Uma's curse: gods' wives shall bear no children

Classical

A goddess's curse is why gods keep fathering children on mortals and monkeys.

This story is told by Vishvamitra to Rama and Lakshmana on the bank of the Ganga, and it is really an introduction to another story. The princes have just heard about the two daughters of the Himalaya, Ganga and Uma, and they ask: why does Ganga flow along three paths, and what makes her the best of rivers in the three worlds? Vishvamitra begins by telling them about Uma's marriage.

Shiva, he says, married Uma, and the two spent a very long time in lovemaking, a hundred divine years by Valmiki's count. The translator's note equates that to 36,000 human years. Even so, no son was born.

The gods grew worried. Led by Brahma, they feared that no one in the universe could bear the child that such a union would produce. They approached Shiva respectfully and asked for his mercy. The worlds could not endure his fiery offspring, they said; let him practice austerity with Uma instead, and hold his seed within his own radiance to protect the universe.

Shiva agreed. He would hold it in himself and in Uma. But, he told them, the seed had already stirred. Who would take it? The gods said the earth would carry it. Shiva released it, and it spread over the earth, covering mountains and forests.

Then the gods asked Agni, the god of fire, to enter that fierce energy, along with Vayu the wind. Agni filled the seed, and it took the form of a white mountain and a divine reed forest called Sharavana, shining like the sun and like fire. From it was born the brilliant Kartikeya, also called Kumara or Skanda. The gods and sages honored Shiva and Uma, happy at the outcome.

But Uma was not happy. She was angry that she had been prevented from having a son, and she turned on the gods. Because they had stopped her, she said, their own wives would be without children, and the gods would never be able to father sons on their own wives. This sets up something later in the epic. When Brahma orders the gods to father helpers for Vishnu's birth as Rama, the vanara heroes are born to celestial women of many kinds, and to female monkeys and bears, and not to the gods' own wives.

In the same outburst, Uma cursed the earthIn the same outburst, Uma cursed the earth, which had accepted the seed. The earth would take an unusual form and be the wife of many, and, because she had been disloyal to Uma's son's cause, would find no joy in her own children.

Seeing the gods in distress, Shiva left. He went to the northern side of the Himalayas and settled in austerity with Uma on a mountain peak.

Vishvamitra then tells Rama that he has finished the story of Uma and will now explain how the Ganga came down. This chapter, in other words, is a hinge: it explains why Kartikeya has the origin he does, why gods do not have children by their wives, and why the earth is shared by many. It also shows a pattern the Ramayana repeats often, in which divine energies are too great to be held by the ordinary world and have to be passed, carefully, from one vessel to another, as with the Ganga's own descent in the chapters that follow.

Who: Uma, Shiva, the gods

Bound to

Kartikeya's birth causes

Horse-sacrifice, divine dessert, and the births past-life-explains

Ganga, elder daughter of Himavan causes

Where this comes from

valmiki · Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda (valmikiramayan.net translation) sarga 36
read for this telling · valmikiramayan.net Valmiki Ramayana Bala Kanda sarga 36

See it on the tree · All stories

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