A story · Yoga Vasishtha · Yoga Vasishtha — Stories of Creation

King Lavana Among the Outcastes

Yoga Vasishtha 3.107

The story · English

The king went on with his account. After the great feast among the Chandalas, he said, he was no longer a stranger to them. His fellows called him Pushta-Pukkusha, the cherished Chandala, the son-in-law raised in the house. The festivity lasted a week, and he stayed on. Eight months went by, and his wife came into her womanhood and then conceived. She bore a daughter, and with her came new cares, as a danger brings its own troubles. Three years later she bore a dark boy. Then came another daughter, and after her another boy. So the king, who had once ruled, found himself an aging Chandala with a crowded household in a forest. The years passed over him like a long sentence, and he did not yet see how heavy it was.

Those years were hard ones. He wore bark and ragged cloth, with a grass covering and a straw hat, and he carried loads of logs out of the woods on his back. Under the dhavali trees his only garment was a tattered, stinking loincloth crawling with fleas and leeches. In winter he lay in a cave like a frog, with the cold wind cutting through him. At home and away there were quarrels and wailing, until he wept tears that felt like blood. On rainy nights the family slept in marshy ground, or sheltered in mountain caverns, with nothing to eat but the roasted flesh of bears. He looked at his troubles rising around him like a fire and saw no one to help him.

Then his own relations turned on him. After one rainy season, worn down by their unkindness and by constant quarrels, he was driven from his home. He feared everyone nearby and moved with his wife and prattling children into another man's house. There the Chandali scolded him and the Chandalas threatened him, and his face grew pale as the moon under Rahu's shadow. His wife bit and scratched him like a tigress. He felt snow and frost on his bare skin, and rain struck him like iron arrows. In old age he lived on dug-up roots, and he ate apart, afraid of the touch of his low-born family. One night, under a palm tree among the apes, his teeth chattered with cold and he quarrelled with his wife again.

Hunger made him hard. With a rod and hook he fished the rivers, and with a trap in his hand he went after deer, like Yama with his noose. When he caught one he drank its warm heart's blood as a child drinks at its mother's breast. Smeared with blood, he stood like a demon in a graveyard, and even the Vetalas of the woods ran from him. He spread nets of thread for birds, and as he did so he saw something. People spread the nets of wife and children and are caught in them, hoping for happiness. So sixty painful years went by, each one long as an age of the world. He raved in anger, wept in grief, ate coarse food, and lived among the low Chandalas, bound by his own desires.

Old age came, and his beard turned to frosted grass. His days drifted by like leaves on a river, now green, now dry. His mind fluttered like a bird, and he was carried along like a straw in a whirlpool. He moved through the Vindhya woods like a worm, worn down like a beast of burden. He had forgotten that he had ever been a king and fully believed himself a Chandala. Then the land gave out. The marsh at the foot of Vindhya dried up, and no corn, vegetable or water was left. The clouds stopped raining and vanished, and the winds blew with sparks in them. The trees stood leafless, wildfires raged, and the whole tribe of Chandalas was close to dying of hunger and thirst.

A terrible famine followed, and fire swept the forest until the grass and gravel were ashes. Men and women, smeared with ash, starved in a land without food, grass or water. A mirage glittered like a pool and tricked the thirsty buffaloes. People crowded to chew branches and herbs and died doing it. Some bit at catechu gum, thinking it was meat. Others swallowed stones as if they were cakes. Starving men fell on one another and tore each other like lions, and the ground was wet with blood. Serpents burned in their caves, and the wind lifted heaps of ashes into the sky like domes without pillars. Children cried in fear beside their weeping parents. The whole place looked like the world at its ending.

Some of the people left, taking their wives and children to look for new homes abroad, and the weak were left behind like fallen branches. Tigers caught some on the road, as hawks catch unfledged birds. Others walked into the fire like moths, or fell into pits. The king parted from his father-in-law's kin and trusted to himself. With his wife and children close to him, he slipped through the pitfalls, storms, wild beasts and snakes, and came out unharmed at the edge of the forest. Under some palm trees he took his children off his shoulders, glad to be rid of the burden of his sins and sorrows. He rested there like a man who had run away from the edge of hell.

His Chandala wife fell asleep under the same tree, and his two boys slept in each other's arms in the shade. Then the younger son, Prach'chhaka, rose and stood before him. The boy was dear to them, though not the cleverest, and he spoke with tears running down his face. 'Papa, give me some meat and drink soon, or else I die.' He said it again and again. The king answered that he had no meat, but the more he said so, the more the child begged, and nothing could quiet him. At last, moved by a father's love and pain, the king said, 'Child, cut a slice from my flesh, and roast it, and eat.' The boy, too faint with hunger to refuse, answered, 'Then give it.'

The king could not bear it. His love for the boy and his own helplessness were too much, and he decided his grief should end with his life. He looked on death as his one remaining friend. He gathered wood, heaped it into a funeral pile, set it alight, and watched it blaze up as he wished. He was hurrying to throw himself in when he was jolted awake by music. It came from the palace, hailing him as king and shouting his victory. In that moment he understood. The conjurer had cast a spell on him and made him live through all those troubles for what seemed so long. The sorcerer vanished from his sight, and the courtiers looked around in wonder before speaking to him.

The courtiers told him that the man was no mere sorcerer, since he had nothing to gain from it. It was divine magic, shown to the king so that he could see the lot of humanity and the state of the world. The world, they said, is a creation of the mind, a display of the endless power of the Almighty. Its hundreds of systems deceive even the wise into taking the unreal for real, so it was no wonder the king had been overcome by it. Those who love money never leave without payment, so they doubted he was an ordinary sorcerer. Vasishtha then told Rama that he knew this story to be true, no fiction. The mind grows through its inventions as a tree grows through its branches, and its widening knowledge of all things leads it to perfection.

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In this book

• Before: King Lavana and the Magician · Yoga Vasishtha 3.104
• All of Yoga Vasishtha · Ask Krishna about it

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