Damayanti Alone in the Forest

The fire in the Kamyaka camp had burned to coals, and Yudhishthira had not moved since the sage began.

"You have left her sleeping," he said. "A king of the line of Virasena, truthful in speech, took a sword to his wife's one cloth, cut half away for himself, and walked off into the trees. Tell me what she did when she woke, Brihadashva. Do not hurry over that part to reach the happy ending."

"She woke because the night had got at her skin where the cloth had been," said the sage.

Damayanti put out a hand in the dark and found the ground beside her empty and still warm. She felt the cut edge of her garment, straight and clean, the work of a blade and not of thorns, and understood the whole of it in one breath.

"O lord," she cried, "O husband, do you desert me? I am lost and undone, frightened in this desolate place. You are truthful in speech and you know what morality is. How then, having pledged your word, have you left me asleep in the woods? Why have you deserted a wife devoted to you, who has never wronged you, though you have been wronged enough by others?"

She turned in a circle, peering. "Enough of this joke. I am terribly frightened. Show yourself. I see you, O king. You are there, Naishadha, hiding behind those shrubs. Why do you not answer me? It is cruel of you, seeing me in this plight, that you do not come and comfort me."

No one answered. The forest went on with its night noises, which have no interest in the affairs of queens.

"I do not grieve for myself," she said, more quietly. "I grieve only to think how you will pass your days alone. In the evening, oppressed with hunger and thirst, under the trees, what will it be like for you when you look and cannot see me?"

Then she sprang up and sank down again, and shrank, and wept aloud. "Whatever being it is," she said at last, "through whose curse my lord suffers this, let it bear a grief greater than ours. Let the wicked one who has brought Nala of sinless heart to this carry heavier ills than he does."

So the crowned consort of a king went looking for her husband in woods kept by beasts of prey, hither and thither like a woman out of her mind, calling, "Alas. Alas. O king." She wailed like a female osprey, high and thin and unceasing, and the sound carried far, which is how the two things that came for her that day both found her.

The first was a serpent, enormous and hungry, and she walked within its reach without seeing it, because she was watching the middle distance for a man. It took her in one motion and folded her into its coils.

Her arms were pinned, the breath going out of her by degrees, and what she said from inside that grip was not for herself.

"O lord, why do you not run to me now, when I am seized in this wilderness with nobody to protect me? When your mind comes back to you, and your senses, and your wealth, how will it be with you then, when you think of this? Who will soothe you, O sinless one, when you are weary and hungry and fainting? O tiger among kings, who will be there?"

The coils tightened. She did not ask the serpent for anything, and she did not ask heaven for anything. She asked, over and over, who would look after Nala.

"Mark that," said Brihadashva to the Pandavas around the fire. "She is being crushed to death by a snake and every word out of her mouth is about her husband's supper. That is not a figure I have added for your instruction."

A huntsman ranging the deep woods heard the lamentation and came running. He saw the large-eyed woman in the coils, rushed in, struck the head from the reptile with his sharp weapon, and pulled her free.

He sprinkled water on her until she came back to herself, gave her food, and spoke kindly while her breathing steadied. Then he asked what any decent man would ask.

"O you with eyes like a young gazelle's, who are you? Why have you come into these woods? How has a woman like you fallen into such misery?"

And she told him. All of it, plainly, the dice and the exile and the cut garment, as one tells a rescuer.

While she was speaking, he was looking. He saw a beautiful woman clad in half a garment, with limbs delicate and faultless, a face like the full moon, eyes graced with curved lashes, and a voice sweet as honey, and somewhere in the middle of her account of her ruin his purpose changed. He began to soothe her again, but the words were different words now, winning and soft, and Damayanti, who had been a queen and knew what men's voices did, understood him before he finished the sentence.

She seemed to blaze. He was not deterred. Burning with desire, and then with resentment at being refused, the wretch attempted force upon a woman who was in that hour as unconquerable as a flame.

She had no weapon, no protector, no kingdom, no husband. She had one thing left, and she spent it.

"I have never even thought of any person other than the Naishadha," she said. "Therefore let this mean-minded creature who lives by the chase fall down lifeless."

He fell where he stood, like a tree consumed by fire. She had not touched him. The truth she had kept in reserve all her life went off in her hand like a weapon nobody had told her she carried.

