Unwed mother, or honourable queen? Meet the 'real' Śakuntalā...

Even if we didn’t know it at the time, most of us growing up in India received the story of Śakuntalā and Duṣyanta from Kālidāsa’s literary masterpiece – “Abhijñānaśakuntalam.” ¹ For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, here is a synopsis. The rest can skip to the following paragraph.

Handsome, righteous king (while on a hunt) falls madly in love with a beautiful forest/hermitage damsel.  They marry by ‘gandharva vivāh’ i.e. without any witnesses. He leaves.  She, day dreaming of him, is cursed by the choleric sage Durvāsa. As a result, when she comes to his court, he doesn’t recognise her.  A keepsake ring that should have jogged his memory has slipped off her finger in a river. The shamed and visibly pregnant Śakuntalā is carried away by her celestial mother and deposited in another hermitage where she gives birth to a strapping lad.² Of course there’s a happily ever after. The ring from her finger was swallowed by a fish. The fisherman who finds it is suspected of theft and brought to the king’s court. Sure enough, as soon as he sees the ring, Duṣyanta remembers everything, is deeply remorseful, and after a few more twists and turns, they are united.

What’s fascinating is the difference between Kālidāsa’s play and its source - the original story as it appears in the Mahābhārata. In the epic version, there is no Durvāsa, no curse, no ring, no fish, and no weepy, helpless, pregnant woman who has to be rescued by her heavenly mother. The two portrayals of Śakuntalā couldn’t possibly be any more different from each other than they are.  As compared to Kālidāsa’s heroine, who is beautiful, meek, virtuous, wilting and dependent for her fate on the men around her,  the epic Śakuntalā  is steelier, and knows how to stand up for herself. In this blog-post, I’ll contrast the court scene (Act V of Kālidāsa’s play) with the  Mahābhārata version to give you a taste. Kālidāsa’s girl is veiled, and the exchange goes something like this:

King: What? Was this lady married to me before?

Śakuntalā: Ah, my heart... My Lord has a doubt about the very marriage!

King: I really do not remember espousing this lady

Śakuntalā: It is now settled that I have to deplore my fate

King: How shall I receive her, bearing visible signs of pregnancy?

Śakuntalā: Let me show you the ring you gave me ... Alas! it is missing

King: (smiling) Ready is the wit of womankind ... only lustful men are allured by honeyed words full of falsehood...

Etc. etc.

Of course he refused to accept her, and the male companions who have accompanied her from the hermitage refuse to take her back with them. At that moment, a flash of lightening shaped like a woman (Menaka, the celestial nymph, Śakuntalā’s mother) appears and carries her hapless, pregnant, weeping, abandoned daughter away.

Now let’s have a look at what happens in the epic version.  Firstly, she agrees to marry Duṣyanta  after extracting a promise from him that the son born of her will be king. She bears her child in the forest, and arrives at the king’s court six years later, with son in tow.  He flatly refuses to recognise her, even though he knows who she is. The exchange in question can be found in the Ch VII (Sambhava Parva), Bk I (Ādi Parva) of the epic, and is as follows (I paraphrase):

 King: I do not remember having any connection with you. Go or stay or do whatever you please.

Śakuntalā’s grief turns to burning anger. Her eyes red like copper, she looks at him directly:-


Śakuntalā: Knowing everything, how can you, like a mean and inferior man, say that ‘you know nothing?’

She then proceeds to call him a thief, a sinner, and her general frame of mind may be ascertained from these selected quotes from a long monologue:  ‘You think you alone know what you did?’ ‘Do not disrespect me. I am your wife and deserve to be treated respectfully’. ‘Why are you treating me like an ordinary women in front of all these men?’ ‘I am certainly not crying in the wilderness.’  ‘O Duṣyanta, if you refuse what I ask you to do, your head today will be divided into a thousand pieces.’

King:  You are the daughter of the lewd Menaka and the lustful Viśvāmitra. Your words deserve no credence. Are you not ashamed to utter them? Go away, you wicked woman. How do I know I have begotten this son on you?

Śakuntalā: A swine seeks dirt and filth even if it is in a flower-garden ...   My birth is more noble than yours. The difference between you and me is like that of a mustard seed and the Meru (mountain) ...

