32
The Prince with Six Fingers
This is an ancient tale retold by a modern holy man in the town of Nasik in the state of Maharashtra, in western India. The story itself occurs as early as the Mahābhārata Saṃhita of Jaimini, with variants in Buddhist and Jain literature. Moriz Winternitz declared in his History of Indian Literature that “the story of Candrahāsa and Viṣayā is of importance to the literature of the world,” and refers to variants in Jain and Buddhist literature as well as in European literature from the Gesta Romanorum to poetry by Schiller.
In short, the text below is one variant of a tale that spans extensive time and space, transmitted through written collections and in oral retellings alike. Swāmiji, the holy man who told this story, was born in the southern state of Karnataka, with Kannada as his first language. However, since his teens he had wandered throughout India on spiritual quests, settling down on a mountain sacred to the Mother Goddess near Nasik in 1956, when he was thirty-nine years old. When I arrived as a graduate student in anthropology, tape recorder in hand, Swāmiji was in his late sixties. Due to failing health, he had moved from his mountain residence to live in town, occupying an apartment next door to his doctor. Stretched out in an aluminum deck chair beside an altar, he met with visitors each day. Among his visitors were local people and also a scattering of Westerners from England, France, Australia, and the United States. With my ambiguous identity as local woman (my father is from Nasik) and foreign academic, I often found myself in the position of translating Swāmiji’s vivid and unabashedly ungrammatical Hindi into English.
In reproducing the story below, I adopt a performance-oriented approach: that is, locating the text squarely in the lived context of its retelling for an audience that included an inquisitive anthropologist. I include notes on what inspired Swāmiji—always a compelling raconteur—to remember this story, and his interactions with his listeners. Although Swāmiji often told stories for didactic purposes, he tended not to spell out the moral precisely but rather to leave a tale’s interpretation open to his listeners. Reader-response theory has alerted us to the variety of readings a text may receive, and so it should be kept in mind that the meanings I highlight may not match what my fellow listeners understood, or what a reader viewing this transcription might surmise.
Most broadly, the story is about destiny. In this Hindu construction of destiny, hardship and success are intertwined: the worst catastrophe can carry the seeds of a brilliant triumph. Further, destiny is located within the framework of religious belief. Born in the lap of luxury, Candrahāsa sinks to penurious vulnerability on account of his stars. However, he later swallows a revered holy man’s sacred śalagrāma—a round stone representing Viṣṇu—and incorporates its powers. Thanks to his magnetic luster coupled with piety, he is saved from execution, adopted by a king, blessed by the Mother Goddess with an invincible sword, and miraculously saved from further plots for his murder. By the end of the story, he has acquired two wives, two kingdoms, and also, it is suggested, the possibility of controlling an entire empire of disparate kingdoms. Even his adversary Dust-buddhi (“Wicked Mind”) is transformed through the blessings of the Mother Goddess into Subuddhi, (“Good Mind”). This would suggest an allegorical interpretation, advanced by one of Swāmiji’s disciples, in which Candrahāsa represents the individual self unaware of its own expansive grandeur, largely on account of the machinations of an illusion-spinning mind.
Although it is centered around a heroic male figure, this tale gives women important roles. It is an old woman who rescues Candrahāsa as an infant. Similarly, the spunky and nubile minister’s daughter. Viṣayā, rescues Candrahāsa from murder by altering the letter he carries. Throughout Swāmiji’s version of the tale, ultimate power resides in the hands of Bhagavatī, the many-armed, fierce, and compassionate Mother Goddess whom he worshiped.
Further Reading
Kirin Narayan, Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).
On the afternoon of September 16, 1985, Swāmiji had been discussing the nature of the divine inner self and how to meditate upon its nature. “Who am I? This is the most important question. Meditation is a dialogue about this. One part of you poses the question, the other part puts forward answers. . . .” Swāmiji lay in his aluminum deck chair, ocher robes wrapped around his waist, expounding in this vein. His eyes were earnest behind black-rimmed spectacles, his voice weighted with seriousness. An overhead fan blew a cool incense-scented breeze through the room.
