The Chaste Wife and the Three Gods

The sages told the Pandavas of Anasuya, the wife of the sage Atri, whose chastity and devotion were so perfect that they gave her power over the very gods - and of how, when the three great gods themselves came to test her, she humbled them with her purity and her wit.

Atri was one of the great sages, a seer of the highest order, and his wife Anasuya was famed throughout all the worlds as the most faithful and devoted of wives, a pativrata of perfect purity. Her name itself means "free of envy," and she was without jealousy, without ill-will, wholly devoted to her husband and to righteousness. So complete was her chastity and her devotion that, by the law that gives such purity great power, Anasuya had become mighty in spirit - so mighty that her virtue could command the elements and even the gods, and her fame as the most faithful of wives spread to the very heaven of the gods.