The King Who Became a Demon

The sages told the Pandavas of King Kalmashapada and the sage Vasishtha - a tale of the most terrible grief borne with the most perfect forbearance, and of a forgiveness that returned good for the worst of evils.

There was a king of the solar line named Kalmashapada, a mighty ruler but proud. And there was, as you have heard, a long and bitter rivalry between the two greatest of sages, Vasishtha and Vishvamitra - the contest between them that had run for ages. It happened that one day King Kalmashapada, out hunting in the forest, came upon a narrow path where he met Shakti, the eldest of the hundred sons of the sage Vasishtha, walking toward him. The path was too narrow for both to pass, and neither would step aside - the proud king demanding that the sage's son yield, and the sage's son standing on the right of a brahmin to be given way. In his arrogance and anger, the king raised his whip and struck Shakti, the son of Vasishtha.

Shakti, struck by the king's whip and grievously insulted, was filled with anger, and in his wrath he pronounced a terrible curse upon Kalmashapada: that since the king had behaved like a savage beast, he should become one - that he should be turned into a flesh-eating rakshasa, a man-eating demon, and roam the earth devouring human beings.

It was a fearful curse, born of a moment's anger over a narrow path and a blow - a small quarrel of pride that was about to grow into a vast and terrible grief. And the curse fell at the worst possible moment, into the worst possible hands, for it was about to be seized upon by the king's hidden enemy and the sage's old rival.

For the sage Vishvamitra, the old rival of Vasishtha, was nearby, and he saw in the king's curse a chance to strike at his adversary through him. Vishvamitra wished Vasishtha ill, and here was an instrument to hand: a king cursed to become a man-eating demon, who might be turned against the very sons of Vasishtha.

So Vishvamitra, by his power, caused a fierce rakshasa spirit to enter into the cursed king and take full possession of him, so that Kalmashapada was wholly transformed into a savage, flesh-devouring demon, his own mind submerged, driven now by the demon's hunger for human flesh. And the malice of Vishvamitra directed that hunger, in the cruelest way, toward the household of his rival - so that the king-demon's first and chief victims would be the sons of Vasishtha himself.

Possessed by the rakshasa and driven by Vishvamitra's malice, the king-demon fell first upon Shakti, the very son whose curse had made him what he was, and devoured him. And then, one after another, he hunted down and devoured the rest of Vasishtha's hundred sons, until all of them - the whole hundred sons of the great sage - had perished, consumed by the man-eating king.

It was an annihilation almost beyond bearing: that the noble sage Vasishtha, in a short span, should lose all his hundred sons, every one of them, devoured by a cursed king whom his old rival had turned into a demon for this very purpose. The grief of it was designed by Vishvamitra to break the great sage utterly - to do to Vasishtha, through the king-demon, the worst that could be done to any father.

When Vasishtha learned that all his hundred sons were dead, devoured every one, his grief was beyond all measure - a sorrow so vast that even his great wisdom could not at first contain it. In the depth of his anguish, the sage no longer wished to live; he resolved to end his own life, for the loss seemed more than any being could bear.

But nature itself would not let the great sage die. He cast himself headlong from the peak of a high mountain - and the rocks at the bottom became soft as cotton beneath him, so that he was not harmed. He threw himself into a blazing fire - and the fire did not burn him, but felt cool to his body. He bound himself with a noose and flung himself into a flooded river to drown - and the river snapped the noose and cast him up unharmed upon the bank (and that river was called ever after Vipasha, the unbinding). He hurled himself into the swollen, rushing waters of another river - and it broke into a hundred channels and carried him gently to the shore. Again and again the great sage sought death, and again and again the world itself refused to let him die, as if to say that so great a soul must not be lost, and that his grief, however terrible, must be borne and not fled.

At last, when every attempt to die had failed and nature had refused his grief its escape, Vasishtha understood that he was meant to live and to bear his sorrow, and slowly his great wisdom rose up and mastered it. He gave up the wish to die, and instead took up the far harder task: to endure his unbearable loss with forbearance, to carry his grief without being broken by it, and to go on living and doing his duty in the world though all his sons were gone.

