Pururava and Urvashi

The Beginning of the Lunar Dynasty

Maitreya had heard the solar line to its end, king after king descending from the sun, and now he asked for the other line. “You have given me the kings of the Surya dynasty,” he said to Parashara. “Now I wish to hear of all the kings of the Chandra line, whose descendants earned a fame so steady that men sing it even today. Tell it to me with a glad face.” Parashara said, “Hear it in order, then: the line of the radiant Chandrama, in which so many famous kings were born. Nahusha adorns it, and Yayati, Kartavirya, Arjuna, and many another king of great strength and valor, bright, tireless, full of good qualities. I will tell it from the beginning.”

The beginning goes back to the lotus that rose from the navel of Narayana, maker of the whole world. On it sat Brahma, and Brahma’s son was Atri, one of the Prajapatis who peopled the earth, and Atri’s son was Chandrama, the moon. Brahma, born of that lotus, consecrated him to lordship over three domains at once: every herb that grows, the twice-born, and the nakshatras, the star-houses through which he travels month after month. Chandrama performed the Rajasuya, the sacrifice by which a king is declared sovereign over kings. And then his own power, and an eminence that high, went to his head. Drunk on it, he carried off Tara, the wife of Brihaspati, guru to all the gods. Brihaspati went to Brahma, and Brahma reasoned with the moon at length, and the devarshis came and begged; he would not give her back. Over one woman the heavens split in two. Shukra, teacher of the asuras, hated Brihaspati of old and took the moon’s side. Rudra had received his learning from Angira, and Brihaspati was Angira’s son, so Rudra stood with the guru. Wherever Shukra stood, Jambha and Kumbha and the whole daitya and danava host threw their weight in beside him; Indra brought the entire army of the gods to Brihaspati. The war they fought for Tara was called Tarakamaya, and it was terrible. Rudra and the gods loosed weapon after weapon on the danavas, and the danavas answered in kind, until the whole world, shaken to its depths by a war of gods against asuras, took refuge with Brahma. Then the lotus-born stopped them all, Shukra and Rudra, danavas and devas alike, and had Tara returned to Brihaspati.

She came back carrying a child, and Brihaspati saw it at once. “It is not right that you bear another man’s son in my field,” he told her. “Put it from you. Do not add to your shamelessness.” Tara, who was a faithful wife, did as he said and left the unborn child in a clump of ishika reeds. The moment it lay there its own radiance dimmed the radiance of every god present. The child was beautiful, and now both Brihaspati and Chandrama wanted him, each pressing forward to take him for his own. Doubt took the gods, and they turned to Tara. “Tell us truly. Is this son Brihaspati’s or Chandrama’s?” Tara said nothing, from shame. They asked her again and again, and still she gave the gods no answer, and at last the boy himself turned on her with a curse already in his mouth. “Mother, you are wicked. Why will you not say my father’s name? For this false modesty of yours I will put you in such a state that from today you forget how to speak as slowly as this.” Brahma, grandfather of all, held the boy back and put the question himself. “Daughter, tell the truth. Whose son is this, Brihaspati’s or Chandrama’s?” With her shame still on her she said, “Chandrama’s.” Then the lord of the nakshatras caught the boy to his chest. “Good, good, my son,” he said. “You are very wise.” He named him Budha, and in that moment the light in the moon’s clear cheeks swelled and shone.

The Meeting of Pururava and Urvashi

How Budha begot his son Pururava on Ila has been told before. Pururava grew into a king who gave without counting, who kept the great sacrifices going one after another, and whose own radiance was his first ornament. At that time the apsara Urvashi was living in the mortal world under a curse laid on her by Mitra and Varuna, and she looked on this king, truthful, rich in beauty, quick of mind, and she went to him. The pride of an apsara, the appetite for the pleasures of svarga, all of it left her with that one look; she came to him with her whole being absorbed in him. And the king looked back at her, at a radiance, a delicacy, a beauty, a grace in motion, a smile such as no woman on earth possessed, and passed under her sway. So the two of them, taken up entirely with each other and with eyes for nothing else, let every other purpose fall.

