Sagara, the King Born with Poison

A prince sent away

Sūta is telling the sages the line of Ikṣvāku, king after king. Among the descendants of Māndhātā he comes to a learned king named Trayyāruṇi, and to Trayyāruṇi's strong son, Satyavrata. With him the list of names slows down and becomes a story.

Satyavrata did a reckless thing. A girl of the city was being married to another man; the brahmins were already reciting the wedding mantras when the prince, carried away by desire, pride and his own wilfulness, took her by force. His father was furious. He disowned him and told him again and again, “Go.”

“Where am I to go?” the prince asked. “Live beside the outcastes,” said the king. So Satyavrata, cast off by his righteous father, went to live at the edge of the outcastes' settlement.

The king himself, sick at heart over what his son had done, gave up everything and went to the forest to do tapas to Lord Śaṅkara. And because of that wrong, the Purāṇa says, Indra sent no rain on the kingdom for twelve years.

The sage's wife and the boy with the rope

In those same years the great ascetic Viśvāmitra left his wife near where Satyavrata lived and went away to the seashore for hard tapas. The famine pressed on her. To feed her other children she tied a rope round the neck of her middle son and set out to sell him for a hundred cows.

Satyavrata saw her leading the boy and set him free. Out of pity, and hoping to please Viśvāmitra, he took on the care of the child. Because he had been bound by the neck — gala — that son of Viśvāmitra became known as Gālava, and grew into a great ascetic.

From then on Satyavrata kept the sage's whole household alive. He hunted deer, boar, buffalo and other forest animals, and every day he left the meat near Viśvāmitra's hermitage. He did it to serve them, out of compassion, and because he had given his word.

Vasiṣṭha's silence

With the old king gone to the forest, the sage Vasiṣṭha, as the family's priest, looked after the kingdom, its sacred places and the royal household. He had not spoken up when the prince was driven out, and Satyavrata held it against him.

The Purāṇa explains what the prince did not understand. A marriage, it notes, is complete only at the seventh step. Vasiṣṭha's thought was that these years of exile would themselves serve as a vow of penance: the father would be satisfied, the family would be cleansed, and when the silent vow was complete he himself would anoint the prince as king. So he had said nothing. Satyavrata saw only the silence, and anger stayed between them.

Three stains: Triśaṅku

For twelve years the prince kept to that hard life. Then one day there was no meat to be found anywhere. Hungry, and overcome by anger, greed and confusion, he saw Vasiṣṭha's own cow — a cow that fulfilled every wish. He killed her, ate the meat himself, and fed it to Viśvāmitra's son.

When Vasiṣṭha heard, he spoke in wrath. “Cruel man! Had you not driven in these two new stakes, I would surely have removed the first. You displeased your father; you killed your teacher's cow; you ate meat that had not been consecrated. Three offences — so you shall be Triśaṅku.” Śaṅku means a stake or thorn, and from that day he was known by that name.

Viśvāmitra's gratitude

Then Viśvāmitra came home from his tapas and learned who had kept his wife and children alive. He told Triśaṅku to ask for a boon. The prince asked, and the sage, pleased, granted it.

The twelve years of drought came to an end. Viśvāmitra anointed Triśaṅku on his father's throne and officiated at his sacrifice. And then, while Vasiṣṭha and all the gods looked on, the mighty sage sent him to heaven in his own body.

From Hariścandra to Bāhu

Triśaṅku's wife Satyarathā, a princess of the Kekaya line, bore him a blameless son, Hariścandra — also called Traiśaṅkava, “son of Triśaṅku” — who performed the rājasūya and was famed as a universal king. Hariścandra's son was Rohita, Rohita's son was Vṛka, and from Vṛka came Bāhu.

Bāhu did not live up to that age of dharma. He was a king given over to his vices, and the Haihayas and Tālajaṅghas took his whole kingdom from him. They had help: the Purāṇa names five war-bands — Yavanas, Pāradas, Kāmbojas, Pahlavas and Bahūdakas — who fought for the Haihayas, together with the Śakas, and handed them Bāhu's realm.

Born with poison

Here Śaunaka interrupts to ask how a child could be born “with poison”, and Sūta answers by repeating what Vaiśampāyana once told Janamejaya, the son of Parīkṣit.

His kingdom gone, Bāhu went sorrowing to the forest with his wife, and there he died. His queen, Yādavī, was carrying his child. A co-wife, jealous of the son to be born, had given her poison.

The queen built her husband's pyre and was about to step into the fire when the sage Aurva, of the line of Bhṛgu, stopped her out of compassion. For the sake of the child she stayed in his hermitage. There she served the great sage, the Purāṇa says, while in her heart she kept her mind on Śaṅkara.

In time, at an auspicious hour, under a strong ascendant with five planets exalted, the child was born — and the poison came out with him. Gara means poison; born together with it, sa-gara, the boy was Sagara.

