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Legend · 4 tellings · Pan-India

Ghosha calls the Ashvins

Who is in it

  • The Ashvins the gods she calls
  • Ghosha the woman grown old at home
  • Kakshivat her father (Brihaddevata)
  • Bhujyu rescued from the sea (in her list)
  • Vishpala given an iron leg (in her list)
  • Atri saved from the burning pit (in her list)

Texts: Rigveda

The story, beat by beat

  1. Ghosha has grown old unmarried in her father's house.
  2. She praises the Ashvins' chariot and calls them the luck of the woman ageing at home.
  3. She lists their rescues: Chyavana, Bhujyu, Vimada's bride, Vandana, Vishpala, Rebha, Atri, Pedu's horse, the quail.
  4. She asks them to save her, without kin or friend, from her curse.
  5. In a second hymn she names herself and asks for a husband.
  6. The Ashvins give her a husband (RV 1.117.7).
  7. Brihaddevata: disfigured by disease for sixty years, she 'sees' the two hymns, is healed and bears Suhastya.

prayer healing women seers marriage rescue

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 10.39 and 10.40

Pan-India All traditions

Two hymns in the voice of a suppliant. The first invokes the chariot 'like a father's name', calls the twins the bliss of her who grows old at home and healers of the blind, thin and broken-boned, then recites their deeds: Chyavana, Tugra's son, Vimada's bride, the weakling's wife, Kali, Vandana, Vishpala, Rebha, Saptavadhri, Atri, Pedu's horse, the quail. In the midst the singer pleads: I am poor, without kin or friend; save me from this curse. The second asks where the twins rest at night, then says the daughter of a king, Ghosha, came to them begging them to be near her day and night and win her a chieftain with chariot and horses; it speaks of a wedding the singers do not know, and asks for a ford and the removal of a spiteful tree-stump.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.39; Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.40

Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 1.117.7

Pan-India All traditions

Kakshivat's hymn records the outcome in a half-verse: to Ghosha, living in her father's dwelling and stricken in years, the Ashvins gave a husband.

What is different here:

Outcome only; no disease, no hymn-seeing.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 1.117.7

Primary text (translation)

Brihaddevata 7.42-48

Pan-India All traditions

Ghosha, daughter of Kakshivat, was disfigured by an evil disease and stayed sixty years in her father's house. Grieving that she had aged without husband or son, she resolved to turn to the Lords of Light, reasoning that her father won youth, long life, health and power by pleasing them. As she reflected she saw the two hymns RV 10.39 and 10.40. The Ashvins, praised, were pleased; they made her ageless, free from disease and beautiful, and gave her a husband and the sage Suhastya as a son.

What is different here:

Supplies the disease, the sixty years, the father's example, the seeing of the hymns and the son. The handbook's wording of the cure is physical; our telling says only that they healed her. These verses stand in only one recension of the Brihaddevata.

The Brhad-devata attributed to Saunaka, ed. and tr. A. A. Macdonell (Harvard Oriental Series 6) § 7.42-48

Encyclopedia

Later commentary: the disease as leprosy

Pan-India All traditions

Later commentators and modern summaries (so Wikipedia's article on Ghosha) name the disfiguring disease as leprosy and present her as a brahmavadini, a woman seer and teacher.

What is different here:

Names the disease; not in the hymns or the Brihaddevata.

Wikipedia: Ghosha

Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; The Brhad-devata attributed to Saunaka, ed. and tr. A. A. Macdonell (Harvard Oriental Series 6); Wikipedia: Ghosha

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