She points out that the son is the image of his father and having just compared him to a swine, she tells him that he’s worse than an insect, because “even ants bear their eggs and don’t break them.” Eventually, she tells him that if he insists on ‘being united with falsehood’ and does not place credence in her words, she’d rather leave.

Śakuntalā: “I shall go away from this place of my own accord. Your companionship should not be sought after.  And know this for a certainty, that when you are dead, this son of mine shall rule the whole earth...”

At this point she turns her back to him. In this version too, there is divine intervention. A voice issues from heaven (ākāśvāṇi) telling Duṣyanta that everything Śakuntalā has said was true.  He swiftly relents, says I knew all along but people would have been suspicious so I acted the way I did , and proceeds to pacify her with affection, perfume, food and drink:

King: Dearest Lady of beautiful eyes, I have forgiven you for all the hard words you have uttered in anger. You are my darling. ... I myself know that this boy is my son. If I’d accepted him as my son (at Śakuntalā’s word), my people would have been suspicious, and my son would not have been considered of pure birth.

So, Duṣyanta was just being a righteous king, knower of dharma, just like Rāma. But as it turns out, Śakuntalā would rather be more like Satyavati than Sita. Women in the Mahābhārata rock! Of course, I’m guessing that Kālidāsa, writing for his regal audience, needed a more embroidered tale which made everyone look good. Not the king’s fault, not Śakuntalā’s fault, not anyone’s fault. Just a beautiful story, rich with poetic genius. I urge you to read Kale's translation. If you ever wondered what the big deal is about Sanskrit literature, you won't any more.

Notes:

¹  The recognition (also the remembering) of  Śakuntalā

² The eponymous Bharata, after whom India gets its Indian name.

Quotes and narrative for this blog have been taken from:

• Kālidāsa’s Abhijñānaśakuntalam translated by M.R Kale. Motilal BanarasiDass, 10^th edition, 1969
• Mahābhārata, translated by M.N Dutt, Parimal Publications, Delhi, New Revised Edition, 2008.
• Images are from Google images.

The idea for the blog arose from a conversation with Renate Söhnen Thieme, Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit, SOAS.

Kashmir Shaivism

Please welcome guest writer Arpita Gaidhane, who is currently in the M.A programme at SOAS. Arpita plans to continue with  her research and take a PhD in Kashmir Shaivism. I'd heard of it, of course, but mostly nodded wisely when people talked about it because I had no clue what it was really about. All I knew was that it was an 8th or 9th century phenomenon, associated with the writings of Abhinavagupta. It was practiced in secret while adherents carried on with their external lives as normal. The key idea, Arpita explains is that divinity exists within each one of us, and we can become God if we choose to recognise our divinity and and identify with it.

If you have any queries after reading the blog-post, please write in, and I'm sure Arpita will be happy to address them. Read on...

Kashmir Shaivism… where to begin? It flourished from about the 8th to 12th centuries CE. According to legend, Siva saw that the world was falling into doom, so he gave the secret of the world or the truth and the means to it, to Durvasas, who then taught it to his sons. His sons then carried on the tradition through three forms of Saivism: Dualism, Non-Dualism and a combination of both. Kashmir Shaivism falls under the Non-Dualistic line, and was propagated by his son Traymbaka.

Having said all that, Kashmir Shaivism is actually a misnomer, there’s no such thing. Yeah, what at introduction right? It doesn’t exist, before I even tell you what it is! Well, there’s a genre Kashmir Shaivism, which includes many different philosophies of Trika, Pratyabhijñā, Krama, Kula and Spanda…So, serious readers, these are the schools you want to look up to learn more.  Somananda, the first author of the Pratyabhijñā,  philosophy mentions himself as the 19th descendent of Tryambaka. But there is no singular founder, especially because it falls under the much larger rubric of Tantra. 

Abhinavagupta is indeed an important figure in the school, but he lived from 975 to 1025 AD according to John Nemec. So he's from the middle phase of the religion. In these philosophical schools that comprise Kashmir Shaivism, the primary focus is the worship of god Śiva, popularly the destructive part of the Triad that causes Creation, Maintenance and Destruction of the Universe. He has existed from the Vedic times as Rudra, and some have argued that he is also represented in the proto-historic Indus valley seals. 

