The Eight Hundred Horses

The divine sage Narada told the Pandavas the strange tale of Galava and the eight hundred horses - a story of how a disciple's stubborn insistence, however well-meant, set in motion a long train of trouble, and of the dignity of a woman used as a coin who in the end chose her own path.

Galava was a devoted disciple of the great sage Vishvamitra, and he served his teacher faithfully through all his years of study. When at last his education was complete and the time came to depart, Galava wished to give his guru a guru-dakshina, the teacher's fee that a grateful student offers at the end of his learning. But Vishvamitra, who had taught him out of affection and wanted nothing, told him he needed no fee, and bid him simply go in peace.

Galava, however, could not let it rest. Out of a stubborn pride in his own gratitude, he insisted, again and again, that he must give a dakshina - that he would not feel his learning complete, nor his honor satisfied, unless he paid his teacher something. He pressed and pressed, refusing to accept that his guru wanted nothing, until at last Vishvamitra, somewhat wearied and even annoyed by the young man's obstinate insistence, decided to give him a fee to seek that would cure his stubbornness - or at least keep him busy.

"Very well," said Vishvamitra at last, with a touch of irritation at being so pressed. "Since you will not be content unless you give me a fee, then bring me this: eight hundred horses, every one of them pure white, shining white as the moonbeam - and each one with a single black ear. Bring me eight hundred such horses, and that shall be your guru-dakshina."

It was a fee very near to impossible, and Vishvamitra had named it precisely because it was. For horses pure white but for a single black ear were among the rarest of all creatures, and to find eight hundred of them was a labor that might consume a lifetime, if it could be done at all. The sage had set the impossible task partly to teach his obstinate pupil a lesson about the folly of his insistence, partly perhaps in genuine annoyance.

But Galava, far from being cured of his stubbornness, only set his jaw the harder. Having insisted on paying a fee, he now insisted on paying exactly this one, however impossible. He bowed to his guru, vowed to bring the eight hundred horses, and set off into the world to find them - and so his obstinacy, which had refused to let the matter drop, now bound him to a near-hopeless quest that would cause trouble to many.

Galava wandered the world in search of the rare white horses with one black ear, and found them nowhere; despair grew upon him, for such horses seemed not to exist in any number, and he had bound himself by his vow to bring eight hundred. Worn down and hopeless, he was at the point of giving up his life in shame at his failure.

Then he was aided by a mighty friend: Garuda, the great divine eagle, the bird-king who is the mount of Vishnu, took pity on the struggling disciple and offered to help him. Garuda carried Galava upon his back, flying him swiftly across the whole world in search of the horses, to the far quarters of the earth and to the realms of kings who might possess such treasures. But for all their searching, they could not find eight hundred such horses anywhere - for, as they learned, there existed in all the world only six hundred of these rare white horses with a single black ear, no more, and these were held, two hundred each, by three great kings. Eight hundred could not be gathered, for eight hundred did not exist.

At last Garuda counseled Galava to go to a certain king famous above all others for his generosity, and to ask his help - for where horses could not be found, perhaps generosity could find another way.

So Galava came to King Yayati, the renowned and generous monarch, and told him his trouble - that he needed eight hundred rare white horses with one black ear for his guru's fee, and that only six hundred existed in all the world, held by three kings.

Yayati did not possess such horses himself, but he was a king who could not bear to send a suppliant away empty-handed, and his generosity found another path. He gave to Galava his own beautiful daughter, the princess Madhavi - a maiden blessed with a wonderful boon: that she would remain ever virginal, regaining her maidenhood anew after each childbirth, and that any son she bore would become a great and mighty king. "Take my daughter," Yayati said, "and offer her in turn to the kings who hold the horses. Each will gladly give you horses for the honor of begetting upon her a son who is destined to be a great king. By this means you may gather your fee."

It was a strange and troubling solution - to use a princess as a kind of currency, passed from king to king to purchase horses - and it tells, too, of an age that valued such things differently than we might wish. But Galava, fixed upon completing his vowed fee at any cost, accepted the gift of Madhavi and set out to trade her, son by son, for the horses he needed.

