The Secret of Reviving the Dead

The sages told the Pandavas of an old contest between the gods and the demons that was decided not by arms but by a single piece of forbidden knowledge, and of the devoted young man who risked death many times over to win it.

In those days the gods, the devas, and the demons, the asuras, were locked in endless war, and the demons held a decisive advantage. Their preceptor was the great sage Shukracharya, wisest of teachers, and Shukra alone in all the worlds possessed the mrita-sanjivani vidya - the science of bringing the dead back to life. Whenever an asura warrior fell in battle, Shukra would revive him, whole and living, to fight again. But the gods had no such art, and their slain stayed dead. So however many demons the gods killed, the demons rose again, while the gods' own ranks only dwindled. The war was being lost, not for lack of valor, but for lack of that one secret.

The gods saw that they could never win until they too possessed the science of reviving the dead. And they devised a plan to steal it - not by force, which had failed, but by sending one of their own to learn it from Shukra himself.

The gods chose for this perilous mission Kacha, the handsome and virtuous young son of Brihaspati, the preceptor of the gods. They asked him to go to Shukracharya, the teacher of their enemies, and become his disciple - to serve him so faithfully and please him so well that the sage would in time teach him the secret of reviving the dead, which Kacha could then bring back to the gods.

It was a dangerous errand, for Kacha was the son of the gods' own preceptor, going into the very household of the demons' teacher, among enemies who would surely kill him if they guessed his purpose. But Kacha accepted the task. He came to Shukracharya, bowed to him, and humbly asked to be accepted as his student for the customary term of discipleship. Shukra, honoring the laws of teaching that require a guru to accept a worthy student who comes in earnest, took Kacha in as his disciple. And so the young man of the gods came to live in the house of the teacher of the demons, to serve him and, in time, to win his secret.

Kacha served Shukracharya with perfect devotion. He tended the sacred fires, gathered fuel and flowers, herded the cattle, and saw to his teacher's every need, and by his diligence, his sweetness of temper, and his skill in music and pleasing arts, he won Shukra's affection and trust.

He also won the heart of someone else. Shukracharya had a daughter named Devayani, proud and beautiful, and as the handsome, gentle young disciple lived in her father's house, season after season, Devayani fell deeply in love with him. Kacha, for his part, was careful and respectful, treating her with kindness and courtesy, and the two became close companions; he gathered flowers for her and pleased her with his music, and she delighted in his company. This closeness would prove to be Kacha's protection more than once - for Devayani's love for him would save his life again and again, when the demons did their worst.

For the asuras were watching. In time they grew suspicious of this disciple from the gods' own line, and guessed that he had come to steal the secret of the sanjivani vidya. And they resolved to make sure he never carried it home.

One day, while Kacha was out in the forest herding Shukra's cattle, the asuras fell upon him and killed him, and to be thorough they cut his body to pieces and fed it to the jackals, so that nothing of him should remain.

When the cattle came home in the evening without their herdsman, Devayani knew something was wrong, and when Kacha did not return she was stricken with grief and went to her father. "Father," she wept, "Kacha has not come back. I fear he has been killed. I cannot live without him. Bring him back to me, I beg you."

Shukracharya, moved by his daughter's tears and unwilling to see her suffer, used the sanjivani vidya. By the power of the science of revival, he summoned Kacha back to life from wherever his scattered remains had gone, and the young man returned, whole and living, and came home. Devayani rejoiced. But the asuras had only begun, and they would not give up so easily.

The asuras watched for another chance, and soon they took it. Once more they caught Kacha alone, and this time they killed him, ground his body to a paste, and dissolved it into the waters of the sea, certain that now he could never be found or brought back.

Again the evening came and Kacha did not return; again Devayani grieved and went to her father; again she pleaded, "Bring him back, father, or I shall die of sorrow." And again Shukracharya, for love of his daughter, exerted the sanjivani vidya, and called Kacha back to life out of the very sea into which he had been dissolved, and the young man returned once more, alive and whole.

Now the asuras were deeply troubled, for they saw that as long as Shukra possessed the secret of revival and his daughter loved Kacha, the young man could not be permanently killed - and meanwhile he drew ever closer to learning the very secret that kept their enemies' spy alive. So they devised a darker and more cunning plan, one that would turn Shukra's own power against him and force the sage into a terrible dilemma.

