The Sage and the Princess

On their pilgrimage the Pandavas came to a clear and lovely lake, and the sage Lomasha told them it was holy because of a wonder that had happened there long ago, when an aged sage was made young again by the physicians of the gods, all through the faithfulness of a single devoted wife.

"There was once a great sage named Chyavana, of the line of Bhrigu," said Lomasha, "who sat down in one place to perform penance, and sat so long, so still, and so deep in meditation that the world forgot he was there. Years passed over him, and then more years. Creepers grew up and twined about his motionless body; the dust gathered; and at last a great anthill rose around him and covered him entirely, so that nothing of the sage could be seen at all - nothing but his two eyes, glittering faintly through a gap in the mud like two small jewels. He had become, to all appearance, no more than a strange anthill in the forest, with two points of light shining within it."

It happened that a king named Sharyati came to that very forest on an outing, with all his retinue and his many wives, and with his beautiful young daughter, the princess Sukanya. While the king rested, Sukanya wandered among the trees with her companions, playful and curious as a young girl is, looking at everything.

She came upon the great anthill, and within it she saw two strange points of light glittering out at her through the mud. She did not know that they were the eyes of a living sage buried within; she thought them some curious shining things, fireflies perhaps, or gems. Idly, thoughtlessly, in the way of a child poking at a curiosity, she took up a sharp thorn and pushed it into the two glittering points to see what they were.

They were Chyavana's eyes. The thorn pierced them, and the great sage, sitting in his deep penance within the anthill, was suddenly blinded, his eyes destroyed by the careless hand of the princess who never knew what she had done. And though Chyavana, master of himself, made no cry and no movement, a terrible anger rose in him at the injury.

The sage did not curse the girl, for he could not see who had wounded him. But in his pain and wrath his accumulated power lashed out, and a strange affliction at once fell upon the whole of King Sharyati's encampment. The natural functions of the body were stopped throughout the army: no man among them could relieve himself, and a great and growing distress spread through the entire host, baffling and frightening them all.

King Sharyati, alarmed, understood that some holy person must have been offended, for such afflictions came only from the anger of the powerful in penance. He went through his camp asking urgently whether anyone had done injury to a sage or a hermit, that he might make amends before the whole army perished. At first no one knew of any fault. Then the princess Sukanya, frightened and honest, came to her father and confessed what she had done - how she had seen two glittering points in an anthill and, not knowing what they were, had pierced them with a thorn.

The king hurried to the anthill, and there he found the great sage Chyavana, blinded, and understood the whole of it. He fell at the sage's feet and begged forgiveness for his daughter's innocent but grievous fault, and asked what he might do to make amends and lift the affliction from his army.

Chyavana, blind and aged, named his price. "Give me your daughter Sukanya to be my wife," he said. "She has taken my sight; let her be the eyes and the companion of my remaining years. Give her to me in marriage, and I will be appeased, and your army will be freed."

It was a hard thing to ask - that a young and lovely princess be wedded to a blind, ancient hermit covered in the dust of an anthill. But the king, to save his people and to right the wrong, agreed, and Sukanya herself accepted her fate without complaint, for she knew the fault had been hers. So the princess was given to the sage Chyavana, and the king and his army, the affliction lifted, departed and left her behind in the forest with her aged husband.

And now the true greatness of Sukanya appeared. She did not pine for her lost youth or her father's palace, nor resent the blind old man whose sight she had destroyed. She took up her life as the wife of the sage with a whole and willing heart. She tended Chyavana with perfect devotion - feeding him, guiding him, caring for his every need, keeping his fires and his rites, serving him in his blindness and his great age as faithfully and as cheerfully as if he had been a young king and she the most fortunate of brides.

She asked for nothing and complained of nothing. The princess who had been raised in luxury wore bark and lived on forest fare and gave her days to the service of an old blind hermit, and she did it so purely and so well that her fidelity became a thing the very gods took note of. She had wronged him once, in ignorance; she would make it right with a lifetime of devotion. And that devotion was about to be tested in the hardest possible way.

One day the two Ashvins, the twin physicians of the gods - youthful, radiant, surpassingly handsome, the most beautiful of all the celestials - came wandering through that forest. They saw Sukanya, lovely as she was, serving her ancient blind husband, and they were struck by her beauty and astonished to find her wedded to so old and broken a man.

They came to her and spoke. "Why, fair one, do you waste your youth and your beauty upon this blind old hermit? You were made for delight. Choose one of us instead - we are young, beautiful, and deathless gods - and leave this withered sage. Surely a woman so lovely should not throw her life away on one who can give her nothing."