I sat among the handful of listeners, fidgetting with my tape recorder. After all, I hoped to document storytelling as a form of Hindu religious teaching, and was especially interested in folk narratives that featured holy men like Swāmiji himself. I couldn’t decide whether this discourse on meditation was relevant to my project or not, and so I fitfully switched my recorder on and off. Swāmiji had perhaps discerned my unrest, for when he suddenly stood up, he shot me a question: “What are your professors going to do with this?”
As a young, unmarried, female student, I had often tried to gain some credibility for my work by invoking the interest of my distant professors: my metonymn for male authority and the prestige of American-based academe. But questioned directly, I knew well that my professors were not interested in this material in any way beyond whether it would help me complete a dissertation to their satisfaction. I began to mumble something about documenting Indian culture. “But what will your professors do with it?” Swāmiji repeated.
“They won’t do anything with this,” I had to confess, “It’s for me.” I took a deep breath and adopted Swāmiji’s own idiom of the will of the Divine Mother. “If it’s the Goddess’ wish, I’ll write a book.” I said. “One can write a Ph.D. dissertation on anything, and I’ve chosen this. Many holy men tell stories, and you tell these stories, too. Your stories contain your teachings: your stories and your spiritual teachings are the same thing.” I made this speech with self-possession, but inwardly I was shaken. Just the day before, Swāmiji had stated that everything in the world was a matter of self-interest and business: even I was taking his stories for a business. Even as I had smarted, I also could see that Swāmiji’s stories were for me a medium for academic exchange: lectures, fellowships, books, jobs, invitations for edited volumes might all result from collecting them. “Don’t just take these stories,” Swāmiji had admonished, “Understand them.” Today, his asking about my professors reopened the painful issue of ethics in fieldwork, and so I felt that I needed to clarify my purpose.
“Hañ-hañ-hañ,” Swāmiji let out a stream of assent when I finished speaking. Then he went inside to spit out some tobacco. I seemed to have reassured him of my best intentions, for when he returned he was grinning from ear to ear. He resettled himself in his armchair, and started to question me exuberantly about my familiarity with beloved Indian stories.
“Do you know why the elephant has a trunk? There are so many stories from India that you must have heard. You must have heard the story of Gaṅgā [River Ganges], you must have heard the story of the Pāṇḍavas [in the Mahābhārata epic]. Haven’t you heard Candrahāsa’s story? No? What are you saying? You haven’t heard about Candrahāsa? There was a king in the past . . . you’re taping this, aren’t you? You can tape this one, it’s really good. . . . ”
Swāmiji launched into the story, and I translated after each sentence on behalf of the French woman and Jewish-American man present. Swāmiji’s voice unfolded an alternate reality, while in the background we were reminded of the bustle of everyday life in Nasik by a screech of horns, putter of motorcycles, ring of bicycle bells, and occasional cries of vendors. On the windowsill behind Swāmiji, sparrows hopped and twittered.
There was a king. He was a very good king. He had a queen. They had no children. They worshiped God because they were childless. This went on and on, and finally they had a child. When the child was born, they summoned the pandits. They summoned them and asked them to cast a horoscope. [“Horoscope,” Swāmiji echoes Kirin’s translation into English.] As the pandits drew the horoscope, they said, “The child has a very auspicious future.”
The king was overjoyed. He distributed fine milk sweets, he distributed milk. He presented many gifts to the brahmans. The pandits said [hesitantly], “King, what can be done? There’s just one planet that’s a little badly placed. He has a great future, but there’s just this little thing wrong.”
“What is it?” the king asked [with anxious haste].
“He has six fingers on one hand. And one planet badly placed. Because of this, within eleven days of the child’s birth, his mother and father will die. The entire kingdom will fall into the hands of wicked enemies. Otherwise, this child has the future of a great emperor.”
[Swāṃiji unexpectedly bursts into laughter, eyes creasing behind his spectacles, and toothless gums exposed. “What, Gulelal!” he says, addressing the American who sits cross-legged in Indian clothes at the back of the room. “Look at what destiny can be like! Just one bad planet can make havoc.” ‘Gulelal’ nods. It is hard to understand just what Swāmiji finds so hilarious—the ironies of destiny? the hubris of householders? the brahmans underplaying impending catastrophe?—but his laughter is infectious. Everyone in the room laughs along as he continues, amusement sputtering through his words.]