Having destroyed the hunter, Damayanti went on through that fearful and solitary forest, which rang with the chirp of crickets and held lions and leopards and rurus and tigers and buffaloes and bears and deer, and was infested besides by thieves and by mlechchha tribes. She walked under salas and bamboos and dhavas, under tindukas and kinsukas and jambus, under banians and palms and date trees, and saw mountains with ores in them, snakes, goblins, and rakshasas of grim visage.

She was not frightened by any of it. That is the strange thing the story insists upon. Safe in her virtue and her patience, the daughter of Bhima was distressed by exactly one fact in the world, which was that she did not know where Nala was.

She sat down on a stone, every limb trembling, and began again.

"O king of the Nishadhas, where have you gone, leaving me in this lone forest? You performed the horse sacrifice and gave to the brahmanas in profusion. Why have you played false with me alone? Remember what you declared before me. Remember what the sky-ranging swans said in your presence and in mine. The four Vedas in all their extent, with the Angas and the Upangas, well studied, set on one side, and one single truth set on the other, weigh the same. Make good, then, what you once said to me."

A tiger came down the slope toward the water, heavy and unhurried, four teeth showing, going about his evening. She stood up and spoke to him without fear.

"You are the lord of all animals and the king of this forest. Know me for Damayanti, daughter of the king of the Vidarbhas and wife of Nala, king of the Nishadhas. I am seeking my husband alone in these woods. Comfort me with news of him, O king of beasts, if you have seen him. And if you cannot speak of Nala, then devour me, and free me from this misery."

The tiger drank and went away into the reeds without touching her, and she was left with the second half of her offer refused as well.

Then she came to a high hill crested with many peaks, banded with ores, hung with kinsukas and asokas and blossoming karnikaras, rising over the forest like a banner. She went to the foot of it and bowed as a petitioner bows in a court, and made her case formally, giving her lineage first, as one does before a king.

"O best of mountains. O refuge of the distressed. I bow to you, O pillar of the earth. Know me for a king's daughter, a king's daughter-in-law and a king's consort, Damayanti by name. That lord of earth who rules the Vidarbhas, the warrior-king Bhima, who protects the four orders and celebrated the Rajasuya and the horse sacrifice with profuse gifts to the brahmanas, is my father. The celebrated ruler of the Nishadhas, Virasena of high fame, was my father-in-law. Of his son, that slayer of foes called also Punyasloka, of the complexion of gold, versed in the Vedas, a quaffer of Soma and an adorer of fire, liberal and warlike, I am the innocent spouse and the chief of his queens, and it is I who stand before you.

"Despoiled of prosperity, deprived of my husband, without a protector, I have come to you seeking him. Have you, with your hundreds of peaks towering into the sky, seen king Nala in this frightful forest? Have you seen my husband, who walks with the tread of a mighty elephant, long-armed, of fiery energy, possessed of prowess and patience and courage and high fame?"

She waited. Nothing came down off the rock but the wind and the noise of birds.

"Seeing me bewailing alone," she said, "why do you not soothe me with your voice, as you would your own daughter in distress? When shall I hear again the voice of Nala, gentle and deep as a cloud, sweet as amrita, calling me daughter of Vidarbha? O king, I am frightened. Comfort me."

The mountain, which had been standing there before the Vidarbhas had kings, did not comfort her. She turned north.

Three days and nights she walked north, and came on a penance grove so beautiful it might have been cut out of heaven and set down among the sal trees. Ascetics lived there in the manner of Vashishtha and Bhrigu and Atri, some on water, some on air, some on fallen leaves, clad in bark and deerskins. Deer moved among the huts, and monkeys, unafraid. It was the first place in weeks that was not trying to kill her.

She went in, saluted the old men, and stood in an attitude of humility.

"Welcome," they said. "Sit down. Tell us what we may do for you."

And here is the measure of the woman. Filthy, half naked, starving, three days out from a serpent and a killing, she asked after her hosts first.

"You sinless and blessed ascetics, is it well with your austerities, and your sacrificial fires, and the duties of your order? And is it well with the beasts and the birds of this asylum?"

"Prosperity attends us in every respect," they said, amazed. "But tell us who you are. Are you the presiding deity of this forest, or of this mountain?"