This mastery of grief became one of the great examples of the sage's forbearance - that the wisest of sages, struck by the worst sorrow a father can know, did not flee it into death nor let it destroy him, but bore it, patiently and steadily, with the strength of a soul that has learned that grief, like all things, must be endured and outlasted rather than escaped. He found, too, a small mercy in time: that his lost son Shakti had left a child, a grandson, Parashara, who would carry on the line - and in that grandson Vasishtha found a reason and a comfort to live on. So the sage took up his life again, his sorrow not erased but mastered, borne with the serene endurance that is the mark of true wisdom.

In time the curse upon Kalmashapada ran its appointed course. After its term of years had passed, the rakshasa nature left the king, and Kalmashapada was restored to himself - freed of the demon that had possessed him, his own mind and heart his own again. And with his restoration came the full and horrified knowledge of all that he had done while possessed: that he had devoured the hundred sons of the great sage Vasishtha, the most terrible of crimes, though done not by his own will but by the curse and the malice that had driven him.

Overwhelmed with remorse and grief at the evil he had been made to commit, the restored king went to Vasishtha - the very sage whose sons he had devoured - and threw himself down before him, begging his forgiveness, expecting and perhaps even desiring the sage's curse and his own destruction in return for so monstrous a wrong.

And here the greatness of Vasishtha shone at its brightest. The sage, who had lost all his hundred sons to this very king, looked upon the remorseful, restored Kalmashapada - and he forgave him. He bore the king no grudge and laid no curse upon him. For Vasishtha understood that the king had not acted of his own will, but had been made a demon by a curse and driven by another's malice; that the true author of the evil was the rivalry and the wrath that had set it all in motion, not this broken, repentant man who had been only its instrument. And the sage's heart, having mastered its own grief, was great enough to hold compassion even for the one who had been the means of his sorrow.

Vasishtha freed the king of his rakshasa nature for good, and restored him to his kingdom, and made peace with him. And he went further still in his magnanimity: for the king and his queen were childless, and the royal line was in danger of ending; and so Vasishtha, out of pure compassion and for the continuance of the dynasty, consented at the king's own request to beget, by the ancient custom, a son upon the queen - a son named Ashmaka, who continued the royal line. So the sage who had lost all his sons to this king gave that king's house a future, returning, for the worst of evils done to him, the greatest of goods.

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

"See, first, where so much sorrow began: in a small quarrel of pride on a narrow path, and a rivalry between two great sages. A blow struck in arrogance, a curse spoken in anger, a rival's malice seizing the chance - and from these small seeds of pride and wrath grew the devouring of a hundred sons and a grief almost beyond bearing. Guard against pride and the petty quarrels it breeds, for you cannot foresee the vast and terrible harvests that the small seeds of anger may yield.

"See, second, the forbearance of Vasishtha in grief. Struck by the worst sorrow a father can know, the great sage at first wished only to die - but nature itself would not let so great a soul be lost to grief, and at last his wisdom mastered his sorrow. He bore the unbearable; he did not flee it into death nor let it break him, but endured it with the patient strength that is the truest mark of wisdom. Grief must be borne and outlasted, the tale teaches, not fled; and even the deepest sorrow can be mastered by a soul that holds fast.

"And see, above all, the magnanimity of his forgiveness. Vasishtha forgave the very king who had devoured all his sons, bore him no grudge, and even gave that king's house a future - returning the greatest good for the greatest evil done to him. For he understood that the king was the instrument, not the author, of the wrong, and his heart was great enough for compassion even there. To return good for evil, to forgive even the one who has caused us the deepest grief - this is the highest reach of the soul, and it was attained by the sage who had lost the most."

And the Pandavas, who would themselves suffer terrible losses and face the question of vengeance and forgiveness, took deeply to heart the forbearance and the magnanimity of Vasishtha.