Markandeya, sixteen forever

In the text — not yet checked

A boy who won against Death by holding on to a stone.

This is not a Mahabharata story in the strict sense, though Markandeya himself appears in the epic. It is a Puranic tale about a boy who was not supposed to live past sixteen.

His father is the sage Mrikanda, and his mother is Manasvini. They have no child, and Mrikanda does long penance to win a son from Shiva. Shiva offers him a choice: a virtuous son who will live a short time, or a dull and malicious one who will live long. Mrikanda chooses the virtuous son. So the child, Markandeya, is given to them with a fixed term: he will die at sixteen.

The boy grows up learned. He masters the Vedas and the other scriptures, and he becomes a devotee of Shiva. As his sixteenth year draws near, he learns of his fate from his parents, and he takes up very hard austerities.

On the day he is meant to die, Markandeya is worshipping a lingam, the symbol of Shiva. Yama's messengers come for him, but they cannot take his life because of his devotion. So Yama himself comes. He throws his noose, and it falls around the boy and the lingam together.

That is the moment Shiva acts. Angered, he comes out of the lingam and kills Yama. The gods then plead with him, because the world cannot work if death is dead. Shiva brings Yama back to life, on one condition: Markandeya will stay sixteen forever. That is why Shiva is called Kalantaka, the one who ends Time and Death.

That is the story as I found it in a reference source. The tellings differ in where it is said to have happened. Several places claim it: Kaithi near Varanasi on the Gomati, the Shiva temple at Triprangode in Kerala, Parli Vaijnath in Maharashtra, Thirukkadaiyur or Thiruvanmiyur in Tamil Nadu, and Khandya in Karnataka, where marks of a child are said to be on the linga.

There is also a quite different Markandeya tradition. In the Bhagavata Purana he worships Vishnu for six manvantaras. Indra sends apsaras, gandharvas and Kamadeva to disturb him, and he is not moved. Vishnu appears as Nara-Narayana, and later Markandeya sees the great flood and Vishnu as a baby. Shiva and Parvati then appear and grant him immortality and the authorship of a Purana. In the Mahabharata, he appears in the Markandeya-Samasya section of the Vana Parva, where he talks to Yudhishthira. The Markandeya Purana is also attributed to him, framed as a conversation with the sage Jaimini.

So there are really two Markandeyas side by side. One is the child of a boon who stays sixteen, saved by Shiva from death. The other is the very old sage who has seen the world dissolved and remade. They are joined, in the popular mind, by one idea: that devotion can hold off death.

Who: Markandeya, Shiva, Yama

Bound to

Markandeya sees the flood and the child on the banyan leaf same-story-other-version

Nachiketa and Yama mirror

Where this comes from

purana · Wikipedia: Markandeya
read for this telling · Wikipedia: Markandeya Yama story, texts, variants, sites

See it on the tree · All stories

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