The Hermit Who Brought the Rain

On their long pilgrimage the Pandavas came with the sage Lomasha to a quiet and beautiful hermitage deep in the woods, and Lomasha told them that this was a place made holy by a sage named Rishyasringa, whose innocence had once been so complete that the rains of heaven obeyed him.

"There is a tale here, son of Pandu," said Lomasha, "of a boy who grew to manhood in the forest and never once in all those years set eyes upon a woman, nor upon any human being but his own father. So pure and untouched was he that a whole kingdom, dying of drought, sent for him as their only hope - and the moment his foot touched their soil, the clouds broke and the rain came down. Listen, and I will tell you how the innocent hermit was brought out of his forest."

And the brothers sat in the green shade of that ancient grove while the sage unfolded the story of Rishyasringa.

There was once a mighty ascetic named Vibhandaka, a sage of enormous spiritual power, who lived alone in the deep forest practicing the most severe austerities. In time a son was born to him, and the boy was born with a small horn upon his brow, and so he was named Rishyasringa, the deer-horned one.

Vibhandaka raised the boy himself, alone, in the heart of the wilderness, and he kept him entirely apart from the world. The child grew up knowing only the forest and his father. He saw the trees and the streams and the deer and the birds; he learned the scriptures and the rites and the discipline of penance from Vibhandaka; but he never saw another human face. He did not know that cities existed, or kings, or other men. Above all, he had never seen a woman, and did not know that such beings were. He believed the whole world was forest, and that all people were ascetics like his father and himself.

And because he grew up in such perfect innocence, untouched by desire, by ambition, by any of the appetites of the world, his purity became a power. Without ever intending it, the boy accumulated a spiritual force so great that it was said the very heavens favored wherever he dwelt. His innocence was his strength, though he did not know he had it.

Far from that forest lay the kingdom of Anga, ruled by King Lomapada. Now the king had, through some fault, given offense to the brahmins, and they had withdrawn from his land in displeasure - and when the holy men departed and the sacred fires went cold, a terrible thing befell the kingdom. The rains failed.

Month after month the sky stayed empty and pitiless. The rivers shrank to cracked mud; the fields withered; the cattle died; and the people of Anga began to starve, looking up day after day at a hard blue sky that would not weep. The king, desperate, gathered his wisest brahmins and ministers and begged them for any remedy that might bring the rain back to his dying land.

The sages consulted among themselves, and then they gave the king a strange and difficult answer. "There is one thing, O King, that will surely break this drought. In the deep forest there lives a young ascetic named Rishyasringa, son of Vibhandaka, a youth of such perfect innocence that he has never seen a woman nor known the world. So great is the power of his purity that wherever he goes, the rains will follow. Bring that boy into your kingdom, and the clouds will open. But it will not be easy, for his father guards him jealously, and the boy himself knows nothing of the world."

The king pondered how such a thing could be done. He could not march into the forest and seize the boy, for to lay hands on the son of so mighty a sage as Vibhandaka would call down a curse that might destroy the whole kingdom. The boy could not be taken by force. He would have to be drawn out gently, by his own will, without ever understanding what was happening to him.

At last an old and clever courtesan came forward and offered a plan. "Leave it to the women, O King," she said. "This boy has never seen a woman in his life and does not know what desire is. Let me take my daughters and other fair young women, and let us build a floating hermitage - a beautiful boat made to look like an ashram, with flowering trees and gentle creatures - and let us drift it up the river to the edge of his forest. When the sage Vibhandaka is away at his austerities, my girls will approach the innocent boy, and by sweetness and kindness, not by force, they will win his trust and his heart, and lead him gently home to your kingdom. He will come willingly, never knowing he was led."

The king, seeing no other way to save his people, and uneasy in his heart but driven by their suffering, agreed to the plan.

So the floating hermitage was made ready, decked with blossoming branches and tame birds and every beautiful thing, and it was drifted quietly up the river to the edge of Vibhandaka's forest. There the women waited, and when the great sage had gone deep into the woods to his penances and his son was left alone, the courtesan's lovely daughter went softly to the boy's hermitage.

Rishyasringa looked up from his fire and saw, for the first time in his life, a being unlike any he had ever known - graceful, fragrant, adorned, with soft eyes and a gentle smile, dressed not in bark but in shimmering cloth. He did not know it was a woman. He thought it some new and radiant kind of ascetic, some young hermit of a sort he had never met. He greeted the stranger with the courtesy his father had taught him, offering the simple welcome and the forest fare of a host to a guest.