It was the king who spoke first, without hesitation. “I desire you. Be gracious to me, and give me your love.” Urvashi’s voice came faltering with shyness. “If you can keep my conditions, it can certainly be so.” “Very well,” said the king. “Tell me your conditions.” She told him. “Beside my bed are tied two rams, and they are like sons to me. You must never let them be taken from my bed. You must never let me see you naked. And ghee alone shall be my food.” Three conditions, and none of them sounded hard. The king said, “So be it.”

So they lived. Sometimes they sported in the Chaitraratha and the other forests inside Alakapuri, the city of Kubera, sometimes on lakes as lovely as the Manasa, laid out with beds of lotus; and the king’s joy grew with every day, for sixty thousand years. Her love grew by the same daily measure, through that same pleasure, until Urvashi no longer wished to live even in devaloka.

The Separation

Svarga without Urvashi had gone dull for the apsaras, the siddhas and the gandharvas. One of them, the gandharva Vishvavasu, knew exactly what the two had agreed between them. One night he came with the other gandharvas to the king’s bedchamber and carried off one of the rams from beside it. The animal cried out as it was borne up through the sky, and Urvashi heard it. “Who is stealing the son of a woman with no one to protect her? Whose shelter am I to run to now?” The king heard her too, and he stayed where he lay, because if he rose his queen would see him unclothed. So the gandharvas came back for the second ram and took it the same way. Urvashi heard that one crying as it went, and this time her grief broke out. “I have no protector, and I have no husband. I have put my life in the hands of a coward.”

That was the word he could not lie still under. It is dark, he told himself; she cannot see me now. He snatched up his sword and ran out after the thieves in a fury, shouting that the villain was a dead man. In that instant the gandharvas threw a great flash of lightning across the sky. By its light Urvashi saw the king with nothing on him. Her condition was broken, and she left at once. The gandharvas dropped the rams where they were and went back to svarga.

The king came back to the bedchamber glad, a ram under each arm, and Urvashi was not there. He looked for her and did not find her, and he went out as he was, unclothed, and wandered the land like a madman. One day the wandering brought him to Kurukshetra, and there, in a lake full of lotus, he saw Urvashi with four other apsaras. He called to her the way a madman calls. “Wife, stop! Stand where you are. Your heart is cruel and your tongue is false; stay one moment and speak to me.” Urvashi answered him from the water. “There is nothing to be had from these senseless gestures. I am carrying your child. Come back to this place after a year, and you will have a son, and I will spend one night with you.” That was enough; the king went home to his city with a lighter heart. When he was gone Urvashi turned to the others. “That is the best of men I lived with so many days on earth, my heart drawn after him the whole time.” The apsaras looked after him. “Well said. His form is lovely in truth. May we have his company always.”

When the year was out the king came to Kurukshetra, and Urvashi put a boy in his arms, a son named Ayu. She stayed one night with him, and in that night conceived the five sons she would bear him later. Then she told him, “Out of love for us both, the gandharvas wish to grant you a boon. Ask for what you want.” The king answered without a pause. “I have conquered every enemy. My senses have lost none of their power. I have kinsmen, an army past counting and a full treasury. There is nothing left in this world for me to gain except Urvashi’s company, and that is what I ask: to pass my time with her.” The gandharvas gave him a fire-vessel, an agnisthali, and told him what to do with it. “Divide this fire by the Vedic rule into its three forms, the Garhapatya, the Ahavaniya and the Dakshina. Worship in it rightly, with the desire for Urvashi’s company in your heart, and you will surely have what you wish.” The king took the vessel and set off.

On the road home, deep in the forest, the thought caught up with him. “What a fool I am. What have I done? I have brought away this agnisthali and I have left Urvashi behind.” He set the vessel down in the forest where he stood and went on to his city. Half the night had passed when his sleep broke and the truth of it came to him. The gandharvas gave me that vessel so that I might have Urvashi near me, and I have left it in the forest. I must go and fetch it. He got up and went back to the place, and the vessel was gone. Where it had stood there was a pipal growing out of the heart of a shami tree. The king looked at it and understood. I threw the agnisthali down here, he thought, and it has become this pipal born inside a shami. Then I will carry this ashvattha, which is fire in the form of a tree, to my city. I will make the arani from it, the sticks that are churned together to bring fire into the world, and I will worship the fire that is born of them.