When the pandits said this, the mother and the father worried about what they were to do. “Now we have this child, how do we get rid of him?” They were stumped. The pandits, on the other hand, had received their gifts, and off they went.
The wicked enemy king heard this news. “This king has had such a child, with this sort of life predicted, and his kingdom is about to be destroyed.” His minister came, bringing a big army. They surrounded the kingdom on all four sides. The army [“military”] emerged for the battle. Then there was a terrible war.
As they fought, the army was defeated. Then the king left the fort to fight, too. In the midst of the battle, he was also killed. Someone immediately brought this news to the queen: “the king is dead.” The queen heard this. “Now what should I do? I’ll fall into enemy hands, and will be dishonored. It’s better that I die. But I have this eleven-day-old child. It’s just ten days since he was born.”
There was this old woman, a maid who served the queen. The queen wrapped the baby in dirty rags and gave him to her: “Take this child.” There are secret doors in king’s palaces, with secret passages that lead out into the jungle. “Escape through this passage,” the queen said, “I’m giving this child to you.”
Then she set herself on fire. And the secret door was tightly closed.
The enemy came in. They looked here and there and saw that everything had been burned. They came to the king’s quarters and looked around. “The king had a wife and a child. What happened to them?” There was just ash there. “They probably died and are now ash,” they said. So they captured the fort, and the kingdom was in their possession.
The old woman took the child and went far off to another kingdom. She was an old woman, what did she have? Nothing. “If I ask for alms and receive something, I’ll feed it to the child. He’s a king’s child, but now he’s become a beggar, look at what a person’s destiny can be! He has no clothes to wear, nothing. And he has no idea who he is.”
Then after two or three years, the old woman died, too. He had no clothes to wear, and no food to eat. He was a tramp. He didn’t even had a loin cloth. He wandered around with his “Gaṇapati” swinging. [Swāmiji laughs again, though his translator is embarrassed. Gaṇapati, the elephant-headed deity, is clearly standing in for a penis. “He wandered around naked,” Kirin glosses over the translation.] He wandered all over the place. Then one day he found some cloth and wore this as he wandered. He didn’t have to go to school or anything. He lived like one of the beggar’s children on the roadside here [Swāmiji extends an arm to encompass the squalor on the streets beyond this quiet enclave]. What do beggar kids do? They play marbles together [Swāmiji demonstrates, taking aim at an imaginary marble with his right forefinger pulled back by the left]. He kept company with these sorts of children. They’d look around outside the houses of rich people to see if anything was thrown out that they could scavenge. If something was lying outside, they’d eat it. This is what their life was like. They’d eat what had fallen through the drains.
This went on, and there was one big house. Consider it to be Kirin’s house. A great Swāmiji had come there: a big Swāmiji like Swami R. [Kirin laughs tentatively, for though Swāmiji often includes people from his audience in his stories, this is the first time that she, her grandfather’s Victorian mansion in Nasik, or her family’s longstanding affection for young Swāmi R. have ever found their way into a traditional plot]. This Swāmi had many śalagrāmas, round stones representing Viṣṇu. He was one who did a lot of ritual worship. It took him at least five or six hours to perform his worship. Many people used to come for audience with him. He kept all these śalagrāmas in a dish and washed them as worship. They were very round and small, and were washed as they were worshiped.
He wasn’t exactly like Swāmi R., he was an older Swāmiji. As he was washing, he left behind one of the śalagrāmas. He took each one out, wiped it, and kept it aside. But one śalagrāma remained in the dish. There was a maid there, like Līlabai [who sweeps Swāmiji’s apartments each day]. She took the water from the ritual wash, and she tossed it down the drain.
What happened next was that the child was out wandering to scrounge for food that might have fallen around wealthy people’s houses. He knew that wealthy people ate well. As he came to this house he spotted a round stone by the window. He thought “This will be a good marble.” And he kept it.
That evening when he was playing with the other children he used this as a marble. .Whenever he played with this, he won the game. This marble was better than all the others, and he won with every child. All the children thought, “He has a wonderful marble. Whenever he plays, he wins.”
He defeated all the children, even those bigger than him. Then the bullies said, “Give us your marble.”
But this child had understood that he had a good marble and that was why he was winning. “I won’t give it to you,” he said [in a stern voice].