This time, when the asuras killed Kacha, they burned his body to ashes - and then they took those ashes and stirred them secretly into the wine that Shukracharya was about to drink. Shukra, knowing nothing of it, drank the wine down, and so the ashes of Kacha passed into the sage's own body, and Kacha now lay dissolved within the belly of his teacher.

When Kacha did not return yet again, Devayani came to her father in even deeper distress. "Father, Kacha is gone once more, and I cannot bear it. Revive him, I beg you."

But this time, when Shukracharya looked with his inner sight to find where Kacha had gone, he discovered the terrible truth: the young man was inside his own stomach, having been drunk down in the wine. Now the sage was caught in a dreadful trap. If he used the sanjivani vidya to revive Kacha as before, the young man would come to life and grow inside him and burst out of his body - which would kill Shukra himself. But if he did not revive Kacha, his beloved daughter would die of grief. To save the one, he must destroy the other, and either way someone he loved would die.

Shukracharya found the only path that could save them both, and in taking it he gave away the very secret the gods had sent Kacha to win. He spoke to Kacha within his own body, and taught him, from the inside, the entire mrita-sanjivani vidya - the whole science of reviving the dead - so that Kacha now knew it perfectly.

Then Shukra revived Kacha. The young man came to life and grew within the sage and, as it had to be, burst forth from Shukra's body, tearing it open - and Shukracharya fell dead. But Kacha, now himself a master of the science of revival, at once turned it upon his fallen teacher and brought Shukracharya back to life, whole and well. So the two saved each other: the teacher had given the disciple the secret to revive him, and the disciple had used it to restore the teacher, and both lived.

Shukracharya, restored, reflected with dismay on how this whole disaster had come about - that he had unknowingly drunk wine, and that it had nearly cost him his life and tangled him in such a trap. And so, in his displeasure, he pronounced a lasting condemnation of intoxicating drink, declaring that wine should not be touched by brahmins and the wise, since it had clouded his judgment and led to such ruin. From that day intoxication was held a thing forbidden to those who would keep their wisdom clear.

Kacha had now accomplished his mission: he possessed the secret of reviving the dead, and his term of discipleship was complete. He took his leave of Shukracharya, who released him with honor, and prepared to return to the world of the gods, carrying with him the knowledge that would at last let the gods revive their own slain and so end the demons' advantage.

But as he made to go, Devayani came to him and spoke the longing of her heart. "I have loved you all these years, Kacha," she said. "My love saved your life again and again. Now your studies are done. Stay, and marry me, and be my husband."

But Kacha gently refused. "Devayani," he said, "I cannot marry you, much as I honor and love you. For I came forth from your father's body when I burst from him and was reborn - which makes me, in a sense, your brother, sprung from the same source as you. And beyond that, you are the daughter of my guru, and the daughter of one's teacher is as a sister and may not be wed. To marry you would be against dharma. Forgive me; I must keep the law."

Devayani, wounded and angry at being refused after all her love and all she had done, cursed him in her bitterness: that the great knowledge he had learned with such pains would never bear fruit in his own use of it. And Kacha, sorrowful, answered that since she had cursed him unjustly, she for her part would never be wed to any sage's son, but only to a king. So the two parted in pain - she who had saved him cursing him, and he blessing the gods with the secret even as her curse fell on him.

Kacha returned to the gods bearing the science of reviving the dead, and with it the long disadvantage of the gods in their war was undone, for now they too could call their fallen back to life, and the demons' great edge was gone.

The sages drew several threads of meaning from the tale for the Pandavas. There was the lesson of devotion and perseverance: that Kacha won the priceless knowledge only by years of humble service and by being willing to die again and again for it, for the greatest secrets are not given cheaply. There was the lesson of the boundaries of dharma: that Kacha, offered love and even a kind of happiness, still held to the law that forbade him to wed his teacher's daughter, choosing duty over desire even at the cost of wounding one who had saved him. And there was the older, sadder lesson woven through it: how love refused can curdle into a curse, and how even the noblest people, in their hurt, may wish harm on one another, so that the same story holds both the heights of devotion and the bitterness of a parting.

And the Pandavas noted, too, that this proud Devayani, cursed never to marry a sage's son, would indeed go on to wed a king - and so this tale was but the doorway to another, the story of Devayani and King Yayati that follows from it.