Vishvamitra and Menaka; Rambha sent by Indra

Classical

Ten years passed 'like a day' in the apsara's company.

Shataananda, the priest of Janaka, is telling Rama the long story of Vishvamitra, and this part of it is where the great king's ambition runs into the limits of his own nature.

Vishvamitra has just finished a thousand years of austerity, ending with a vow-bath, and all the gods arrive, wanting to give him the fruit of what he has done. Brahma speaks first. By your own good deeds, he says, you have become a royal sage, a rajarishi. He wishes him well and returns to heaven. Vishvamitra, unsatisfied, begins another long austerity.

After a long time, Menaka, the foremost of the celestial nymphs, comes to a holy lake to bathe and swim. Vishvamitra sees her, beautiful as lightning in a dark cloud, and desire rises in him. He invites her to his hermitage and asks her to stay and give him what he wants. She agrees, and they live together for ten years, which pass in comfort.

Then it ends, and Vishvamitra is shaken. He feels distressed and humiliated. He blames his own lust, and he blames the gods, who he believes had deliberately interrupted his austerity. He realizes that ten years have felt like one day and one night. Repentant, he sends the frightened, trembling Menaka away with gentle words, and goes north to the Himalayas.

On the bank of the Kaushiki river he takes up an extremely severe austerity again, determined to master himself and conquer desire, and this lasts for another thousand years. The gods grow alarmed, and the gods and sages go to Brahma and ask that Vishvamitra be given the title Maharshi, great sage. Brahma comes, says he is pleased with Vishvamitra's austerities, and grants him the status of supreme among sages.

Vishvamitra bows and answers politely, but he wants more. He wants to be called Brahmarshi, which, he says, would mean he had truly conquered himself. Brahma says his senses are not yet entirely conquered, and tells him to keep striving. Then Brahma goes back to heaven.

So Vishvamitra begins a fourth austerity, harsher still. He stands in the air with arms raised, living on nothing but air, and endures extreme weather: five fires around him in summer, the open sky in the rains, and water in winter. He keeps this up for another thousand years.

The gods, Indra above all, are very troubled by his power. Indra summons the nymph Rambha and speaks to her. The sarga ends there, with Shataananda saying he will go on with the story.

What is notable here is how little drama there is about Menaka herself. She comes to bathe, and Vishvamitra falls; the only blame he assigns is to his own desire and to the gods who he thinks arranged it. The emotional weight of the passage is on the shame, and on the way ten years can feel like a single day and night. Brahma's two replies also show a pattern in how this story is told. Brahma never refuses him; he grants a title each time, and then tells him it is not the one he wanted.

This is a turning point in Vishvamitra's life as Rama is hearing it. He has spent a thousand years of vow, ten with Menaka, a thousand by the Kaushiki and is now into another thousand in the air, and the title he wants is still out of reach.

The sarga ends before we learn what Rambha does.

Who: Vishvamitra, Menaka, Rambha, Indra

Bound to

Vishvamitra covets Vashishtha's wish-cow Shabala causes

Mandakarni's Five-Apsara Lake mirror

Places: Pushkar (traditional)

Where this comes from

valmiki · Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda (valmikiramayan.net translation) sarga 63
read for this telling · valmikiramayan.net Valmiki Ramayana Bala Kanda sarga 63

See it on the tree · All stories

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