Aurva's pupil wins back the earth

Aurva performed the birth rites and the other sacraments for him, taught him the Vedas and the śāstras, and then trained him in arms. Last of all he gave him the fire-weapon, the āgneyāstra, which the Purāṇa says even the gods could hardly withstand. Sagara received it gladly and in the proper way.

Then he gathered an army and, in his anger, with the power of that weapon, quickly destroyed the Haihayas. His fame spread through the worlds, and he set dharma on its feet again.

The Śakas, Yavanas, Kāmbojas and Pahlavas, cut down by him, fled in terror to Vasiṣṭha for refuge. Vasiṣṭha gave them his protection on certain terms and held Sagara back from killing them.

Sagara had his own vow to keep and his teacher's word to honour, so he found a way to do both. He spared their lives but took away their old observances and altered their appearance. The Śakas he released with half the head shaved, the Yavanas and Kāmbojas with the whole head shaved; the Pāradas had their hair shorn, the Pahlavas were made to wear beards, and all were shut out from Vedic study and the sacrificial call. So, conquering by dharma, he became lord of the whole earth.

The horse, the digging, and Kapila

With the earth won, Sagara consecrated a horse for the aśvamedha and let it go. It wandered to the shore of the south-eastern sea, with the king's sixty thousand sons following behind. There Indra, the king of the gods, looking to his own ends, stole it from the shore and hid it under the ground.

To find the horse, Sagara had his sons dig up that whole country on every side. As they dug, in what became the great ocean, they came upon the Lord Kapila, the primal Person whose form is the universe.

He woke. Fire came from his eyes, and the sixty thousand were burnt. Only four were left, the Purāṇa says, to carry on the family: Harṣaketu, Suketu, Dharmaratha and the valiant Pañcajana.

Kapila then granted five boons: a lasting line, learning, fame, wealth — and the ocean itself as a son. By that deed the sea became sāgara, “Sagara's son”. From the ocean the king got back his sacrificial horse. He went on to complete a hundred horse sacrifices, and he worshipped the manifestations of Śiva and the gods.

Two queens and a gourd of seeds

Śaunaka asks next how sixty thousand sons could have been born at all. Sagara had two wives, Sūta says. By tapas they burnt away their sins, and Aurva, pleased with them, offered each a boon.

One asked for sixty thousand mighty sons. The other chose, of her own will, a single son who would carry on the line. In due time the first queen gave birth to a gourd full of seeds, and each seed was a child. The infants were placed one by one in jars of ghee, and nurses reared them in order. They grew up to be their father's delight — and it was they who were burnt to ash by Kapila's anger.

The son of the other queen, Pañcajana, became king after Sagara.

Down to Bhagīratha, Rāma, and the end of the line

Pañcajana's son was the valiant Aṃśumān; his son was Dilīpa; and Dilīpa's son was Bhagīratha — the one who brought the Gaṅgā, best of rivers, down to the earth, led her to the sea, and made her his daughter. That is why she is called Bhāgīrathī, and that descent is a story of its own.

From Bhagīratha the Purāṇa counts on: Śrutasena, the devout Nābhāga, Ambarīṣa, Sindhudvīpa, Ayutājit, and Ṛtuparṇa, the master of dice and close friend of Nala. Then Anuparṇa, Kalmāṣapāda who was also called Mitrasaha, Sarvakarmā, Anaraṇya, and so to Khaṭvāṅga, who came back from heaven with only a moment of life left and in that moment, by his understanding and truthfulness, gained all three worlds. After him came Dīrghabāhu, Raghu, Aja and Daśaratha.

From Daśaratha was born Rāma — righteous, glorious, a portion of Viṣṇu, the slayer of Rāvaṇa and, the Purāṇa adds, a great devotee of Śiva. His story is told in many Purāṇas and is famous from the Rāmāyaṇa, so Sūta does not tell it again here.

After Rāma come Kuśa, Atithi and a long file of kings. Among them the Purāṇa pauses over Hiraṇyanābha, a teacher of yoga and pupil of Jaimini, from whom the sage Yājñavalkya of Kosala learned the inner yoga that cuts the knot of the heart; and over Maru, a perfected yogī who, it says, still lives with the sages in the village of Kalāpa and will restore the solar line when it has perished at the end of the Kali age. The kings already past end with Bṛhadbala.

Then Sūta names the kings still to come, from Bṛhadbala's son onward — Śākya, Śuddhoda and Prasenajit are among them — down to Sumitra, with whom this line will end in the Kali age, to grow again in the age of truth.

This, he says, is the family of Vaivasvata Manu, the son of the Sun. Whoever reads or hears it is blessed with descendants, enjoys great happiness in this world, and reaches union with the Lord.