The young woman spoke sweetly to him, and gave him, instead of his plain roots and water, delicious sweets and garlands and fragrant things he had never tasted, and embraced him in friendship, and the innocent boy was utterly charmed. He felt a happiness he had no name for. When at last the visitor said she must return to her own hermitage, Rishyasringa was filled with a longing to follow, though he did not understand it. He could think of nothing but the wonderful young ascetic who had come to him from beyond the forest.

When the sage Vibhandaka returned, he found his son distracted and dreaming, not tending the fire nor minding his duties. The boy, in his innocence, told his father everything: of the wonderful young ascetic who had come, who wore soft and shining things, who gave sweet food and warm embraces, and whose company had filled him with a joy he could not explain. He asked his father who this beautiful hermit might be, and where such ascetics dwelt.

Vibhandaka understood at once, with alarm and anger, exactly what had happened. He knew that this was no ascetic but a woman, and that someone had come to lure his carefully guarded son away into the world he had striven so hard to keep from him. He warned the boy sternly that these were not holy hermits at all but creatures sent to disturb his penance, and that he must have nothing to do with them. Then the old sage set off into the forest to hunt for the intruders and drive them away.

But while Vibhandaka was gone searching, the women came again to the innocent boy, and this time, when they drifted away downriver toward Anga, the longing in Rishyasringa was too strong to resist. He left his father's hermitage and went with them, stepping for the first time out of the only world he had ever known, carried toward the dying kingdom that so needed him.

The moment the innocent sage's foot touched the soil of the kingdom of Anga, the long cruelty of the drought was broken. The hard blue sky that had withheld its water for so long grew suddenly dark with gathering clouds; thunder rolled across the parched land; and the rain came pouring down in great life-giving sheets upon the cracked fields and the dying people.

The kingdom erupted in joy. The rivers filled, the earth drank deep, the withered crops lifted their heads, and the famine that had gripped Anga began to lift. The power of Rishyasringa's purity had done exactly what the sages had foretold: where that untouched innocence went, the heavens could not keep back their blessing.

King Lomapada came out to meet the young sage with the highest honors, bowing before him, welcoming him as the savior of the realm. The boy, bewildered and gentle, found himself no longer in a forest hermitage but in a great city, surrounded by grateful people, the rain he had brought falling all around him.

King Lomapada, overflowing with gratitude and eager to bind the precious young sage to his kingdom, gave to Rishyasringa his own daughter, the princess Shanta, to be his wife. Shanta was gentle and devoted, and she became a true companion to the innocent hermit, guiding him kindly into the ways of the world he had never known, and the two came to love each other well.

So the boy who had grown up believing the whole world was forest now lived as a honored sage in a kingdom, with a wife at his side and a grateful people around him. He had brought them rain and life; they had brought him into the wider human world. His innocence had been the kingdom's salvation, and in giving it up a little he had gained a life he could never have imagined under his father's lonely trees.

But there remained the matter of Vibhandaka. When the great ascetic returned and found his son gone, lured away into the world of men, his fury was terrible. He set out for the kingdom of Anga in a towering rage, prepared to burn the land to ashes with the heat of his accumulated penance for the theft of his child.

Knowing his coming, and knowing his power, the people of Anga prepared with great care to receive him. Along the road by which the angry sage would travel, the king had cattle and gentle gifts and signs of honor placed everywhere, and the herdsmen along the way greeted Vibhandaka humbly as the father of their lord's son-in-law, telling him how his son was loved and honored and had become the savior of their kingdom. By such honor and humility the sage's anger was slowly cooled.

And when at last Vibhandaka came to the city and saw his son thriving, beloved, married to a good princess and revered by a whole grateful people, the old sage's wrath gave way. He saw that no harm had truly been done to his son, but rather a great good, and he blessed Rishyasringa and his bride, and asked only that the boy return to him in the forest once a son of his own was born. So father and son were reconciled, and the curse that might have destroyed Anga was never spoken.

Lomasha ended the tale in the green quiet of the holy grove. "That is the story of Rishyasringa, son of Pandu, and this place keeps his memory. A boy raised in such perfect innocence that he had no notion of the world, and whose very purity grew so strong that it could call rain out of an empty sky and lift a famine from a dying land."

Yudhishthira sat thoughtful, for there was a gentle wisdom folded into the strange tale. He saw in it how great a power there is in an untouched and undivided heart, in a soul that has never been bent by greed or desire or ambition - a power so quiet the one who holds it does not even know it is there. And he saw too the tenderness of the telling: that the innocent boy was not seized or harmed but drawn gently into a fuller life, and that even his angry father came at last to bless the change.

The brothers honored the hermitage and went on along their pilgrim road, carrying with them the memory of the deer-horned sage whose innocence had brought the rain.