The King Who Became a Mother

The sages told the Pandavas of King Bhangasvana, who was changed from a man into a woman, and who, when offered the choice to return to his manhood, chose instead to remain a woman - because, having been both father and mother, he found a mother's love the greater - a tale of the two natures, of a parent's love, and of which of life's joys runs deepest.

King Bhangasvana was a great and righteous ruler, but he was childless, and longed for sons. So he performed a certain great sacrifice to obtain offspring - a sacrifice, however, that was dedicated to a god other than Indra, and that did not give Indra his due honor. Indra, the king of the gods, was offended at being slighted in the rite, and bore the king a grudge for it, waiting for a chance to humble him. By the sacrifice the king did indeed obtain his wish, and in time a hundred sons were born to him, and he rejoiced in them, a father blessed with many heirs. But Indra had not forgotten the slight, and watched for his moment of revenge.

One day King Bhangasvana went out hunting, and Indra, seeing his chance, used his divine power to bewilder the king and lead him astray, so that he wandered, lost and thirsty, far from his companions. Parched and weary, the king came at last upon a beautiful lake of clear water, and, glad of it, he dismounted to drink and to bathe and refresh himself after his wandering. He entered the water of the lake to bathe.

But the lake was enchanted by Indra's power; and when the king came up out of the water after bathing, he found that he had been transformed: he had entered the lake a man, and he came out of it a woman. The king who had gone down into the water as a mighty king and father of a hundred sons rose from it changed utterly in body and nature into a woman, by the secret power that Indra had laid upon the lake to avenge the old slight. Astonished and ashamed and bewildered at the change, the king-now-woman did not know how to return to the kingdom and the throne and the family in such an altered form; and so, in confusion and shame, she did not go back, but wandered away from her old life into the forest.

Wandering in the forest in her new form, the transformed king, now a woman, came in time upon a hermit, an ascetic dwelling in the wood; and the ascetic took her to wife. And so the one who had been a king and the father of a hundred sons now lived as a woman, the wife of a forest hermit; and in this new life she conceived and bore children once again - a hundred sons, this time as their mother, brought forth from her own body.

So Bhangasvana had now been both father and mother: a hundred sons begotten as a king and father in the former life, and a hundred sons borne as a woman and mother in the new one. Two hundred children in all called this one person parent - the first hundred fathered, the second hundred borne and suckled and reared as a mother rears her children. And this strange double experience, of having been both father and mother to a hundred children each, would prove to be the heart of the tale; for it gave Bhangasvana a knowledge that almost no one else has ever had: to know, from within, both a father's bond to his children and a mother's, and so to be able to weigh the one against the other.

Now Indra, still not satisfied in his revenge, and perhaps wishing to deepen the king's trouble, came down and worked further mischief. He went to the two sets of sons - the hundred begotten by Bhangasvana as a king, who remained in the kingdom, and the hundred borne by Bhangasvana as a woman, who lived in the forest - and he stirred up strife and enmity between them, setting the two groups of brothers against one another, until they quarreled and fought and destroyed one another, all the two hundred sons perishing in the conflict that Indra had sown.

So the transformed king suffered a terrible double bereavement: all the children of both lives, the hundred fathered and the hundred borne, were dead, slain in the strife that Indra had stirred among them. Bhangasvana, who had been so blessed with offspring, both as father and as mother, was now bereft of them all at once, grieving for two hundred dead children. It was a cruel stroke; and Indra, having brought the king-now-woman to this depth of sorrow, at last appeared, ready to reveal himself and his hand in all that had befallen, and to see the king humbled and grieving at his work.

Indra now appeared before the grieving Bhangasvana and revealed himself, confessing that it was he who, out of the old grudge for the slighted sacrifice, had wrought all of it - the transformation at the lake, and the strife that had destroyed all the children. But seeing the depth of the king's sorrow, and perhaps relenting somewhat, Indra was moved to offer some relief. He offered to restore to life one set of the slain sons: either the hundred that Bhangasvana had begotten as a king and father, or the hundred that Bhangasvana had borne as a woman and mother. The transformed king must choose which hundred should live again.

And Bhangasvana, to Indra's surprise, chose the sons that she had borne as a mother - the hundred children of her womanhood - rather than the hundred she had fathered as a king. Indra, astonished, asked why: why, having been a king and a father, she chose the children of her womanhood over the children of her manhood, the sons she had borne over the sons she had begotten. And Bhangasvana gave the answer that is the heart of the whole tale: that a mother's love for her children is greater than a father's, and that therefore she chose the children of her motherhood.

Bhangasvana explained her choice to the wondering Indra. 'I have been both father and mother,' she said, 'and have loved a hundred children as their father and a hundred as their mother; and so I, almost alone among all beings, can truly say which love is the greater. And I tell you that the love of a mother for her children is greater than the love of a father; that the bond formed by bearing and nursing and rearing a child from one's own body is deeper than the bond of begetting. Therefore, having known both, I choose the children of my motherhood to be restored to me, for it is them I love the most deeply.'

Indra was so struck and so pleased by this answer, and by the king's having borne all the strange trials of the tale, that his grudge melted away and his heart turned wholly to favor. He offered now to restore to life not one set of sons only, but both - all two hundred children, those of her fatherhood and those of her motherhood alike - and granted this gladly. And he offered her a further choice besides: whether she wished to remain a woman, as she now was, or to be changed back into the man and king she had formerly been. The revenge had turned, in the end, to reconciliation and generous boon.

When Indra offered to change Bhangasvana back into a man and king, or to let her remain a woman as she now was, the transformed king chose to remain a woman. And again Indra asked why - why, having been a mighty king, she would not return to her manhood and her throne, but chose to keep the woman's form into which she had been changed against her will. And Bhangasvana gave an answer as remarkable as the first: that she found greater happiness and a deeper joy in the life and love of a woman than she had known as a man, and above all in the love between a woman and her children; and that therefore she chose to remain as she was.

So the king who had been transformed into a woman against her will, and had at first been ashamed and bewildered by the change, came in the end to choose that very form freely, finding in the woman's life, and especially in a mother's love, a sweetness and a depth that she would not give up even to regain her kingship and her manhood. Indra, honoring her choice, granted it, and restored all her children to life besides, and departed reconciled. And Bhangasvana lived on as she had chosen, a mother among her restored children, having found, through all the strange trials of her transformation, that the deepest of loves and the sweetest of lives was the one she had come to by misfortune and now embraced by choice.

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

'See, first, the remarkable testimony of one who had been both father and mother. Bhangasvana, having loved a hundred children as their father and a hundred as their mother, could weigh the two loves as almost no other being ever could; and she declared that a mother's love is the greater, the bond of bearing and nursing and rearing deeper than the bond of begetting. The tale honors thereby the depth of a mother's love, and the greatness of the bond between a parent and the children of their own body; and it bids us reverence that love, the deepest of human bonds, and the mothers who bear it.

'And see how one who was changed against her will came in the end to embrace her new life freely, finding in it a deeper joy than she had left behind. Bhangasvana, transformed into a woman by Indra's revenge, was at first ashamed; yet, having tasted the love of a mother, she chose to remain a woman even when offered her kingship again, finding that life and that love the sweeter. The tale teaches that what comes upon us as misfortune may hold a hidden good we would not give up once we have known it; that the deepest joys are not always where we first sought them; and that even a fate we did not choose may become, in time, the very life we would choose above all. And it teaches, through Indra, that even revenge may turn to reconciliation, and a grudge to a generous boon, when the heart is touched.'

And the Pandavas, who knew the love of their mother Kunti and the bonds of family, took to heart the tale of the king who became a mother and found that love the greatest of all.