The King Who Was Both

The sages told the Pandavas of the king who was changed from man to woman and back again, dwelling now as one and now as the other, and who became the ancestor of a great line - a tale of the strange turns of fate, of the acceptance of what cannot be changed, and of how blessing may be woven even out of a curse.

There was a mighty and righteous king who went out hunting in the mountains, and in the chase he wandered, all unknowing, into a certain forest that lay upon the slopes of the great mountains - a wood that was sacred and forbidden. For that forest had been hallowed by the great Lord Shiva, who sported there with his consort the goddess; and Shiva, that the goddess might not be disturbed, had laid a powerful enchantment upon the wood: that any male who entered it, of whatever kind, man or beast, should at once be turned into a female. Into this enchanted forest the king, hunting, all unaware, now strayed.

No sooner had the king entered the enchanted forest than the spell took hold: in an instant he was transformed, changed from a man into a woman. The mighty king who had ridden into the wood as a hunter found himself, suddenly and bewilderingly, a woman; his horse too, and all that was male about him, changed likewise by the power of the enchantment. The king, in his new form, was utterly astonished and dismayed, unable at first to understand what had befallen him, finding himself changed in his very nature in a moment, by a power he had not known and had not meant to offend.

In this strange and unlooked-for condition the transformed king wandered in the forest, no longer a man and a king, but a woman, lost and bewildered, the whole course of life turned upside down in an instant by straying into a place he had not known was forbidden. It was a fate as strange as any that could befall a person: to be changed, all unwitting and through no fault of intent, into the opposite of what one had been, one's very body and nature altered by an enchantment one had blundered into. And the king had to begin to reckon with a transformation that seemed to admit no remedy.

The transformed king, grieving for the manhood and the kingship that had been taken away, sought some means of restoration, praying to be made a man again. And in time, by entreaty and by the intercession of others, the matter was brought before the great Lord Shiva and his consort, whose enchantment had wrought the change; and the transformed king pleaded to be restored to the former state, to be made a man and a king once more.

But the enchantment was a powerful one, woven by the great Lord himself, and not to be wholly undone even by his grace; for what the divine power has decreed cannot simply be erased as though it had never been. And so the relief that was granted came not as a full and simple restoration, but as a strange compromise, a middle way between the curse and its lifting - a remedy that would give back the former state, yet not take away the new one, so that the king would be neither wholly the one nor wholly the other, but both by turns. The divine power softened the curse without quite revoking it, and out of that softening came the strange double life the king would now lead.

The compromise granted to the transformed king was this: that he should live alternately as man and as woman, being a man for one span of time and a woman for the next, changing from the one to the other and back again in turn, through the cycles of the months or the seasons, so that he would pass his life now in the one form and now in the other, neither state permanent, but each giving way to the other in its season. Thus the curse was neither left in full force nor wholly lifted, but transformed into this strange alternation.

Moreover, it was ordained that when the king passed from the one state to the other, he would not carry the memory of the one into the other: as a man, he would not remember the life he had lived as a woman, and as a woman, he would not remember the life he had lived as a man, so that each state was lived as a separate existence, without the burden of recalling the other. And so the king took up this strange double life, living as a man and as a woman by turns, each in its season, each forgetting the other - a fate stranger than any curse or blessing alone, a life lived in two natures, neither wholly lost and neither wholly kept.

In the time when the king lived as a woman, dwelling in the forest and the mountains, it came to pass that the wandering god Budha, the son of the Moon, beheld the king in that female form, and was enamored, and took the king to wife for that season; and of their union a son was born - a child fathered upon the king while he lived in his woman's nature. So out of the strange double life came a child, the offspring of the transformed king and the god, born of that season of womanhood.

This child was no ordinary offspring, but the founder of a great and famous line of kings; for from this son sprang the lunar dynasty, the line of mighty rulers that would descend through the ages and from which great houses would later trace their origin. So the very curse that had turned the king into a woman, and the strange compromise that followed, became the means by which a great royal line was begun: the child of the king's womanhood was the ancestor of generations of kings. What had seemed a calamity, a strange and grievous turn of fate, had woven into it the beginning of a noble lineage; the curse had borne, in time, an unlooked-for blessing.

Through all the strangeness of this fate - changed from man to woman, living the two lives by turns, fathering and bearing the founder of a line - the king came, in the end, to a kind of acceptance and peace. The transformation could not be wholly undone; it had to be lived. And the king, after the first dismay, learned to accept the strange condition that fate and the divine power had decreed, neither raging against it forever nor breaking under it, but living out the double life that had been given, and finding in it, at last, even a blessing in the great line that sprang from it.

In the tellings, the king at length found release or rest, the strange alternation completing its course in time; but the deepest note of the tale is the acceptance of a fate that could not be changed. The king had blundered, all unwitting, into a transformation no power could simply erase; and the wisdom of the tale lay in the learning to live with what could not be undone - to accept the strange turn that fate had dealt, to make the best of a condition not of one's choosing, and to find that even so strange and grievous a fate could carry within it an unlooked-for good. What could not be cured had to be endured; and in the enduring, a blessing was found.

There was in the tale a teaching about the strange and unpredictable turns of fate, and the wisdom of accepting what cannot be changed. For the king had done no great wrong; he had merely strayed, all unknowing, into a forbidden wood, and by that small and innocent misstep had been overtaken by a transformation that altered his whole existence. So it is, the tale taught, that fate may deal us strange and unlooked-for turns, through no great fault of our own, changing the whole course of our lives in a moment; and against such turns there is often no remedy but acceptance.

The king's wisdom lay not in any power to undo his fate - for that he could not do - but in coming to terms with it, in living out the strange life that had been given him rather than breaking against it in vain. And the tale held out a further comfort: that even the strangest and most grievous turns of fate may carry within them an unlooked-for good, as the king's transformation became the origin of a great line. So it bids us, when fate deals us blows we cannot avert, neither to rage forever nor to despair, but to accept what cannot be changed, to live out our altered condition with what grace we can, and to trust that even from our misfortunes some good may yet be woven.

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

'See, first, the strange and unpredictable turns of fate, which may overtake us through no great fault of our own. The king had merely strayed, all unknowing, into a forbidden wood, and by that innocent misstep was changed in his very nature and given a fate stranger than any he could have imagined. The tale teaches that fortune may deal us sudden and unlooked-for blows, altering the whole course of our lives in a moment, and that we are not always masters of what befalls us; much comes upon us that we did not choose and cannot avert.

'And see the wisdom of accepting what cannot be changed. The king could not undo his transformation; he could only learn to live with it, and so he did, taking up his strange double life rather than breaking against it in vain. The tale teaches that when fate deals us what we cannot change, the wisdom lies not in raging or despairing, but in acceptance - in living out our altered condition with what grace we can. And it offers this comfort besides: that even the strangest and most grievous turns may carry an unlooked-for good, as the king's curse became the origin of a great line. Accept, then, what you cannot change; make the best of the fate you are given; and trust that even from misfortune some blessing may yet be woven.'

And the Pandavas, whose own lives had been turned by exile and misfortune into strange and unchosen paths, took to heart the tale of the king who learned to live with a fate he could not change.