“What do you mean you won’t give it to us? We won’t let you off. Hand it over!”
“No, I won’t.”
“What, you won’t give it to us?” And the children began to chase him. He ran away. He had nothing to hide it in; no box, nothing. Where could he hide it? He put it in his mouth. Then they caught him and began to beat him up, saying, “Spit it out.” Instead he swallowed it. “I ate the marble,” he said.
There was no marble any more. What to do? The other children left.
When this marble reached his stomach, a lustre came over his face. With this shine on his face, everyone who looked at him was drawn to him. Everyone started to say, “Child, come to our house, come to our house!” Every day, people were inviting him to their homes for food. Some gave him clothes, some called him to eat. Everyone loved him. He became the child of every house.
The minister there had a son of the same age. This boy was going to have his “hair-cutting” [Swāmiji enunciates the English words] ceremony. He was about eight years old. It was a special day, so people from all the surrounding towns were called: the brahmans. Then all the brahmans went around saying “In the minister’s house there’ll be a child’s tonsure. A lot of food will be distributed. And lots of gifts will be given.”
They asked this child, “Will you come? Come along too! You’ll get some good food.”
“Let’s go,” he said. So they took him along too. Everyone was sitting down to eat. There was a very long line of people eating. The minister was also personally serving everyone, pouring water. So as he was coming around he saw the child. He asked those people, “Whose child is this? He looks like the moon among the stars. He has the auspicious marks of a king. Whose child is this with such a shine on his face? Whose child is this?”
The brahmans said, “We have no idea whose child this is. He has no mother, no father. He’s lives in our town. In the future, this child will be the emperor of our entire country. We have all given him this blessing. A brahman’s words are never false. He will truly become an emperor. He has all the right attributes for it.”
When they said this, the minister became suspicious. “That king had a son. The brahmans had said that this boy would be an emperor recognized by the world. He had some trouble with a planet, so within eleven days his kingdom was to be destroyed. But later he was to become an emperor. It’s possible that he survived. He would have been of this age. Maybe this is that very boy.”
The minister actually hoped to make his son the emperor of this country. He wanted to start out by making him king of the region. He said to the brahmans [nonchalantly], “That’s fine. I can bring up this child. I’ll have him educated. Why should you all trouble yourselves about him? Give him to me.”
“Fine,” they said. When no one knew whose child he was, how could it matter who he went with? “You bring him up.” They left the child behind and took off.
The minister took the child inside with him. He said [sternly], “You stay in this room!” So the child stayed put in the room. Then the minister called two Canḍāla outcastes: executioners! At twelve midnight, he said, “There’s a child sleeping in that room. Take him to the jungle and hack him up. Bring me some token that he is dead. Then I’ll give you two thousand rupees.”
“Fine,” they said. What did it matter to them? They proceeded inside and threw open the door. They grabbed hold of the boy.
He asked, “Who are you?”
They had huge moustaches [Swāmiji twirls his hand by a cheek], they had red eyes. And he was just a little child. “Who are you?” he asked.
“How does who we are matter to you?” they said [fiercely]. “Come on!”
He began to cry. But who was there to heed his crying?
“If you cry we’ll beat you!” they said. Smacking him and striking him, they dragged him off. There was nobody to hear his cries. So they took him to the jungle. It was a dark and terrifying jungle. When they arrived, they sat down and began to consult with each other. “This is a good spot to do it,” they said.
The boy asked [in a worried voice], “What will you do to me? What have I done to you?”
They said, “We’re going to hack you up!”
“What did I do wrong? Why are you murdering me?”
They said, “We don’t know anything about all that. We’re supposed to execute you anyway.”
“But if I haven’t done anything, then why are you going to execute me?”
“We don’t know anything about that, but we’re going to execute you.”
He said, “All right. If you must execute me, execute me. But first let me worship Bhagavān.”
He started to worship Bhagavān. As he worshiped, these people watched. Compassion crept into their minds. “What are we going to gain by killing this child?” they said. “We’ll get two thousand rupees. But that’s not going to last us all our lives. We too have children. What has this child done anyway? He has six fingers on one hand. If we cut off one of these fingers, we’ll get two thousand rupees. We’ll get every rupee. And we’ll also be doing a service to this child. We’ll tell him never to return to this country. And then we can set him free.”