So he carried the ashvattha to his city and shaped the arani from its wood. He measured the wood off finger-width by finger-width, reciting the Gayatri as he measured, and when the recitation ended the sticks had come out at exactly as many finger-widths as the Gayatri has syllables. He churned them. The three fires came up out of the wood, and he fed them their offerings by the Vedic rule, and the fruit he asked for was Urvashi’s company. With that same fire he went on offering sacrifice after sacrifice of every kind, until he attained the world of the gandharvas, and he and Urvashi were never parted again. Before that there had been one fire only. From that one fire, in this manvantara, the three fires spread across the world.

Jahnu and the Line Beyond

Pururava had six sons, all of them wise: Ayu, Amavasu, Vishvavasu, Shrutayu, Shatayu and Ayutayu. Amavasu’s son was Bhima, Bhima’s was Kanchana, Kanchana’s was Suhotra, and Suhotra’s son was Jahnu. Jahnu came out one day to find his whole sacrificial hall standing under the water of the Ganga. His eyes went red. He set Bhagavan, the Lord of the sacrifice, within himself in the deepest samadhi, and he drank the Ganga, all of it. The devarshis came and pleased him, and when he was pleased they took the river from him in a new relation: the Ganga became his daughter, which is why she carries the name Jahnavi. Jahnu’s son was Sumantu.

Sumantu’s son was Ajaka, Ajaka’s Balakashva, and Balakashva’s son was Kusha, who had four sons: Kushamba, Kushanabha, Adhurtaraja and Vasu. Kushamba sat down to tapas with one wish in him, a son equal to Indra. Indra watched that fierce tapas burn and took alarm. Let no one become my equal in strength, he thought, and he came down and was born as Kushamba’s son himself. The boy was named Gadhi and called Kaushika, after the house of Kusha. Gadhi had a daughter, Satyavati, and Richika, son of Bhrigu, came asking for her hand. Richika was a Brahmin of great age and quick wrath, and Gadhi had no wish to give his daughter to such a man, so he named a bride-price he thought could never be paid: a thousand horses, each with one black ear, lustrous as the moon and swift as the wind. The maharshi went to Varuna, and from the Ashvatirtha, where such horses are born, he brought back a thousand of them and handed them over. Then he married the girl. In time, wanting offspring, Richika cooked a charu, the rice of the sacrifice, for Satyavati; and Satyavati, who pleased him, asked for one for her mother too, so he cooked a second charu, for the birth of a best of kshatriyas. “This charu is for you and this one for your mother,” he said. “Use them rightly.” And he went to the forest.

When the time came to eat them, Satyavati’s mother took her aside. “Daughter, everyone wants the son with the finest qualities for his own house. No one takes much interest in the qualities of his wife’s brother. So give me your charu and take mine. My son must rule the whole earth; what has a Brahmin’s boy to do with strength and valor and wealth?” Satyavati gave her mother her charu and ate the other. When the rishi came back from the forest he took one look at his wife. “What wrong have you done, that your body has that terrible look? You have eaten the charu I made for your mother, and that was not right. Into hers I had put the whole wealth of sovereignty, valor, heroism and strength; into yours every quality of a Brahmin, shanti, jnana, titiksha and the rest. You have used them the wrong way round. Now your son will be a man of kshatriya ways, terrible, a bearer of weapons, given to rule, and hers will be a peaceful son of Brahmin conduct.” Satyavati seized his feet and bowed over them. “I did it in ignorance. Be gracious. Let my son not be so. Let it be my grandson.” The muni said, “So be it.” She bore Jamadagni, and her mother bore Vishvamitra, and Satyavati herself became the river Kaushiki. Jamadagni married Renuka, daughter of Renu of the Ikshvaku line, and she bore him Bhagavan Parashurama, an amsha of Narayana, guru of all the worlds, who would destroy all the kshatriyas. To Vishvamitra the gods gave Shunahshepa of the Bhrigu line as a son; after him came Devarata, then Madhuchhanda, Dhananjaya, Kritadeva, Ashtaka, Kachchhapa, Haritaka and more. From them descended the many lines of the Kaushika gotra, who may marry into the other rishi houses.