"I am not the goddess of this forest, or of this mountain, or of this stream," she said. "Know that I am a human being."

She gave them the whole of it: the king of the Vidarbhas her father, and the ruler of the Nishadhas her husband, unwavering in promise, who was summoned to the dice by deceitful persons of mean mind and crooked ways, skilful in gambling, and was deprived of wealth and kingdom.

"If I do not see him within a few days and nights, I shall seek my good by renouncing this body," she said. "Of what use is my life without that bull among men?"

The ascetics neither lied to her nor flattered her.

"We see by ascetic power that the future will bring you happiness, and that you will soon behold the Naishadha, freed from all sins, decked with gems, ruling that selfsame city."

Then the ascetics went out, and the sacred fires went out, and the huts went out, and the grove went with them.

She stood in ordinary forest. "Was it a dream that I saw?" she asked aloud. "Where are all those ascetics? Where is that asylum? Where is the delightful river of sacred waters, and where are the charming trees decked with fruits and flowers?"

Nobody told her. The colour went out of her face again.

Going on into another part of the wood she found an asoka tree in flower, heavy with foliage, loud with birds, and she went up to it as she had gone up to the mountain, because there was nothing else in that country to petition.

"This graceful tree in the heart of the forest, decked in flowers, looks beautiful, like a charming king of hills," she said. "O beauteous asoka, free me quickly from grief. Have you seen king Nala, the slayer of foes, the beloved husband of Damayanti? Have you seen him, the ruler of the Nishadhas, clad in half a piece of cloth, that hero afflicted with woe who has come into this wilderness? O asoka, vindicate your name. Asoka means the destroyer of grief. Be what you are called."

She walked round the tree three times, which is what one does at a shrine, and went on into a worse part of the forest than any she had entered yet.

Then the trees opened onto a broad way, and there were people on it.

A great body of merchants with horses and elephants was coming down to a river to make the crossing. The water was broad and clear, bushed with canes, dotted with islands, echoing with cranes and ospreys and chakravakas. There were carts and drivers and children, and the smell of animals and cooking. It was the ordinary noisy world, which she had last seen from a palanquin.

Damayanti walked straight into the middle of it: lean, pale, smutted with ash and dust, her hair matted, wild as a maniac, wearing half of a garment.

The caravan came apart around her. Some of the merchants fled outright. Some stood rooted and anxious. Some cried aloud, some laughed at her, and some hated her at sight. A few felt pity, and it was these who spoke.

"O blessed one, who are you, and whose? What do you seek in these woods? Seeing you here we have been terrified. Are you human? Are you the goddess of this wood, or of this mountain? Are you a female Yaksha, or a Rakshasa, or a celestial damsel? Bless us, and act so that this caravan may go hence in prosperity."

She answered as a queen answers a petition, and the answer began with the one word they most needed.

"O leader of the caravan, and you merchants, and you youths and old men and children, know me for a human being. I am the daughter of a king, the daughter-in-law of a king, and the consort also of a king, and I am eager for the sight of my lord. The ruler of the Vidarbhas is my father, and my husband is the lord of the Nishadhas, named Nala. If you have chanced to see that tiger among men, tell me quickly."

The leader came forward. His name was Suchi.

"O blessed one, listen to my words. I am a merchant and the leader of this caravan, and I have not seen any man of the name of Nala. In this extensive forest, uninhabited by men, there are only elephants and leopards and buffaloes and tigers and bears. Except for you I have met no man or woman here. So help us now Manibhadra, the king of the Yakshas."

It was honest and it was worth nothing to her. "Tell me, then, where this caravan is bound."

"O daughter of a great king, for the purpose of profit this caravan is bound direct for the city of Suvahu, the truth-telling ruler of the Chedis."

So she went with them. It was a road, it had people on it, and it went somewhere, and she had had none of those three things for a long time.

They travelled many days, and in the middle of that dense forest came on a great lake fragrant with lotuses, its banks thick with grass and fuel and fruit and flowers, its water pure and sweet and cold. The caravan was worn out. Their leader gave permission, and, finding it was evening, they halted there.

At midnight, when the tired caravan was asleep, a herd of wild elephants came down to a mountain stream to drink, their temporal juice trickling and fouling the water. They saw the caravan, and among the carts the domesticated elephants of the merchants, their own kind kept in ropes. They went at them.

