HOW TO BECOME A GANDHARVA

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MYTH AND RITUAL

HOW TO BECOME A GANDHARVA

('Shatapatha Brahmana,' XI, 5,)

This selection from one of the latest and best known of the Brahmanas is a

welcome expansion of a love story begun, but not concluded, in the most famous

of the Rig Veda 'dialogue' (samvada) hymns, X, 95. The tale recurs in the

Mahabharata and the Puranas, and was used by Kalidasa for his drama

Vikramorvashi. The Gandharvas and the Apsarases-ancient classes of celestial

beings who in the later Samhitas are often associated with waters and

trees-are, like many forest creatures, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile to

men. King Pururavas falls happily in love with the nymph, Urvashi, until the

Gandharvas separate the lovers by a ruse and the lonely king seeks the ritual

means whereby he too may become a proper forest creature, a Gandharva.

The nymph Urvashi loved Pururavas the son of Ida.1 When she married him she

said: You must embrace me three times a day, but never lie with me against my

will. Moreover I must never see you naked, for this is the proper way to behave

to us women !' She lived with him long, and she was with child by him, so long

did she live with him. Then the Gandharvas said to one another: 'This Urvashi

has been living too long among men ! We must find a way to get her back !' She

kept a ewe with two lambs tied to her bed, and the Gandharvas carried off one

of the lambs. 'They're taking away my baby,' she cried, 'as though there were

no warrior and no man in the place!' Then they took away the second, and she

cried out in the same way.

Then he thought to himself. 'How can the place where I am be without a warrior

and a man?', And, naked as he was, he leapt up after them, for he thought it

would take too long to put on a garment. Then the Gandharvas produced a flash

of lightning, and she saw him as clearly as if it were day-and she vanished. .

.. . Bitterly weeping, he wandered all over Kurukshetra 2. There is a lake of

lotuses there, called Anyatahplaksha. He walked on its banks, and there were

nymphs swimming in it in the form of swans3. And she noticed him, and said:

'That's the man with whom I lived!' 'Let us show ourselves to him,' they said.

'Very well,' she replied, and they appeared to him [in their true forms] 4

Then he recognized her and entreated her: 'O my wife, with mind so cruel, stay,

let us talk together, for if our secrets are untold we shall have -no joy in

days to come!'

Then she replied: 'What use is there in my talking to you! I have passed like

the first of dawns. Pururavas, go home again! I am like the wind, that cannot

be caught.'.

Mournfully Pururavas said: 'Today your lover will perish, he will go to the

furthest distance and never come back. He will lie in the lap of disaster, 5

and fierce wolves will devour him.'.

She replied: 'Pururavas do not die! do not go away! do not let the fierce wolves

devour you! Friendship is not to be found in women, For they have hearts like

half-tamed jackals!'6

And then she said to him: 'When I dwelt in disguise in the land of mortals and

passed the nights of four autumns,7 I ate a little ghee 8 once a day, and -now

I have had quite enough! . . .

But her heart pitied him, and she said, 'Come on the last evening of the year,

then, when your son is born, you shall lie one night with me.' He came on the

last night of the year, and there stood a golden palace. They told him to

enter, and brought her to him. She said: 'Tomorrow the Gandharvas will grant

you a boon and you must make your choice.' He said: 'You choose for me I' She

answered: 'Say, "Let me become one of you!"' In the morning the Gandharvas gave

him a boon, and he asked: 'Let me become one of you.' 'There is no fire among

men,' they said, 'which is so holy that a man may become one of us by

sacrificing with it.' So they put fire in a pan, and said: 'By sacrificing with

this you will become one of us.' He took it and his son, and went homeward. On

the way he left the fire in the forest and went to a village with the boy. When

he came back the fire had vanished. In place of the fire was a pipal tree and in

place of the pan a mimosa. So he went back to the Gandharvas. They said: 'For a

year you must cook enough rice for four [every day]. Each time [you cook] you

must put on the fire three logs of the pipal anointed with ghee . . . and the

fire which is produced [at the end of the year] will be the fire [which will

make you one of us]. But that is rather difficult,' they added, 'so you should

make an upper firestick of pipal wood and a lower one of mimosa wood, and the

fire you get from them will be the fire [which will make you one of us]. But

that too is rather difficult,' they added, 'so you must make both the upper and

lower firestick 9 of pipal wood, and the fire you get from them will be the

fire.' So he made an upper and a lower firestick of pipal wood, and the fire he

got from them was the fire [which would make him one of them]. He sacrificed

with it and became a Gandharva.

Notes

Translation by A. L. Basham, in his The Wonder That Was India (London, 1954), PP. 405-7

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