Satyavatī

The next thread of the story begins in mystery, with a fish drawn from the Yamunā, and it leads to the birth of the very sage who would one day compose this whole epic.

In the kingdom of Uparichara, a fisherman caught a great fish in the Yamunā, and when it was cut open, there were found inside it twin children, a boy and a girl. They were brought to the king, who kept the boy to raise in his own household, and this boy grew up to found the kingdom of Matsya, which means fish. The girl, who carried about her the smell of fish, was given to the chief of the fishermen to be raised, and she was named Satyavatī. And as a young woman she helped her foster-father by working the ferry across the Yamunā.

One day the great sage Parāshara wished to cross the river, and Satyavatī ferried him; and midway across, the sage was seized with a sudden longing for the beautiful girl, and made his desire known. And Satyavatī was both flattered and afraid, and raised her objections: the smell of fish that clung to her, her unwed state, the open daylight in which the sages on the banks might see them.

And Parāshara, by his yogic power, answered each: he wrapped the boat in a dense mist that hid them from all eyes; and he granted her two boons, that her virginity would be restored after their union, and that the fishy odour that had marked her all her life would be replaced by a divine fragrance that would carry for miles through the forest.

From this union, upon a misty island in the Yamunā, Satyavatī bore a child; and this child was Vyāsa, the great compiler of the Vedas and the author of the Mahābhārata, the very sage whose story we followed at the opening of this book. And Vyāsa, born already destined for greatness, grew at once to maturity, bowed to his mother, and departed to his life of penance, but he left her with a solemn promise: that whenever she should call upon him in difficulty or need, he would return to help her. Remember that promise; the story will call it in.

Years passed, and King Shantanu, who had kept his senses under strict discipline since Gangā left him, was one day wandering on the banks of the Yamunā, when the air was suddenly filled with a fragrance so divinely sweet that he sought its source; and he traced it to Satyavatī, whose divine perfume, the sage's boon, now pervaded the whole forest. And the sight of this beautiful maiden burst the bonds of the king's long restraint, and he was filled with an overmastering desire to make her his wife.

And so the two great threads, the widowed king and the fragrant ferry-girl who had already borne the author of the epic, were drawn toward one another, and toward the fateful bargain that their marriage would require.