Picture 1: Śiva in a cosmic dance

But that’s not for us to deal with, our Śiva is now all encompassing, the universe itself. He is the underlying reality, the substratum on which the entire phenomenal world as we see it is based. And for those beginning to think of this religion as discriminating in gender, he is inseparable from Śakti, his feminine representation. Here, more than a hierarchy, they are two facets of one reality: Śiva is consciousness and Śakti is energy. When manifestation took place in this philosophy, there was absolute consciousness, and when differentiation began, the words uttered were ‘I Am’. I like to think of these words in this way - the I is Śiva, and the Am is Śakti; he is the noun and she is the verb; he is the matter and she is the energy.

Picture 2: Ardhanārīśvara: Śiva and Śakti as two equals constituting a whole

The philosophy says that in this world we live in, we don’t know the underlying truth, and the aim is merely to recognize identity with god to become god. The analogy given is: Just as a woman who has been betrothed but not seen her fiancé feels great joy on finding out that the man she has been interacting with is in fact the person that she will spend the rest of her life with, so is the joy on recognition of Identity with Śiva.

This recognition, they believe, can take place anyhow and anywhere! When you’re eating, enjoy your food, when you’re with your friend, enjoy the company; any action can make you divine! It’s just a matter of releasing the fetters cast by societal conventions.

Picture 3: The Śrī Yantra, a mandala that represents the union of Śiva and Śakti; with Śiva as the upward pointing triangles and Śakti as the downward pointing ones.

Tantra is known for its anti-social rituals, the most popular perhaps being the five-fold requirement in the extreme left path to consume fish, meat, alcohol, grains and indulge in sex to attain liberation. But realise, that these actions, like all others, can only be effective if they are performed outside the social context, without being affected by it, with the focus solely on the achievement of a joy that can lead to recognition of divinity.

So just take a moment and find the place where your thoughts stop, find that unbound joy within you, look for it in whatever you do. Who knows, you might recognize your divinity immediately. After all, a moment is all it takes!

Picture 4: A three dimensional Śrī Yantra as Mount Meru, representing the creation of the cosmos as a union of Śiva and Śakti

Some good introductory books are Kashmir Shaivism by JC Chatterjee, and the same title by Kamalakar Mishra. Entries by Alexis Sanderson on Trika Shaivism and the Shaivism of Kashmir are also great in the Encyclopedia of Religion (ed. Mircea Eliade).

A very interesting figure associated with this religion is Lal Ded or Lalla, a female mystic saint of 14th century Kashmir. You MUST look her up!

Opposition to idol worship from within the Hindu tradition

Come on, be honest! If you are a Hindu of any description, chances are the first thought that entered your head when you saw my mail was 'Muslim'. And why wouldn't it? Even without the intervention of the charming Murli Manohar Joshi, every school kid in India knows about Mahmud of Ghazni and the sacking of the Somnath temple. Go to the Qutab Minar and 'Raju' guide will inform you that the adjoining mosque 'Quwwat-ul-Islam', was built with material from nearly temples that were destroyed. He'll obligingly point out the carved temple bell on one of the slabs, and the Ganapati on one of the lowest stones, clearly an intended insult. [This picture of Quwwat-ul-Islam shows pillars from the said temple(s), just to give you an idea, in case you haven't been there.] We know who is against idol worship, right??

What they don't tell you at school; what they conveniently leave out of public discourse; what you are unlikely to find out unless you study Hinduism neutrally - is that, forget Islam, there are plenty of bona fide 'Hindu' schools of thought that oppose idol worship. Still others are silent on it, or just side step it. It  happened that the theistic traditions (Vaisnavism, Saivism, Shaktism) became extremely popular and idol worship, widespread, came to be considered the norm. The worship of images became the central liturgical programme for public religion in India during the medieval period.* (Perhaps even earlier, but that's another blog-post.) And opposition to it went hand in hand.

