The Sacrifice of Sati

The sages told the Pandavas of Sati and her father Daksha - a tale of a proud man's contempt for the holy, of a wife's unbearable shame, and of the terrible wrath of a grieving god.

Daksha was a great Prajapati, a lord of creatures and a son of the creator, powerful and proud, and he had a beautiful daughter named Sati. Sati loved the great god Shiva with her whole heart and set her mind upon him as her husband. But Daksha disdained Shiva. To Daksha's proud and worldly eyes, Shiva was no fit son-in-law: a wild ascetic who dwelt in cremation grounds, smeared with ash, clad in skins, his hair matted, attended by ghosts and strange beings, owning nothing, keeping none of the conventions that Daksha prized. Daksha could not see the supreme god beneath the unconventional form, and he despised him. Yet Sati would have no other, and in the end she was wedded to Shiva and went to live with him in his mountain home, devoted and content. But her father's contempt for her husband did not cool; it festered, and waited for an occasion to show itself.