Galava took Madhavi to the first of the three kings who possessed the rare horses. The king, delighted at the chance to father a son destined for greatness upon so blessed a princess, gladly received Madhavi as his wife for a time, and gave Galava two hundred of the white horses with one black ear. In due time Madhavi bore the king a son who would indeed become a great ruler - and then, by her boon, she regained her maidenhood, and returned to Galava to be taken onward.

Galava brought her to the second king, and the same was done: the king received her, gave two hundred horses, and Madhavi bore him a son destined for greatness, and was made virgin again. Then to a third king, and again two hundred horses, and again a son who would be a mighty king, and again her maidenhood restored.

So by passing Madhavi from king to king, Galava gathered six hundred of the rare horses - two hundred from each of the three kings who held them - and Madhavi had borne three sons, each fated to be a great ruler, while remaining, by her boon, ever a maiden. But six hundred was all the horses there were in the world; the last two hundred of his guru's fee could not be found, for they did not exist. Galava was again at an impasse.

Since the last two hundred horses could not be found anywhere in the world, a final arrangement was made to complete the fee. Galava brought Madhavi, with the six hundred horses he had gathered, to his own guru Vishvamitra himself, and offered the sage the six hundred horses together with Madhavi - proposing that the princess, who could bear a son destined for greatness and would regain her maidenhood, stand in place of the missing two hundred horses.

Vishvamitra accepted. He took the six hundred horses and the princess Madhavi as together equal to the full eight hundred, and he received Madhavi as his wife for a time, and she bore him a son, named Ashtaka, who would in turn become a great king and the father of kings. And so, with the six hundred horses and the son begotten upon Madhavi, the guru-dakshina was at last reckoned complete, and Galava's vow was fulfilled - though at what cost, and through what a strange and troubling chain of dealings, the tale leaves us to weigh.

Her part in completing Galava's fee now done, Madhavi was returned to her father, King Yayati. She had borne four sons, each destined to be a great king, and by her boon she was a maiden still, and Yayati now wished to hold a swayamvara for her - a ceremony at which she might at last choose a husband of her own and be wed properly, settling into a queen's life.

But Madhavi, who had been passed from hand to hand and king to king as a coin to purchase horses, made a different choice - the first truly her own. At the swayamvara, with kings and princes assembled to win her, Madhavi turned away from them all. She chose neither king nor prince, but the forest. She renounced the world of marriage and courts entirely and retired to the wilderness to live as an ascetic, giving herself to penance among the deer and the trees, choosing solitude and self-mastery over any husband or throne.

It was, in its way, the one act of her own will in a story that had used her as an instrument, and there is a quiet dignity in it: that the woman who had been made a currency for others' purposes claimed, at the last, her own path, and chose the freedom of renunciation over a life arranged for her by others.

Narada, who had told the tale, drew its lessons for the Pandavas - for he had told it, in the first place, to warn against a stubborn and prideful insistence that will not let things go.

"See where it all began, son of Pandu: in Galava's obstinate insistence on giving a fee his teacher did not want. His gratitude was good, but his stubborn refusal to accept his guru's wishes - his prideful determination to pay something, anything, whether or not it was wanted or needed - set in motion a long chain of trouble: an impossible quest, the using of a princess as a coin, a great deal of difficulty and indignity, all flowing from one man's refusal to let a matter rest. The tale is a warning against that kind of obstinacy and false pride - the insistence on having one's own way, on paying one's own debt in one's own terms, even when wisdom and one's elders counsel otherwise. Much needless trouble in the world is born of exactly such stubborn pride that will not yield.

"And see, in the figure of Madhavi, both a sorrow and a dignity: the sorrow of one used as an instrument for others' purposes, passed about for the sake of horses and vows; and the dignity of one who, given at last a choice of her own, refused the life others had arranged and chose her own path of renunciation and freedom. Even those whom the world treats as mere means may yet, in the end, claim their own dignity and their own will."

And the Pandavas, who would do well to learn the dangers of stubborn pride before the great events to come, took the lesson of Galava to heart.