But first, the more widely known objectors. Thanks to the class IX and X curriculum, even those of us who didn't go on to study History or Religion in India have heard of  the Arya Samaj. Established in the 19th century by Swami Dayananda Saraswati its express purpose was to go back to the 'roots' of 'Hinduism'. For Dayananda that meant going back to the Vedic fire sacrifice and rejecting idol worship. Members of the Arya Samaj perform 'sandhya' संध्या (daily recitation of a set of mantras from the Vedas) and the 'agnihotra' (a Vedic yajna). The sect forbids  'murtipuja' मूर्तिपूजा (idol worship). In fact in the early educational institutions set up by the sect, disciplinary action for a transgression was swift and severe~ 

The Brahmo Samaj set up by Raja Rammohan Roy (19th cen.) also did not believe in idol worship. A breakaway faction of the Brahmo Samaj shaped the initial beliefs of Swami Vivekananda@ (19th cen) - arguably one of the most influential figures of modern Hinduism. Later in life, the Swami was mostly guided by Shankara's Advaita-Vedanta, a monistic world view which essentially left no room for idol worship (More on that later in this post). 

The staunchest opponents in early medieval India were the Mīmāṃsā मीमांसा  - committed to understanding dharma (righteousness, correct conduct) on the basis of an exegesis of the Veda. They followed the aniconic  ritual programme set forth in the Veda (shunning graphic representation). For them the Veda was eternal and author-less. It has always existed the way it is, will survive cyclical cosmic dissolution (prayala प्रलय)  and was not written by anyone, let alone a god. In fact there is no God. Only the Veda. Its injunctions tell us how to conduct ourselves, and in the sound (sabda -शब्द) of its mantras, divinity is to be found. No place for images or idols whatsoever.

The less radical but more effective critique came from a philosophical school called Advaita-Vedanta (non-dualism), a school of thought for which the Absolute was an entity without shape or form. It was transcendental and immanent. Addressed by the neuter - Brahman - ब्रह्मण,  it is without qualities (nirguna निर्गुण), pervasive and incomprehensible. Shankara, the founder of the school demoted image worship to an inferior mode. He admitted that all of us were not capable of understanding brahman, and till such time that we did, it was 'o.k.' for us to indulge in "gross" practices like idol worship. In fact for the benefit of us lesser beings, he identified certain deities that were worthy of worship, and even wrote the most beautiful prayers in their praise.** But, according to him, as we progressed spiritually to a more "subtle" understanding of brahman, we ourselves would consider our former rituals as vaguely sinful.  

I could continue with Samkhya which is atheistic, and Yoga which side steps idol worship textually.  But this post has become long enough already, so we'll leave that for another time. 

In studying for my M.A. I've realised that I've been walking around with blinkers on most of my life. If you take one thing away from this post - I'd like it to be - take what you learnt from  your school curriculum with a pinch of salt. And remember, just because revered Indian scholars, Amar Chitra Katha, and other popular depictions of Hinduism have remained silent on certain aspects/beliefs of Hinduism, it doesn't mean that they don't exist. 

If anyone's interested, an excellent introduction to the schools of philosophy is M. Hiriyanna's "Essentials of Indian Philosophy" available at any good book store in India, and also on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Indian-Philosophy-M-Hiriyanna/dp/8120813049

If you want to read about how Swami Vivekananda re-wrote and 'sanitised'  the life of Ramakrishna in line with his philosophical beliefs, you must read: "Kali's Child" by J.J Kripal. It's brilliant, but expensive!
http://www.amazon.com/Kalis-Child-Mystical-Teachings-Ramakrishna/dp/0226453774

Notes:

*Davis, R, "Lives of Indian Images", pg 44

~Arya Samaj Wikipedia page; and personal experience growing up in an Arya Samaj family

@ Swami Vivekananda - Wikipedia page

** E.g. Sivananda Lahiri, Soundarya Lahiri, Kanakadhara Stotram, Bhaja-Govindam. Information about the works of Shankara can be found here: http://www.sankaracharya.org/

Pictures are from Google images

(This post is informed by Richard Davis (1999), Wikipedia pages, personal study and experience. And it is inspired by the lectures of Dr. Crispin Branfoot, SOAS)

The story of Ahalya & Indra: Adultery or not?

I've tried to keep this as short as possible, but as you'll see, it's not easy... I apologise again for the lack of proper citation and diacritic marks. I have listed my sources at the end of the post. I look forward to lots of comments and debate on this one. Read on...

In the story of Ahalya अहल्या,  the king of gods Indra इन्द्र  impersonates a human husband in order to gain sexual access to a human woman, assuming the form of a particular man in order to commit adultery with the man's wife. It has been mentioned, told and retold in Hindu scriptures from the Brahmanas (ब्राह्मण) 9th-6th cen BC right upto the Puranas (पुराण), which continued to be written well in to the medieval period (5th to 15th cen AD)*. It is told twice in the Ramanayana and twice in the Mahabharata.

