The Demon Who Burned Himself

The sages told the Pandavas of Bhasmasura, the demon who won a deadly power and was destroyed by it through his own hand - a tale of how a fearful gift, given to one without the wisdom to hold it, becomes the ruin of its owner.

There was a demon who set himself to win power by penance, and he chose to worship Shiva, the great god who is famous for being easily pleased and quick to grant boons. The demon went into the wilderness and performed austerities of fearful severity for a very long time, mortifying his body and fixing his whole will upon compelling the god's favor. And in time Shiva, pleased by the demon's long and intense devotion, appeared before him to grant him a boon - for so generous is Shiva that he gives freely to those who worship him, sometimes without weighing carefully what is asked, or who is asking.

The demon asked for a terrible boon. "Grant me this," he said. "Let it be that whenever I place my hand upon the head of any being, that being shall instantly be burned to ashes - reduced to bhasma in a moment by the mere touch of my hand upon its head. Let no one be able to withstand my touch."

It was a fearful thing to ask, and a fearful thing to grant - a power of instant death given at the touch of a hand, placed in the keeping of a demon. But Shiva, true to his nature as the giver of boons, granted it as it was asked, without weighing what such a power would do in such hands. The moment the boon was given, the demon possessed the deadly touch: whatever living head his hand fell upon would crumble at once to ashes.

And no sooner did the demon feel the power within him than his heart filled not with gratitude to the god who had given it, but with a wicked and ungrateful ambition. He looked upon Shiva himself, the very god who had just granted his wish, and a monstrous thought rose in him.

"Why should I not test this power at once," the demon thought, "upon the greatest being I can find? If I can burn even Shiva himself to ashes with my touch, then I shall be master of all, and I may take his beautiful consort Parvati for my own, and rule unchallenged." So black was his ingratitude that he resolved to turn his new power against the very god who had given it to him, in the same hour it was granted.

And he reached out his hand toward Shiva's head, to lay it there and burn the great god to ashes.

Shiva, seeing the demon's intent, was forced to flee. For here was a terrible irony: the god could not undo the boon he had given, and his deadly gift was now coming for his own head, and there was nothing he could do to take it back. The giver of the power was now its first intended victim. So the great god turned and ran, and the demon, hand outstretched, ran after him, eager to lay his deadly palm upon Shiva's head.

Across the worlds the strange and desperate chase went on - the great god Shiva fleeing for his life, and the demon pursuing him with his deadly hand reaching for his head. Shiva ran through the mountains and the skies and the forests, and the demon came after, never far behind, and Shiva could not stop nor turn to fight, for one touch would end him.

At last Shiva, in his extremity, ran to the one who could help him: Vishnu, the preserver, the lord of stratagems, whose cleverness could accomplish what raw power could not. Shiva came to Vishnu and told him of the deadly boon and the ungrateful demon and his own helpless flight, and begged him to find a way to save him, for he could not save himself.

Vishnu saw at once that this demon could not be defeated by force - no weapon could reach him fast enough, and his boon made him deadly to the touch. He would have to be undone by his own power, tricked into turning his deadly hand against himself. And Vishnu knew exactly how to do it. He would use the demon's own lust and folly against him, just as the demon had meant to use his deadly touch against his benefactor.

Vishnu took a form he had used before to bewitch the proud and the foolish: the form of Mohini, an enchantress of beauty so overwhelming that no being who looked upon her could keep his wits. As the demon came pursuing Shiva, Mohini appeared in his path - graceful, radiant, impossibly lovely, dancing lightly before him.

The demon, the instant his eyes fell upon Mohini, forgot everything. He forgot Shiva; he forgot his murderous chase; he forgot the very power burning in his hand. All his thought was swallowed up at once by desire for the beautiful woman before him. He stopped his pursuit and approached her, smitten, and begged her to be his, declaring that he must have her for his wife, that he could think of nothing else.

Mohini smiled and played him as an angler plays a fish. She was coy and teasing, neither refusing nor consenting, drawing him on, until the demon was wild with longing and ready to promise her anything at all if only she would have him. And then she named her single condition.

"I will consent to be yours," said Mohini, "but only on one condition. I am a dancer, and I will marry no one but a man who can dance as well as I do - who can match me, movement for movement, pose for pose, exactly mirroring everything I do. Dance with me, and copy my every gesture perfectly, and if you can keep pace with me, I am yours."

The demon, eager beyond all caution to win her, agreed at once. "I will match your every movement," he said. "Begin, and I will follow."

So Mohini began to dance, and the demon danced opposite her, copying her exactly. She struck a graceful pose, and he struck the same; she moved her arms in a flowing gesture, and he moved his the same way; she turned and swayed and gestured, and he mirrored each motion faithfully, his eyes fixed on her in adoration, utterly absorbed in matching her, all his thought bent on copying her every move so that he might win her. He did not notice, in his enchantment, that he was being led, step by step, gesture by gesture, toward a single fatal motion.

Through the graceful figures of the dance Mohini led him, and the demon mirrored her faithfully, lost in his desire. And then, as a natural part of the flowing dance, Mohini raised her own hand and placed it upon the top of her own head, in a lovely gesture, as though smoothing her hair.

And the demon, mirroring her exactly as he had sworn to do, copying her every movement without a thought, raised his own hand and placed it upon the top of his own head.

It was his deadly hand. And in the instant his palm touched his own head, the boon did its work: the demon was burned to ashes that very moment, crumbling to a heap of bhasma where he stood, destroyed utterly by his own deadly power, turned by his own hand against his own head. The terrible gift that he had meant to use to murder the god who gave it, and to seize a goddess, had been turned by his lust and his folly upon himself, and it ended him in a breath.

Shiva was saved, and the worlds were freed of the demon, and it had cost no weapon and no battle - only the demon's own desire, and Vishnu's cleverness, and a dance.

The sages drew the lessons for the Pandavas, and there were several folded into the short and striking tale.

"See first the danger of giving great power to one without the wisdom to hold it. Shiva, generous to a fault, granted a deadly boon without weighing who would wield it, and the gift at once turned against its own giver. Power placed in foolish or wicked hands does not bless the world; it endangers even the one who bestowed it. Be careful what you give, and to whom.

"See, too, the swift ruin of ingratitude and lust. The demon's first thought, upon receiving his gift, was to murder his benefactor; and at the height of his murderous chase, a single glimpse of beauty made him forget everything and led him, blind with desire, straight to his own destruction. Ingratitude and lust between them undid him utterly.

"And see, once more, the oldest pattern of all: that the deadly power the wicked trust in carries their destruction within it. The demon's own boon, his own deadly hand, was the instrument of his death - turned upon himself by his own folly. The wicked are very often destroyed not by their enemies but by the very weapons they meant for others. And brute power, however terrible, is no match for wisdom: the demon could not be beaten by force, but he was undone in a moment by a clever stratagem and his own weakness."

And the Pandavas remembered the demon who danced himself to ashes, and took to heart that power without wisdom is a danger above all to the one who holds it.