But Sukanya did not waver for an instant. "I am the wedded wife of the sage Chyavana," she answered with quiet firmness, "and I will not abandon him, neither for gods nor for any beauty in the worlds. He is my husband, and my faith is given to him, and I will keep it. Do not speak to me so again." Her refusal was so steadfast and so dignified that the Ashvins, instead of being angered, were filled with admiration for her, and they conceived a wish to reward such fidelity rather than to break it.

"Since you are so true a wife," the Ashvins said, "we will do you and your husband a great kindness. We are the physicians of heaven. Bring your husband to the lake, and we will give him back his youth and his sight, and make him beautiful as we are. But there will be a test in it for you."

They led the blind old sage down into the waters of the lake, and the two Ashvins went down with him. And in a moment, all three rose up out of the water together - and they were identical. Three young men, equally radiant, equally beautiful, equally handsome, alike in every feature and every limb, stood before Sukanya, and not one of them could be told from the others. Chyavana had been made young and whole, but he was now indistinguishable from the two gods who stood beside him.

"There they are, faithful wife," said the Ashvins, their voices coming from three identical mouths. "One of these three is your husband, made young again. Now choose. Point out which of us is truly Chyavana, and take him - but choose rightly, for if you choose one of us instead, you must come away with a god. Look well, and pick out your own."

Sukanya looked at the three radiant, identical young men, and her heart did not falter. She did not try to choose by the eye, for the eye could not tell them apart. She chose by the deep, sure knowledge of a faithful heart that had served and loved and studied her husband through all his blindness and age - and, it is said, by the quiet inner sense that her devotion had earned her, she perceived which of the three was truly her own.

Steadily she walked forward and laid her hand upon the right one, claiming Chyavana, her husband, out of the three. And she had chosen truly. The two Ashvins, delighted and full of praise for her fidelity and her discernment, stepped back and revealed themselves, and there stood Chyavana alone - no longer blind, no longer old, but young, whole, and beautiful, restored to the fullness of his youth by the gift of the gods, and given back to the wife who had refused every temptation to keep faith with him.

Sukanya had her husband again, made new; and Chyavana, who had lost his sight to her thorn long ago, had now received from her devotion a second youth he could never have won alone.

Chyavana was overflowing with gratitude to the Ashvins for restoring his youth, and he resolved to reward them. Now the Ashvins, though gods, had long been denied a share of the soma, the sacred drink of the great sacrifices, for the other gods did not count them worthy of it. So Chyavana vowed that he would win them their rightful share. At a great sacrifice held by King Sharyati, the sage himself prepared to offer the soma to the Ashvins.

When Indra, king of the gods, saw the Ashvins about to be given the sacred drink, he was enraged and forbade it, declaring the physician-twins unworthy. "If you offer them the soma," Indra thundered, "I will strike you with my thunderbolt." And he raised his weapon to hurl at the sage.

But Chyavana was not a man to be cowed. By the power of his penance he froze Indra's arm in the very act of throwing, so that the king of the gods stood paralyzed, unable to loose his bolt. And then, from the sage's offering, Chyavana created a vast and terrible demon named Mada - Intoxication - a being so enormous and so dreadful that he threatened to swallow Indra and all the worlds. Faced with this monster of his own making, and his arm held fast, Indra was forced to yield. He agreed that the Ashvins should henceforth receive their share of the soma, and Chyavana released him and dissolved the demon Mada, scattering him into drink and dice and the other intoxications by which men lose themselves.

Lomasha finished the tale beside the holy lake. "This is the place, son of Pandu, where the old sage was made young again, and all of it flowed from one thing: the faithfulness of Sukanya.

"She wronged the sage once, in childish ignorance, and she spent her life making it right, serving a blind old husband without a word of complaint, refusing even the love of beautiful gods to keep her vow. And because her devotion was so pure, the gods themselves rewarded it - gave her husband back his youth and his sight, and gave her the discernment to know her own among the indistinguishable. A faithful heart, you see, can tell true from false where the eye cannot, and can win from heaven what no penance alone could buy."

Yudhishthira looked at Draupadi as the tale ended, for he had heard in it an echo of his own wife's faithfulness through every hardship. The brothers bathed in the holy lake and went on, carrying with them the memory of the princess who pierced a sage's eyes with a thorn and then, by a lifetime of devotion, gave him back his youth.