Bearing in mind that in every version but one, Ahalya is approached and seduced/raped/persuaded by Indra in the form of her husband, I'd like my readers to consider guilt and responsibility in the said adultery. Wendy Doniger points out that the law books of Ancient India (the dharma-texts) blame the man squarely.  This, on the assumption that all women are seductive, just as all snakes bite; but the man is culturally responsible: knowing that all women are seductive, the male adulterer is at fault when a woman is allowed to do what she is naturally inclined to do. In myths on the other hand the woman is almost always to blame and is cursed, mutilated or killed.

In this post I'm going to compare briefly versions that appear in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. G.C. Pande's massive volume on life in Ancient India describes the Ramayana as 'reflecting an age of unquestioned moral idealism'. Living life according to traditional norms and morality is the leading idea of the epic. The Mahabharata on the other hand is a text in which ethical principles and cynical policies are in constant conflict. Despite moralising, didactic portions, 'realpolitik' is not given up in practice, and the whole atmosphere is one of bold questioning and intellectuality.Their respective versions of the the Indra-Ahalya story reflect this.

The Ramayana:

In one telling, there is no masquerade at all. Indra as himself simply takes her by force - she was raped.(Ramayana 7.30.17-36.) Subsequently we are told that Indra comes in the form of Gautama गौतम (her husband). She sees through the disguise but goes ahead anyway out of sexual curiosity about the king of the gods. The deed done, Indra rushes out of the hut and runs straight into Gautama, who is returning from a bath in the Ganges, blazing forth with his ascetic power. He curses Indra thus "You fool, since you have taken my form and done what should not be done, you shall be without your fruit." And as soon as the great-souled Gautama had said this in anger, at that very moment the two testicles of the thousand-eyed god fell down. (Later restored with the testicles of a ram...) Another version of the curse makes Indra sahasrayoni (possessing 1,000 female genitals).** 

Ahalya is also cursed. Turned to stone in one version. "You will live here for many thousands of years, eating wind, without any food, lying on ashes and generating inner heat. Invisible to all creatures, you will live in this hermitage.And when Rama, who is unassailable, comes to this terrible forest, then you will be purified. By receiving him as a guest you will become free of greed and delusion, you evil woman, and you will take on your own form in my presence, full of joy." (Ramayana 1.47.15-31.)

The Mahabharata:

In this version, Indra comes to Gautama's asrama (आश्रम) in the disguise of a brahmin, and when the sage is away, takes his form and asks Ahalya to have sex with him. It is not clear whether she recognises the god, but there is room for doubt, because she states that 'her husband's' desire for sex during the day is unlike him. So perhaps she does, or doesn't  know it's not her husband? Gautama has a son called Cirakarika (चीरकारिका), because he does everything after much deliberation, and thus takes a long time to accomplish even the smallest of tasks.~ After the adultery, Gautama orders his son to kill his mother, and leaves for the forest, where he repents for his hasty decision. He blames Indra for polluting his wife because of his passion. "My wife is thus in no way a culprit in the crime."

Meanwhile the son ponders and concludes that a woman is not guilty if she has not consented (to the act of adultery) willingly. That women are physically weak and have to submit to the desires of men. So if a man leads a woman to adultery, the woman is not to blame. To add to this, Gautama considers: "If examined from the point of view of dharma, neither my wife, nor myself, nor Indra is to be blamed. It is my own 'yoga' (concentration) that is to be blamed ... because jealousy is the source of all unhapiness ... and I am submerged deeply in sin by entertaining jealousy." Jealousy itself a sin, and opposed to sadacara सदाचार (behaviour of good people) a faulty emotion, takes the blame, and also the sting out of the adultery (intentional or unintentional).

And so the issue remains unresolved in my mind, at least. If Ahalya was raped, was she guilty? Rama's comment to Sita after he kills Ravana (रावण) would definitely seems to indicate so. Although the narrative of the epic states clearly that Sita is pure, Rama compares her to a sacrificial offering that has been licked by a dog, and tells her she is free to go her own way (Check it out if you don't believe me!!). If Ahalya thought the man in her hut was Gautama, where does the blame lie? And if she thought he was out or sorts, does that mean she knew it was another man? And if she knew what she was doing, is Indra to blame in any way - after all  he's not married to Gautama, is he? And are there others way of looking at the episode?