The force of that rush was like peaks broken off a mountain summit and rolling down onto the plain. The forest paths were blocked, because the caravan had bedded down across every one of them, and so the elephants went over the sleepers instead. Men were crushed where they lay, some by tusks, some by trunks, some by feet. Camels and horses died by the hundred, and men running in the dark killed one another as they ran.

And there was an uproar out of the middle of it fit to frighten the three worlds. "A great fire has broken out. Rescue us. Fly, fly quickly." And another voice over it: "Why do you fly? Take the heaps of jewels scattered on the ground. All this wealth is a trifle. I do not speak falsely."

Damayanti woke into the middle of it, wild with fright and out of breath, and watched a slaughter she had not caused.

By morning the survivors were asking what they had done to deserve it. "Surely we have failed to worship the illustrious Manibhadra, and the exalted Vaisravana, king of the Yakshas. Our stars are not unpropitious. From what other cause has this disaster come?"

Then those who had lost wealth and relatives together found the other kind of answer, which is always available.

"That maniac-like woman who came among us in a guise scarcely human. It is by her that this dreadful illusion was arranged beforehand. Of a certainty she is a Rakshasa, or a Yaksha, or a Pisacha woman. If we see that destroyer of merchants again, we shall slay her with stones and dust and grass and wood and our fists."

She heard them say it, and went into the woods in terror and shame.

"Peace does not follow in my track. I do not remember that I ever did so little a wrong to anyone in thought or word or deed. I have heard from old men that no person dies before his time, and it is for that reason, and no other, that I was not trodden into the ground with them. I think I suffer this severance through the power of those celestial Lokapalas who came to my swayamvara, and whom I disregarded for the sake of Nala."

The remnant of the caravan moved off next day, lamenting its dead, and Damayanti went on with the brahmanas who had survived the night. Toward evening they came to the great city of Suvahu, the truth-telling king of the Chedis, and she entered it clad in half a garment.

The citizens watched her go, lean and melancholy, her hair soiled with dust, and the boys of the city followed her out of curiosity and pressed round her until there was a crowd before the palace.

The queen-mother was on the terrace above and saw all of it. "Go and bring that woman to me," she said to her nurse. "She is being vexed by the crowd and stands in need of succour. I find her beauty to be such that it illumines my house. Though she looks like a madwoman, she seems a very Sri, with those large eyes."

The nurse scattered the crowd and brought her up. "Afflicted though you are, you own a beautiful form. You shine like lightning in the midst of clouds. Tell me who you are and whose. Though you are helpless, you are unmoved under the outrage of these men."

"Know that I am a woman of the human species, devoted to my husband," Damayanti said. "I am a serving woman of good lineage. I subsist on fruit and roots, and stay where evening overtakes me. My husband was defeated at dice and came away into the forest, and I went with him. In time he was forced by hunger and grief to abandon even his one covering, and I followed him still, myself in a single garment. Then, while I was sleeping, he cut off half of my cloth, and forsook me, who had done him no wrong."

"Stay with me," the queen-mother said. "I am well pleased with you. My men shall search for your husband, and perhaps he may come here of his own accord in the course of his wanderings."

And here the beggar at the palace gate, who owned nothing in the world but half of a cloth, set out her conditions.

"O mother of heroes, I may stay with you on certain terms. I shall not eat the leavings on any dish. I shall not wash anybody's feet. I shall not have to speak with other men. If anybody shall seek me as a wife or a mistress, he must be liable to punishment at your hands, and if he should solicit me over and over again, that wicked one must be punished with death. This is the vow I have made. And I intend to have an interview with any brahmanas who set out to search for my husband. If you can do all this, I shall live with you. If it is otherwise, I cannot find it in my heart to reside with you."

"I will do all this," the queen-mother answered gladly. "You have done well in adopting such a vow." And she called her own daughter. "O Sunanda, accept this lady like a goddess as your sairandhri. Let her be your companion, for she is of your own age."

"And that," said Brihadashva to the silent camp at Kamyaka, "is how the queen of Nishadha was living when the searchers came. She was not rescued. She was recognised. There is a difference, and every day of the difference was hers."

Draupadi, who did not yet know that a thirteenth year would put her into a queen's apartments under another name, sat very still and said nothing.