The Bride From Another Age

The sages told the Pandavas of Revati, the princess who was born in an earlier age of the world and married in a later one, and of how Balarama, the elder brother of Krishna, took her to wife - a tale of the vastness of time, of the passing of ages, and of the love that bridged them.

In an age long before the days of Krishna and Balarama, there reigned a king named Raivata, a mighty and righteous ruler, who had a daughter named Revati, a princess of surpassing beauty and excellence. So peerless was she that the king could find no suitor he thought worthy of her among the princes of his own time; and being troubled how to bestow so excellent a daughter, he resolved to go and seek counsel from the Creator himself, Brahma, in his high abode, as to whom he should choose for her husband. So the king took his daughter Revati and journeyed up to the realm of the Creator to ask his guidance.

King Raivata came with his daughter to the high realm of the Creator and waited to lay his question before him. But when they arrived, the Creator was engaged in listening to celestial music and song, and the king had to wait for that performance to end before he could speak. So the king waited - and the waiting, brief as it seemed to him in that high realm, was no brief thing at all by the measure of the world below.

For time, the king did not at first understand, runs differently in the realm of the Creator than upon the earth: what is a short while in that high place is vast ages in the world below. While the king waited through what seemed to him only the space of a musical performance, age upon age was passing on the earth he had left - generations rising and falling, kingdoms born and perishing, the very yugas, the great ages of the world, rolling by one after another. The king, all unknowing, was being carried by his brief wait in the Creator's hall across an immense gulf of time, so that when at last he came to speak, the world he had left would be utterly changed and long gone.

When at last the celestial music ended, King Raivata bowed before the Creator and laid his question before him: to whom should he give his peerless daughter Revati in marriage? But the Creator smiled, and gave the king an answer he had not expected. 'O King,' he said, 'all those whom you might have considered as suitors for your daughter - the princes and kings of your own age - are long since gone. For while you waited here, vast ages have passed upon the earth; many cycles of the great yugas have rolled by; the world you knew is no more, and all the men of your time, and their children, and their children's children for countless generations, are dead and forgotten. The earth below is grown old and changed beyond all knowing since you came here.'

The king was astounded and dismayed to learn that his whole age, his kingdom, his people, all that he had known, had passed away while he waited through what seemed to him so short a time; that he and his daughter alone remained out of a vanished age, strangers now to the world below, which had aged through ages while they stood in the timeless hall of the Creator. The vastness of time had swallowed his whole world; and he and Revati were left, as it were, marooned in a later age than their own, the last survivors of a bygone era.

But the Creator did not leave the king without counsel. Since all the suitors of Revati's own age were long gone, the Creator told the king whom he should now seek for her in this later age into which they had come: he should give his daughter to Balarama, the elder brother of Krishna, who lived now upon the earth - a being of divine nature, mighty and noble, a worthy husband for the peerless princess, and one suited to receive a bride from a former age. So the Creator appointed for Revati a bridegroom not of her own vanished time, but of the new age she had been carried into.

King Raivata, accepting the Creator's counsel, returned with his daughter to the earth below - an earth utterly changed from the one he had left, grown old through many ages, its people and customs strange to him. He came to the city of Dwaraka, where Balarama dwelt, to offer his daughter according to the Creator's word. So the princess of a former age was brought to be wed to a hero of a later one, the gulf of countless ages bridged by the strange grace of the Creator's counsel; and Revati, who had been born in one world, was to be married in another.

But there was a difficulty, born of the vast span of ages that lay between Revati's birth and her marriage. For in the earlier age in which she had been born, the men and women of the earth had been of far greater stature than the people of the later age into which she now came; the races of the older yuga were taller and mightier of body than those of the present time. And so Revati, a woman of that earlier and greater age, towered over Balarama and the people of the new age, being far taller than her appointed bridegroom - a giantess, as it were, among the smaller folk of the later time.

This difference of stature, the fruit of the ages that divided her birth from her marriage, made the match seem impossible; for the bride of the former age was too tall by far to stand beside her bridegroom of the present one. The vast gulf of time had left its mark even upon her body, making her a woman of a greater race set down among a lesser; and something had to be done to bridge this last difference, that the princess of the older age might be joined to the hero of the new. So Balarama, the mighty elder brother of Krishna, addressed himself to the remedy.

Balarama, whose chosen weapon and emblem was the plough, found the remedy for the difference of stature. With his plough he gently touched the tall princess Revati - laying the tip of his ploughshare upon her shoulders and pressing softly - and by his divine power she was brought down to the stature of the people of the new age, reduced to a height fitting for her bridegroom and her new time, so that she might stand beside Balarama as his equal and his bride. Thus the last mark of the former age was smoothed away, and Revati was made a woman of the present world.

And so Balarama and Revati were wed, the hero of the later age and the princess of the former one joined at last in marriage, the vast gulf of ages between them bridged by the grace of the Creator and the power of Balarama's plough. Revati became the beloved wife of Balarama, dwelling with him in Dwaraka; and the strange tale of the princess born in one age and married in another came to its happy close in their union. Love and divine power together had reached across the immense span of time that had divided them, and made of two who belonged to different ages a single wedded pair.

There was in the tale a teaching about the vastness of time and the smallness of our own age within it. For the whole strange story turned upon the truth that time is far vaster than we imagine: that what seems a brief while in the high and timeless realms is vast ages in the world below; that whole worlds and peoples and ages rise and pass away while we are scarcely aware; and that our own age, which seems to us the whole of things, is but one fleeting moment in an immense succession of ages, soon to pass and be forgotten as the age of Revati's birth had passed.

The king and his daughter, carried across countless ages in what seemed to them a moment, learned by their own strange experience how small a thing a single age is in the great sweep of time, and how utterly the world changes through the rolling of the yugas. The tale held this up before the listener: that we should not take our own brief age, our own world and its ways, for the whole or the permanent thing it seems; that all things pass, ages and peoples and kingdoms alike; and that the span of time is so vast that our little lives and our little age are as a moment in it. To know this is to hold the world more lightly, and to set our hearts on what endures beyond all the passing ages.

The sages drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas.

'See, first, the vastness of time, and how small a thing our own age is within it. King Raivata waited in the Creator's hall through what seemed to him the space of a song, and found that whole ages had passed upon the earth, his world and all its people long gone. The tale teaches that time is far vaster than we imagine; that what seems brief in the high realms is ages in the world below; that whole worlds and peoples rise and pass away in the great sweep of the yugas; and that our own age, which seems to us the whole of things, is but a fleeting moment soon to pass. Hold your own age and world more lightly, then, knowing how soon all things pass.

'And see how love and grace may bridge even the vastest gulfs. Revati was born in one age and married in another, divided from her bridegroom by countless ages and even by the stature of a greater race; and yet the grace of the Creator and the power of Balarama joined them at last, the difference of ages smoothed away by the touch of the plough. The tale teaches that even the greatest divisions may be bridged by grace and love; that what time has put asunder may yet be joined; and that the heart need not despair before the vastness of time, for love can reach across even the gulf of ages. Set your hearts, then, on what endures; hold the passing world lightly; and trust that grace can bridge what seems unbridgeable.'

And the Pandavas, who knew Balarama and Krishna well and had pondered the great ages of the world, took to heart the tale of the princess who crossed the ages to find her love.