’s imagining. They keep no palaces. They have their abodes on trees and on open ground and at the crossing of four roads. They live in caves and in crematoriums, on mountains and beside springs. They wear every kind of ornament and every kind of attire, and among themselves they speak many languages. These tribes and many others, each one able to fill an enemy with dread, fell in behind the high-souled Kartikeya at the command of the chief of the celestials.
Then the gods came forward with gifts, one after another, the way a court equips a general it has just appointed. The adorable chastiser of Paka gave Guha a dart made for the destruction of the enemies of the gods. It produced a loud whiz as it went, it was hung with many large bells, and its splendor was such that it appeared to be on fire. Indra gave a banner as well, bright as the morning sun. Shiva gave an army, large and exceedingly fierce, armed with many kinds of weapons and charged with the energy that comes of long penance. Nothing could beat it, it held every quality a good army should hold, and it went by the name dhananjaya. Thirty thousand warriors guarded it, and the might of each of them equaled the might of Rudra. That force had no knowledge of how to run from a battle. Vishnu gave a triumphal garland that adds to the strength of whoever wears it. Uma gave two pieces of cloth that carried the brightness of the sun in them. Ganga, with great pleasure, gave Kumara a celestial water pot begotten of amrita. Brihaspati gave a sacred stick. Garuda gave his own favorite son, a peacock of beautiful feathers. Aruna gave a cock with sharp talons. The royal Varuna gave a snake of great energy and might. And Brahma, to this god who was devoted to Brahman, gave a black deerskin, and the Creator of all the worlds gave him victory in every battle he would ever fight.
A key to reading this (the roll, and the two tellings): This roll holds 193 names, and five of them are called twice: Sudama, Kandara, Pingakshi, Lohamekhala and Lohitakshi. They are kept here exactly as the text gives them. The second thing worth knowing before reading on is that the Mahabharata installs Skanda as commander of the celestial armies twice, once in the Vana Parva and again here in the Shalya Parva, and the two accounts differ in their details. This page follows the Shalya Parva alone.
The gist: The full roll of the mothers who became Skanda’s companions, from Prabhavati to Virocana, followed by a description of what they were: long nails and large teeth in some, gold-bright skin, complexions of cloud and smoke and early sun, boon-granting, able to take any form, carrying the nature of gods from Yama to Varaha, and living on trees, at crossroads, in caves, in crematoriums, on mountains and beside springs. Then the gods arm the new commander: Indra’s belled dart and banner, Shiva’s unbeatable army dhananjaya with its thirty thousand guards, Vishnu’s garland, Uma’s two cloths, Ganga’s water pot, Brihaspati’s staff, Garuda’s peacock, Aruna’s cock, Varuna’s snake, and Brahma’s deerskin with the promise of victory in every battle.
Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Shalya Parva, Hradapravesha and Gada-yuddha sub-parvas, Sections 23-64. The Gita Press Hindi edition is the controlling witness. The Sanskrit e-text and an independent complete translation were used to verify names, sequence, and principal events. Where recensions differ, this retelling follows Gita Press.
Based on: The Mahabharata, Vyasa (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)