They told the child. “Look, don’t ever come back here! We have been offered two thousand rupees, but we won’t kill you. We’ll just cut off one finger and take it with us. Don’t ever come here again.”
“Fine,” he said.
So they grabbed hold of him and sliced off one finger. He fell down unconscious. They left.
He lay there crying out, “Water! Water! Water!” But he was all alone in the jungle. Only the lions and other wild animals heard him.
The next day what happened is that another king came to the jungle. As he entered the jungle, he heard the cries of a child: “Water! Water!” Kings always carry a flask of water. He rushed to the place the cries were coming from. He poured water into the child’s mouth. The child felt stronger. Then he lifted him up. “Get up,” he said. Then the king took the child with him.
The previous night the king had had a dream. He was childless. In the dream, he was told to go hunting in the jungle. He thought Bhagavān had given him this child. He was overjoyed.
He immediately sent his police [Swāmiji uses the English word—“polis”] ahead to the kingdom. “Bhagavān has given me a child!” he said, “Tell the queen that all the women should stand by their doorways with auspicious pots of water on their heads to welcome us. Prepare the horses and elephants for our arrival. I’m coming with a child. The military should stand at attention.”
He took the child with him. He took him, and presented him to the queen, “Look, Bhagavān has given you this child.” They made this child the crown prince. They gave him the name Candrahāsa.
Then he worships Bhagavatī, the Goddess. Then the Goddess gives him a sword like the moon, just like a sickle moon. If he fights with this in his hand, nobody can defeat him. This is what the Goddess gives him. This is why he is called Candrahāsa. Then as the prince in this kingdom he learned how to govern. He lives here in a nice way until he is eighteen years old. [As though summarizing a long passage, Swāmiji has switched from past to present tense: then he resumes in past tense.]
Previously, this particular king had often been defeated. He had to pay fealty to many other kings. He was a subsidiary king to the very king who had acquired Candrahāsa’s father’s kingdom. He owed a lot of money to this king. One day the accounts were drawn up, and all the money was sent at once. It was sent to the other kingdom with a police escort.
Now in this kingdom was the minister Duṣṭabuddhi [“Wicked Mind”]. He was the one who killed the boy’s father, the same one who tried to kill the boy. The money was sent to him. He saw all the money. He was very pleased. And he told the police, “You can eat here. It’s good that you sent this money to us after so many years.”
The police said, “We won’t eat today. We’ll just leave.”
“Why won’t you eat today?”
They said, “Today is ekādaśī, the eleventh day of the lunar fortnight [a day many devotees of Viṣṇu fast]. One shouldn’t eat on an ekādaśī.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t one eat on ekādaśī?”
They said, “This is the order of our prince—
[“What is it?” Swāmiji asks Mr. Karnad, the retired journalist, who lives nearby and has just come in with another man. Mr. Karnad settles cross-legged on the floor, murmuring something. Swāmiji nods and returns to the story].
“It’s the order of our prince that we shouldn’t eat on an ekādaśī.”
“But in the past you never did this! How long has this been practiced?”
“We’ve been doing this ever since our king found a son.”
[Swāmiji returns his attention the new arrivals, and they speak briefly in Kannada, their shared mother-tongue, which none of the rest of us understand. Then he returns with a renewed vigor to Candrahāsa].
“Ever since then, we’ve been doing this ekādaśi fast—it has been very good for our country. This is good on two scores. It’s good according to your science because look, if you drive a machine every day, it breaks down. If you empty out a boiler once every fifteen days, the fire is stronger when you put something in later. So in this way, just as a person needs to rest after working, so this body-machine needs a rest.
“That’s one. Second, this is good as far as food goes. It’s good for the entire country. Say there’s a city like Bombay with about six million people living there. Consider how much food is consumed there in one day. Say every person eats a half kilo, half of six is three. Three million kilos of food are finished in one day. That much food is saved on a day that people fast. Then there is less need for doctors, since people don’t fall sick so much. So this is why we do an ekādaśī fast. We have no sick people and our stocks of food grow. In the past we didn’t have enough to eat, but now there’s plenty. We are happy.”
Duṣṭabuddhi heard this and thought it over. “Your king didn’t have a child before,” he said, “Where did child come from?”
