The Maiden Named Death

The sages told the Pandavas of the origin of Death - of how the Creator, faced with a world that could not die, brought forth Death as a weeping maiden, and of how she came at last to do her sorrowful work without sin - a tale told to console the grieving, that death is no cruelty but a part of the great order, and that those who die are not wronged.

In the first days of creation, the story goes, the Creator, Brahma, brought forth all the beings of the world, and they multiplied and increased; but in those days there was no death. Beings were born and grew, but none died; and so the creatures multiplied without end and without ceasing, until the whole earth was overburdened with the press of living things, crowded beyond all measure, with no room and no rest, the endless increase of undying creatures weighing the world down until it could bear no more. The very earth groaned under the burden of beings that were born but never died.