Tapati and Samvarana

Surya, the sun god, had a daughter named Tapati, and she was made of her father's substance. Her beauty was not the beauty of lotus ponds and moonlight; it was radiance, a burning loveliness joined to fierce self-discipline, and it was from her tapas, her austere inner fire, that she took her name. In all three worlds her father could not find a husband whose own fire matched hers, and so, while gods and gandharvas hinted and hoped, the sun kept his daughter unmarried and burned on his course, watching the earth below for a man worthy of her.

On that earth ruled Samvarana, son of Riksha, of the line that would one day be called Kuru. He was a great king, but what set him apart was his worship. Of all the gods it was the sun he served, with offerings and fasting and a devotion that had lasted since boyhood, greeting the first light on his feet with his head bowed. Surya, who sees everything that is done in the open, had watched this king for years. Here was a man whose reverence was itself a kind of fire. The sun judged him worthy of Tapati, and waited for the day to arrange itself.

The day arranged itself as days do, looking like an accident. Samvarana went hunting in the foothills of the mountains, riding hard after deer, until his horse, spent with thirst on the waterless slopes, staggered and died under him. The king went on alone on foot, and on a high meadow bright with sun he saw a maiden standing alone, slender and shining, and the world stopped.

He had seen beautiful women; he was a king. This was something else. She seemed a piece of sunlight that had consented to stand still. Samvarana forgot the hunt, the dead horse, and his own name. "Who are you?" he managed. "Why does one so radiant stand alone on an empty mountain?" She looked at him and said nothing, and while he stared she stepped back and vanished like lightning going back into its cloud.

The king searched the meadow like a madman, calling to the empty grass, and then his legs gave way and he fell to the earth senseless with longing. At that the maiden showed herself again, for she had not gone far, and her own heart was not stone; she had seen the king, and the fire in her had leaned toward the fire in him.

"Rise, king," she said, in a voice like warmth itself. "I am Tapati, daughter of Surya. I am not free to be won like a village girl, by strong arms or sweet words. I belong to my father. If you want me, want me lawfully: ask the sun." And she was gone again into the light.

Samvarana did not go home. He sent his mind toward the one being who could carry a suit to the sun: his family's guru, Vasishtha, calm among sages, one of the mind-born sons of Brahma. Then the king stood on that mountain, on one spot, with his arms raised to the sky, fasting, praying to Surya without pause, twelve days like twelve years.

On the twelfth day Vasishtha came, knowing without being told, as such sages know. He looked at his king, starved and sunburnt and steady, and did not scold him for madness. He recognized the thing the king was doing. It was tapas, done for love, and it was being done correctly: no theft, no secrecy, no despair, only asking with the whole body.

Then Vasishtha did what only a perfected sage could do: he rose along a sunbeam into the sky and went up to the sun himself, into the blinding orbit where no flesh goes, and stood before Surya of the thousand rays, and spoke as one great one to another. "Your daughter, lord of light, for my king. Samvarana is worthy: his line is high, his rule is just, and his devotion you have watched yourself for a lifetime."

The sun had been waiting for exactly this embassy. He gave Tapati gladly, saying the match was his own long intention, and the sage brought the daughter of the sun down the sky as a father brings a bride, and gave her hand to the king on the mountain where they had met.

Samvarana married her there in the high meadows, and then made his first kingly mistake. Drunk on a happiness very few mortals have ever been given, he sent word down to his capital that his minister would govern, and stayed. Twelve years the king and the sun's daughter wandered the mountain forests and the gardens of the foothills, and the palace saw nothing of him, and he thought of nothing but her.

But a kingdom is not a machine that runs while the driver sleeps. In the old understanding, the rain follows the king: where the ruler keeps dharma, the heavens keep faith, and where the throne stands empty, the sky closes. For twelve years not a drop fell on his land. Rivers shrank to sand, grain died in the fields, and the people starved and scattered, while far above them their king was happy.

It was Vasishtha again who set it right. The sage went up into the mountains and stood before the lovers, and he did not need many words. "The land is dying," he said. "It is dying of your absence. Come down." And Samvarana, waking as if from twelve years of sweet sleep, took Tapati by the hand and came down from the mountain into his broken capital.

With the king's return the sky opened. The rains came as if they had been waiting behind a door, the rivers filled, the scattered people came home, and the kingdom that had withered under an absent ruler grew fat under a present one. Tapati bore Samvarana a son, and they named him Kuru, and he became so great in righteousness that the dynasty took his name, and the field where he plowed and sacrificed took it too: Kurukshetra, the field of Kuru, where his descendants would one day settle everything. And that is why, generations later, a gandharva by a night river could look at Arjuna and call him Tapatya - child of Tapati, kin of the sun.