They said, “One day he went hunting in the jungle and he found this child.”
He thought, “This is probably the very child I sent to be executed.”
[From the adjoining rooms, we now hear the voices of children joined together in a chant that Dr. Mukund, Swāmiji’s devotee, is teaching. These are children from all over the neighborhood who gather each afternoon for prayers, worship, and consecrated food. From now on, the story continues with this background of sound from the children.]
Duṣṭabuddhi had a daughter. Her name was Viṣayā. Understand? She had come of age: about fifteen or sixteen years old. She was always asking her father, “When will you marry me off? Get me married!”
Her father loved her a lot. Whenever he went somewhere, she would ask, “Where are you going? When will you get me married?”
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” he’d say.
So he sent those people away, saying, “You go. I’ll come to your kingdom tomorrow.”
The next day he saddled up his horse. “I must see this boy,” he thought. As he climbed on his horse, his daughter came there. “Father, where are you going? Where are you off to?”
Whenever someone is leaving you shouldn’t ask where they’re going. It’s a bad omen if you ask where someone is going. So when she asked this, he got angry. “I’m going to look for a boy for you!” he said [sharply]. “I’m looking for a boy so I can marry you off. I’m going to arrange your marriage.” [Swāmiji uses the English word, “marriage” as members of the audience chuckle]. So she went inside laughing. She didn’t ask him anything more. So he left.
When the minister arrived in the next kingdom, he understood, “This is the very boy that I wanted to kill. Now he’s grown up, he’s got a good physique. Nobody can take him on in a fight. He possesses strength. [“Strength” too is an English word melded effortlessly into Hindi grammar]. Somehow or other I’ve got to kill him. What way can this be done?” He thought about it. After all, he was a minister. He pondered [chin in his hand].
Then he said, “Oh son, I’ve become an old man, and I forgot to do this one thing as I was coming here.”
“What?” the boy asked, “What is it, Mahārāj? Tell me and I’ll do it for you in a flash.”
“Look, it’s just this one thing I forgot to do. I’ll give you a letter for my son. Then he can do it.”
“Fine. If you give it to me I’ll deliver it.”
So Duṣṭabuddhi gave Candrahāsa the letter. He stamped his seal on it. “Don’t give it to anyone else, just give it to my son.”
“Fine,” he said. He took it, and he arrived promptly at twelve or one o’clock. It was very sunny. It wasn’t a time that he could meet the son. There was a garden there, with a lake. He gave his horse water, and then he went to sleep under the tree.
Then the minister’s daughter came to this very garden to play with her girlfriends. She had a huge retinue of girlfriends along with her. There were many trees there. The girl was hiding from her friends, and she crept to the very place where Candrahāsa lay sleeping. She spotted the letter in his pocket. She looked at it, and from above she could see a little of the writing. “This is my father’s handwriting,” she said [Swāmiji uses the English word “handwriting,” leaning forward, then very slowly drawing up one hand]. She stealthily pulled the letter out. He was still in a deep sleep. She examined the handwriting and saw it was her father’s.
Now, girls are really smart! She slo-o-owly opened the letter and read it. In it was written, “My dear son Madan. Don’t enquire about the family or lineage of the one who carried this letter. As soon as he comes, give him poison (viṣavā).”
The girl looked at this and thought, “My father has grown a little old. Instead of writing ‘Give him Viṣayā,’ he wrote ‘Give him viṣavā’. He made a mistake. Instead of a yā it’s a vā. And there’s no problem in making a vā into a yā.” She had black collyrium in her eyes, right? So she put took a little on her fingernail, and changed the vā into a yā [Swāmiji crooks his little finger with a conspiratorial gleam, as his audience laughs]. She just lengthened it. Then she closed up the letter, pressed down the seal [clapping one horizontal palm over the other], and left.
Then Candrahāsa woke up. He washed his hands and feet. The minister’s son Madan was in the assembly hall. Candrahāsa went in to deliver the letter. Madan looked at the letter. In it was written, “Don’t enquire about the family, caste, or lineage of the one who carries this letter. As soon as he comes, just give him Viṣayā.” [Swāmiji wheezes with delighted laughter] That’s what was written.
[Kirin’s tape has snapped to a halt, and in a frantic rush, she inserts a new one.]