I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any trouble posting comments (you shouldn't) please email your response to me, and I'll post it for you. 

* Details of the retelling in different texts can be found in the footnotes Renate Sohnen's article: pg 73.
~ Account from D.P. Vora's book pg 47-49
** Help me resolve this circularity, please - he's called the thousand eyed god in this version, but the eyes are supposed to be a mitigated form of the 1,000 female genitals in the first place...



Bibliography:

• Life, Thought and Culture in India: Centre for Studies in Civilisations,  Vol 1 Part 2, ed G.C Pande, 2000
• Wendy Doniger in the History of Religions. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176562
• Renate Sohnen in SOAS Bulletin: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/617314 .
• Vora, D.P, 1959, Evolution of Morals in the Epics, Popular Book Depot, Bombay

Shanta's inputs on Satyavati

This is an encapsulation of V Shantakumar's comment to my 'Satyavati' blog post. I think it deserves to be a post rather than a comment. Some of you would have seen this since he marked us on the reply. But in the hope that this blog will one day have a wider audience, I'm taking the liberty of posting it. Shanta, thanks for the Satyavati bit - I misread the story in the first instance.




Dear Rohini, 

excellent. 

Unfortunately I had typed the entire unabridged, not-so-politically-correct version of the story of Satyavati, but some gremlin wiped out the whole comment on yr blog page!

So now can't rewrite all this but here are a few points:

1. She was unreal cunning and shrewd. Possibly she was reincarnated as Lady Macbeth. ( I mean what she did with poor Shantanu and Devavrata aka Bhishma was genius!)

2. Parashara was actually enroute to a kingdom to ask for the hand of a princess, because the alignment of stars forecast that at the precise moment if he managed to get her pregnant, the son would be wiser than gods!

3. He gets late and stuck on the boat taking him across wide river.  Stars are whizzing and will be gone soon.

4. She is the only one there.

5. He pleads. She, sly as a fox, refuses! Of course she will, if he gives her four boons.

6. Boon One, deodorant forever. Two: virgo intacto. Three: she will be Queen Mama! Four: Cant take the bloating and the prospect of neighbors asking inconvenient q's, so Instant Birth.

7. Caught by short and curly, P says yes, yes, but can we get on with it, and so begins the Mahabharata!!!

Of course the Karmic irony of all this is Vyaasa begets Pandu Dhritarashtra and Vidur, and the first two from  three girls 'abducted' by Bhishma for his step brother  and the third girl Amba becomes Shikandi who finally gets the old man killed, and after all this it is Vyaasa himself who dictates the the story to Ekadanta, aka Ganesha , the story of his grandchildren killing each other!

(All this virgin deflowering, out-of wedlock births, incest, fratricide, polygamy, polyandry, etc etc is why Traditional Hindu families will not keep a copy of this better-than-Lord-of-the-Rings book in their homes!)

And all this because of the once fish smelling now fragrant as Jasmine Satyavati!!

Cheers

Shanta

P.S. Apparently Satyavati was given her name before she got deodorized. See note below.

P.P.S. And that's why the saintly Rajaji could not tell the little children all of this, and made it all out to be somewhat pure and chaste!

According to the Harivamsa, Satyavati in her previous life was Achchhoda, daughter of the Pitrs (ancestors) and cursed to be born on earth.^[1] The Mahabharata, Harivamsa and Devi Bhagavata Purana assert that Satyavati was the daughter of a cursed apsara (celestial nymph) named Adrika. Adrika was transformed by a curse into a fish, and lived in the Yamuna river. When the Chedi king, Vasu (better-known as Uparicara-vasu), was on a hunting expedition he had a nocturnal emission while dreaming of his wife. He sent his semen to his queen with an eagle but, due to a fight with another eagle, the semen dropped into the river and was swallowed by the cursed Adrika-fish.^[4] Consequently, the fish became pregnant. The chief fisherman caught the fish, and cut it open. He found two babies in the womb of the fish: one male and one female. The fisherman presented the children to the king, who kept the male child. The boy grew up to become the founder of the Matsya Kingdom. The king gave the female child to the fisherman, naming her Matsya-gandhi or Matsya-gandha ("She who has the smell of fish") due to the fishy odor which came from the girl's body. The fisherman raised the girl as his daughter and named her Kali ("the dark one") because of her complexion. Over the course of time, Kali earned the name Satyavati ("truthful"). The fisherman was also a ferryman, ferrying people across the river in his boat. Satyavati helped her father in his job, and grew up into a beautiful maiden.^[2][5]

