The God of Love Reborn

The sages told the Pandavas of Pradyumna, the son of Krishna - who was, in truth, the god of love himself reborn, stolen as an infant by a demon and cast into the sea, and brought home again through a destiny that no demon's cunning could overturn.

Long before, Kamadeva, the god of love, had been burned to ashes by the fire of Shiva's third eye, when Kama dared to disturb the great god's penance with the arrows of desire. Kama's devoted wife Rati was left desolate by his death, and she grieved without ceasing. But she was given a promise: that her husband Kama would be born again into the world, and that she would be united with him once more. So Rati waited through the years, longing for the rebirth of her lord. And in time Kama was reborn - as Pradyumna, the son of Krishna and his queen Rukmini, born in the golden city of Dwaraka, a child of surpassing beauty, the god of love come again into the world.

But the birth of this child was known to a great demon named Shambara, who learned by a prophecy that this newborn son of Krishna was destined to be his slayer - that this very infant would one day grow up to kill him. Determined to escape his fate by destroying the child before it could grow, Shambara stole into Dwaraka and snatched the newborn Pradyumna from his cradle, carrying him off.

And to be sure of the child's death, Shambara took the infant far out and cast him into the depths of the sea, hurling the baby into the ocean to drown, certain that thus he had rid himself of his foretold destroyer. So the newborn son of Krishna, the god of love reborn, was thrown into the deep ocean, lost to his grieving parents, who searched for their stolen child in vain. But destiny is not so easily overturned, and the very act by which Shambara sought to escape his fate began the chain of events that would fulfill it.

The infant Pradyumna, cast into the sea, did not drown. A great fish swallowed the baby whole - and within the belly of the fish, by his divine nature, the child lived on, unharmed. And then the fish was caught. Fishermen netted the great fish from the sea and, as fate would have it, brought it to be sold - and it was bought for the kitchen of the demon Shambara himself, and carried into his palace to be cut open and cooked.

When the cooks cut open the great fish in Shambara's kitchen, they found inside it, to their astonishment, a living human infant - whole and well, the baby Pradyumna, delivered by the strange workings of fate into the very household of the demon who had tried to destroy him. The child had come, by this winding path, into the heart of his enemy's own home. And there, in Shambara's palace, was the woman who would care for him and reveal his destiny.

In Shambara's household there was a woman named Mayavati, who took the living infant found in the fish and undertook to care for him in secret. But Mayavati was no ordinary servant of the demon. She was, in truth, Rati herself - the wife of Kamadeva, the god of love - placed there in disguise, waiting; for she knew, by her insight, that this child was none other than her own husband Kama, reborn as Pradyumna, the very lord she had grieved for and been promised would return to her.

So Mayavati guarded and reared the child secretly within the demon's own palace, keeping the truth of who he was hidden, watching over him as he grew, knowing all the while that he was her destined lord from a former life, come back to her at last. She did not raise him as a mother raises a son, but cared for him as the guardian of one who was, in the deepest truth, her own husband reborn, waiting for the day when he would come of age and she could reveal to him the whole secret of his origin and his destiny.

When Pradyumna had grown into a young man of great strength and beauty, Mayavati revealed to him the whole truth that she had kept hidden for so long. She told him that he was not what he had supposed - that he was Pradyumna, the son of the great Lord Krishna and the queen Rukmini of Dwaraka, stolen as a newborn and cast into the sea by the demon Shambara, in whose very palace he had been raised. She told him that he was, in his deepest nature, the god of love reborn; and she revealed that she herself was not his mother but Rati, the wife of the god of love from his former life, his own destined companion, who had cared for him and waited for him through all these years.

And she told him his destiny: that Shambara, the demon who had stolen him and tried to destroy him, was the one he was fated to slay, and that the hour had come for him to fulfill that destiny and avenge the wrong done to him and his parents. To prepare him, Mayavati taught Pradyumna the secret arts of illusion and magic, the powers by which Shambara fought, so that the young man would be able to match and overcome the demon's sorcery.

Armed now with the knowledge of his origin and the mastery of the magic arts, Pradyumna confronted the demon Shambara and challenged him to battle. The demon, enraged to find his foretold slayer grown up within his own house, came against the young man with all his terrible powers, and a fierce battle was joined between them.

Shambara fought with sorcery, conjuring illusions and magical weapons, deceptions and phantoms, the full array of his demonic arts. But Pradyumna, taught by Mayavati, countered every illusion with a greater one of his own, matching the demon's magic with magic, seeing through his deceptions, and breaking his sorceries one by one. And at the last, having overcome all the demon's illusions and worn down his power, Pradyumna struck Shambara down and slew him, fulfilling the very destiny the demon had stolen him as an infant to escape. The wrong done to Krishna and Rukmini was avenged, and the demon who had cast the newborn into the sea fell at last by the hand of that same child, grown to his strength.

His enemy slain and his destiny fulfilled, Pradyumna took Mayavati - Rati, his destined companion from his former life as the god of love - and together they flew back through the air to the golden city of Dwaraka, to the home from which he had been stolen as a newborn so long before.

In Dwaraka there was wonder and overflowing joy. Krishna and Rukmini, who had grieved for their lost infant son for all these years, supposing him dead in the sea, beheld now a radiant young man, the very image of Krishna himself, come home with his bride - and learned that this was their stolen son Pradyumna, alive and grown and victorious, restored to them at last. The grief of the long years turned to rejoicing; the lost child was found; the parents embraced the son they had thought dead. And the god of love, reborn and restored, was united with his Rati and with his divine parents, the whole long ordeal of theft and exile ending in homecoming and joy.

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

"See, first, how destiny cannot be escaped by cunning or by cruelty. The demon Shambara learned that this child was fated to slay him, and he did everything in his power to escape that fate - he stole the newborn and cast him into the sea to drown. And yet his very act of trying to escape his fate was the means by which it was fulfilled: the child survived, was carried by a fish into the demon's own kitchen and his own household, was raised there in secret, and grew up to slay him in the end. What is destined finds its way to pass, often through the very deeds done to prevent it; the cruelty and cunning of the wicked, who try to escape their reckoning, only weave the net that catches them.

"And see the triumph and the constancy of love. Kama, the god of love, was burned to ashes - but love is not so easily destroyed; it was reborn, and restored, and united again with its faithful Rati, who had grieved and waited and watched over him through death and rebirth and exile. Love endures through every loss and every parting, and finds its way home in the end. And see, too, the joy of homecoming: the lost child restored to the grieving parents, the long sorrow turned to rejoicing. What is lost is not always lost forever; the stolen and the grieved-for may yet come home."

And the Pandavas, who knew much of loss and exile and longed for their own homecoming, took heart from the tale of the god of love who was stolen and cast away, and yet came home.