In this it was written, give him Viṣayā with love. [“In Kannada, we say, ‘give poison with love,’ Swāmiji explains as an aside.] “Give her to him with love.”
Madan thought, “How can this be? Father isn’t even here.” So he said to his mother, “Father has written such and such a letter. What should I do?”
His sister, on the other hand, was very happy. “He’s such a handsome boy! I haven’t ever seen a handsomer one. Brother, I want this man as my husband. You have to get me married immediately. Call the pandits!” [Laughter rumbles from Swāmiji’s listeners at this show of enthusiasm which in real life would be anything but dignified or demure.]
Then the mother said, “Call the guruji.”
So they called for their guruji, the family priest. They showed him the letter. He said, “Look, if a girl doesn’t have a father, the elder brother has the right to give her in marriage. Tomorrow isn’t an auspicious day. Today is the auspicious day. That’s why your father has written such a letter. There’s nothing wrong with doing this today.”
[Swāmiji joins his listeners’ laughter, his shoulders shaking with merriment.] Brahmans will do anything at all, as long as they get their payment! So the wedding was performed that evening. The marriage was performed. Instead of giving him poison, they gave him Viṣayā. Look how Bhagavān’s play can be!
Then after the wedding Candrahāsa stayed there. The next day Duṣṭabuddhi returned. He thought Candrahāsa was safely dead. He came riding in on his horse. When he arrived, he saw that his house was all decorated. He asked people, “What happened here?”
They said, “Your daughter was married.”
“My daughter got married! Whom did she marry?”
“To the boy you sent.” [The switch in tone from alarm to a cool informative tone provokes our laughter, and Swāmiji too is laughing].
“How did this happen?”
“You wrote the letter, and the marriage was done.”
So he went into the house. He said, “Madan, what have you done? What is all this?”
Madan said [respectfully], “The wedding has taken place, father”
“What was in the letter I sent you?!”
“I did exactly what you told me to in the letter.”
“Bring me the letter” [abruptly].
The letter was brought. In this it was written “Viṣayā.” “Idiot!” he said, “Get out of my sight. I never wrote such a thing!”
Madan said, “What’s happening? If this is what is clearly written but you say you didn’t write it, what am I to do? What did I do wrong?”
Duṣṭabuddhi didn’t know what to say. “Leave this place immediately!” he ordered. “Don’t stand here in front of me. It makes me furious.” But he didn’t explain what he had actually meant. He didn’t open his heart and confide everything. “Just get out of this place,” he said.
Madan went straight to the king’s palace. The king had had a dream. He had just one daughter. In the dream he was told, “Arrange your daughter’s marriage. Then leave the kingdom and retire to become a forest-dweller. Give your kingdom to your son-in-law.”
Because of this dream, the king was looking for a boy. At that point the minister’s son arrived. The king said to him, “Look, brother. Someone must marry my daughter immediately. I had this dream, this vision. I want a boy who’s a prince: a boy with a prince’s attributes, bravery, and character. He must be a valiant hero. If you know of such a prince, bring him to me. I need him immediately, for within two days I must go to the forest. I plan to give this person my kingdom. Do you know of any boy like this?”
Madan said [reflectively], “Well, there is my sister’s husband. I just gave my sister in marriage to him, and he’s from the next kingdom. He’s a prince: a very fine chap.”
“All right, then bring him here.”
“Fine,” he said.
In the meantime Duṣṭabuddhi had thought, “If my daughter becomes a widow, that’s no problem, but my son-in-law must certainly die.” He summoned another two Canḍāla executioners to do this.
There was a temple to the Goddess at the cremation grounds. Duṣṭabuddhi posted the two executioners there, inside the temple. “This morning a man will come wearing such and such clothes, bearing bananas and coconuts as offerings. When he enters the temple, hack him into two pieces. Then I will give you four thousand rupees. If you don’t do this, I’ll cut you to bits.”
He issued this order, and posted those two men in the temple. He said to Candrahāsa, “Look, whenever there’s a wedding in this house, we go to worship the Goddess in the early morning. Take coconuts, bananas and so on, and go worship the Goddess.”
“Fine,” Candrahāsa said. He took everything with him. He took the bananas and set out. As he went, he met Madan on the road. “Where are you going?” Madan asked [excitedly].
