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King Raji and the Throne of Indra
Along this same current of the lunar dynasty, among the sons of Ayu, there rose a king named Raji, who had five hundred sons, every one of them brimming with matchless strength and valor. In those days the gods and the demons stood once more on the edge of war. Both sides burned for victory, and in the end both went to Brahma to ask, “Lord, which of us two will win?” Brahma answered, “Victory will belong to whichever side King Raji takes up his weapons to fight for.”
Hearing this, the demons reached Raji first. Raji told them, “If, once we win, I may become your Indra, then I will fight on your side.” The demons replied that they did not say one thing and then act against it; their Indra was Prahlada, and it was for him that they were mounting this whole campaign. With that they turned back. Then the gods came, and Raji set the same condition before them. The gods accepted his word, saying, “You yourself shall be our Indra.” So Raji stood with the army of the gods and destroyed the entire host of the demons.
After the victory, Indra made a curious move. He set both of Raji’s feet upon his own head and said, “You are the giver of safety from fear and the giver of food, and so you are the highest in all the worlds; and I, the Indra of the three worlds, have become your son.” The king laughed at this sweet plea and said, very well, let it be so, for it is not right to spurn even an enemy’s flattering words and entreaty, let alone the words of one’s own side. Saying this, he returned to his capital, and Indra remained in his post.
Later, egged on by the celestial sage Narada, Raji’s five hundred sons demanded their father’s post from Indra. When it was refused, those strong men conquered Indra himself and began to enjoy the seat of Indra on their own. A long age passed. Cut off from his share of the sacrifices in all three worlds, Indra sat alone and downcast, and Brihaspati, seeing him, promised his help. By a rite of dark sorcery Brihaspati clouded the minds of Raji’s sons; they turned against the brahmins, forsook dharma, and set their faces against the Veda. The moment they fell from dharma, Indra killed them and climbed back to his post. It is said that whoever hears this account of Indra’s fall and rise again never falls from his own place.
The Curse of Yayati
Now hear of another branch of that same lunar dynasty, the line of Nahusha. Nahusha had six mighty and daring sons: Yati, Yayati, Samyati, Ayati, Viyati, and Kriti. Of these, Yati had no wish for a kingdom at all, and so the royal seat came to Yayati. Yayati married twice, once to Devayani, the daughter of Shukracharya, and once to Sharmishtha, the daughter of Vrishaparva, king of the demons. Devayani bore Yadu and Turvasu, and Sharmishtha bore Druhyu, Anu, and Puru, whose lineages later spread across the whole earth.
This same story comes in full detail in the Mahabharata and the Shrimad Bhagavata, but the Vishnu Purana tells the episode of Devayani and Sharmishtha very briefly and comes straight to the realization that gives this story its life.
What happened was this. By the curse of Shukracharya, old age closed in on Yayati long before its time. In the fullness of his youth his body grew frail, his hair went white, and every appetite for pleasure was left unmet. Later, when Shukra was pleased, he granted this concession: if Yayati wished, he could give this old age to someone else and take that person’s youth in exchange. So Yayati called his eldest son, Yadu, and said, “Dear son, by your grandfather’s curse old age has seized me before its time; now, by that same grandfather’s grace, I wish to pass it to you. I am not yet sated with the pleasures of the senses, and so for a thousand years I wish to enjoy them through your youth. Do not hesitate in this.”
But Yadu would not accept the old age. His father, angered, cursed him that his offspring would never be fit for the royal seat. In the same way Yayati asked Turvasu, Druhyu, and Anu for their youth, and one after another all three refused; the father cursed all three. At last the youngest, Puru, the son of Sharmishtha, bowed to his father with great humility and respect and said, “This is a great favor you show me,” and gladly gave his youth and took his father’s old age upon himself.
The Futility of Indulgence
With Puru’s youth now his own, Yayati grew young again. He enjoyed the objects of the senses as he pleased, in their proper season and within dharma, and he cared well for his people. Amid every kind of pleasure, in the company of the apsara Vishvachi and of Devayani, he kept thinking that now, surely, he would put an end to his desires; yet the more he enjoyed, the more those desires grew dear to him. A full thousand years slipped by like this, and still the thirst stood exactly as it had been. Only then did this cry break out from within him.
“Desire is never stilled by indulgence; fed with offered ghee, like fire, it only flares the higher. All the grain and barley, the gold, the cattle, and the women of the whole earth are not enough for a single man, and knowing this, one should let craving go. For the man who holds no sinful thought toward any living creature, who looks on all with an equal eye, every direction becomes a place of joy. When age wears a body down, the hair and the teeth wear away, yet the hope of wealth and of life never wears away. A thousand years have gone by in my clinging to the objects of sense, and still, day after day, a fresh longing for them rises in me. Now I will leave them, fix my mind on Bhagavan, and free of all opposites and all sense of mine, I will wander in the forest among the deer.”
So saying, Yayati took his old age back from Puru and returned to him his youth. Then he anointed the youngest, Puru, over the kingdom of the whole earth, and made his remaining sons vassal kings of the quarters: Turvasu of the southeast, Druhyu of the west, Yadu of the south, and Anu of the north. Having done all this, and having given up everything, he went himself into the forest for tapas, the life of austerity.
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)