Matsyagandha to Yojanagandha - the story of Veda Vyasa's birth

If you've read an abridged version of the Mahabharata (z.B C. Rajagopapachari's), you will be familiar with the story of Shanatanu (शांतनु) and Satyavati (सत्यवती). The king had gone hunting in the forest. As he "was wandering on the banks of the Yamuna, the air was suddenly filled with a fragrance so divinely sweet that the king sought for its cause, and he traced it to a maiden so lovely that she seemed a goddess."* She was Matsyagandha (smells-like-fish?), a fisher-woman, the daughter of the chief of fishermen. It did seem odd to me even as a child that a fisher-woman should have a sweet smell emanating from her, but it didn't arouse my curiosity too much because Rajaji had added an explanation. "A sage had conferred on  her the boon that a divine perfume should emanate from her and this was now pervading the whole forest."*

Decades later, reading D.P. Vora's informative book about The Evolution of Morals in the Epics, the mystery was finally solved. Matsyagandha used to ferry passengers from one shore of the Ganga to another in a boat. One day the great sage Parashara (पराशर) happened to be her passenger. He found her very attractive and "the desire to enjoy her arose in his mind."^ She refused him saying that there were people on the shore who could see them. So the sage created a mist around the boat. Not only that, he assured her that her 'maidenhood' would be restored after intercourse. He also offered her a boon. She said she wanted a sweet smell to emanate from her body And so it followed that they had sex on the boat.   Her name became Yojanagandha - because the musky scent from her body spread for 8-9 miles (yojana) around her.

From their union, was born a son, who she abandoned on and island in the river Yamuna, because of which the child came to be known as Dvaipayna (द्वैपायन) from dvipa (द्वीप) meaning island. This child grew up to be the author of the Mahabharata.  To him is also ascribed the splitting up of the primordial single Veda into the four that we know. Hence Veda-Vyasa, vyasa meaning to disjoin, to separate, to divide. Hindu tradition also ascribes the authorship of the key Puranas to him.

Why and how Matsyagandha/Yojanagandha came to be called Satyavati, I still don't know. I do plan to read the Mahabharata to find out. Meanwhile if any of you  know the story, do tell me!! Apparently she is also a cursed apsara-turned-fish... 

PS: I'm new at this, so please forgive the lack of diacritic marks (hence the supporting Devanagari for those who can read it). Also I need to work out how to apply superscripts. Till then the foot notes will not be precisely marked. If you know how it's done on blogger, I'd be grateful for the information.

For this story - I took material from C Rajagopalachari's Mahabharata, (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan),  pg 22*; D.P Vora's "The Evolution of Morals in the Epics", 1959, Popular Book Depot, Bombay, pg 28^; Wikipedia pages on Veda Vyasa and Satyavati. The pictures are from Wikipedia and Google images.

Didarganj Yakshi (circa 3rd Century BCE)

In October 1917, a young man named Maulavi Qazi Sayyid Muhammad Azimul spied a large square block of stone along the edge of the Ganges river at the hamlet of Didarganj Kadam Basul in the eastern part of Patna, capital of the colonial province of Bihar and Orissa. Erosion along the river bank had brought this long buried piece of sandstone to the surface. Maulavi hoped to appropriate his find for household use as a grinding stone. But as he began to scrape away the dirt he discovered that the block was in fact the pedestal for a large polished stone statue. When unearthed and set upright the impressive image stood on its pedestal 6'9" tall.

Maulavi's river find would go onto an illustrious career as one of the most celebrated and well travelled of all Indian works of sculpture.

The Didarganj Yakshi, is at the Patna Museum, Bihar.

(Taken from the introduction of "Lives of Indian Images" by Richard H. Davis, 1997, Princeton University Press. Also available at Motilal Banaridass. Image from Google images)