He said, “I’m going to the temple.”
“Why are you going there?”
“My father-in-law has said that I must go there and worship.”
“Leave all that! Go: the king is calling you. You’re about to be married to the king’s daughter!”
Candrahāsa said, “First I should do my father-in-law’s bidding. Otherwise he’ll get angry.”
“I’ll do this for you, let’s hurry to the king,” said Madan.
“Fine,” said Candrahāsa.
Madan escorted him to the king and left him there. “Look, this is the person I was telling you about.” He presented Candrahāsa to the king and left.
Madan took the coconuts and other things, and went to the temple. He got there and was cut into two pieces. Yes? Madan was cut into two pieces.
And here, Candrahāsa was married to the king’s daughter. After the wedding a howdah was put on an elephant. The couple sat there with the king behind them. The entire army was called out, all the regiments. They went in a procession.
They were moving past the minister’s house. The minister was watching everything. “I sent him to be killed and here he is sitting paired with the king’s daughter. What’s this?”
Duṣṭabuddhi came up and said, “Hey there, I sent you out for worship, and what did you do instead?”
Candrahāsa said, “Madan went to do it.”
“All right,” he said. Then what had become of Madan? Duṣṭabuddhi raced directly to the temple. When he arrived he saw that Madan was in two pieces. He saw this and he wept bitterly. “Oh Madan, what did I hope, and what actually happened? I thought I would kill this boy and make the entire kingdom yours. I even wanted to marry you to the king’s daughter. I wanted to give you the kingdom. And it was I who gave the orders that killed you. If Bhagavān is protecting someone, then nobody can kill him. I tried so many times to kill that boy. But I was never able to kill him. I killed you instead. Now what’s the use of staying alive?” And he stabbed himself. He died then and there.
In a little while, Candrahāsa went to the temple. Madan hadn’t returned, Duṣṭabuddhi hadn’t returned. He went to see what had happened. He went there and saw the Goddess, with both the corpses lying before her. Then he said to Bhagavatī, the Goddess, “Mother, look how you are, so compassionate. This Duṣṭabuddhi tried so hard to kill me. You who are so expert protecting others protected me through such hardship. You protected me. Duṣṭabuddhi did so much conniving to gain the kingdom. And innocent Madan died for no reason. So I too will abandon this body. What will I gain from this kingdom? Take this body too!” He lifted up his sword to stab himself. “Since these people died for it, what’s the use of this body?”
Just then the Goddess came and caught hold of his sword. “Don’t die! I have a lot of work in store for you.” Then she said, “Is there any boon you desire? Request it.”
He said, “Bring them all back to life.”
They came to life. Then Duṣṭabuddhi (“Wicked Mind”) became Subuddhi (“Good Mind”). He became a good character.
This is what happened. This is the story of Candrahāsa.
Emerging from the story frame, Swāmiji addressed me genially, “Did you ever hear this before?”
“No, never,” I said, still awed by the length and poetic beauty of the tale. “It’s a very lovely story.”
“There’s a lot to understand in it,” Swāmiji reflected.
“Yes, a lot,” I agreed. Thinking of my dissertation project highlighting holy men in stories, I observed, “That Swāmiji’s śālagrāma, his grace, made the boy what he was. If that śālagrāma hadn’t come into the boy’s mouth, good fortune would never have come to him.”
“No,” Swāmiji shook his head. “That was his destiny. His destiny was like that. There was a prediction given on reading his horoscope at the time of his birth. First there would be suffering, then later he would become an emperor. Then Candrahāsa also went to the horse sacrifice that Dharmarāja sponsored. He caught hold of the horse. But Arjuna didn’t fight with him, because he was also a devotee of Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa warned Arjuna, ‘If you fight with him you won’t be able to defeat him.’ So they became friends instead.”
“Is this part of the Mahābhārata?” I asked.
“This is set in that time, but the story isn’t in the Mahābhārata.” Swāmiji reflected a minute. Then he added, “Actually, it’s possible that it could be in the Mahābhārata, in the section in the forest, when Dharmarāja is talking to the sages. How many minutes are there before we have evening worship? Five minutes?”
Swāmiji resumed his conversation with the two Kannada-speaking visitors until it was 6 P.M., and we all rose to go chant with the children.