Devalok
From the epics · 2 tellings · North India

The hundred daughters of Kushanabha and the Wind

Vayu bends the hundred daughters of a king who refuse to marry without their father's leave; the city is named Kanyakubja for them.

Who is in it

Places: Kanyakubja (Kannauj)

The story, beat by beat

  1. King Kushanabha has a hundred daughters by the nymph Ghritachi.
  2. The girls sing and dance in the garden in the rainy season.
  3. Vayu asks them all to be his brides and offers unending youth.
  4. They laugh and say only their father can give them away.
  5. Vayu in anger bends their bodies crooked.
  6. They tell their father, who praises their patience.
  7. He gives them to King Brahmadatta of Kampilya; each is made straight as he takes her hand.
  8. The city is called Kanyakubja, city of the crooked maidens.

refusal anger forbearance city origin marriage

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda (Griffith 1.34-35)

North India All traditions

Vishvamitra tells Rama on the bank of the Sone. Kushanabha, son of Kusha, has a hundred daughters. The Wind sees them dancing, proposes to all and promises immortality; they answer that their father is their lord and will choose. He bends them. The king praises forbearance, marries them to Brahmadatta, son of the sage Chuli and the Gandharvi Somada, and each is healed at the taking of hands. Kushanabha later has a son Gadhi, Vishvamitra's father.

The Ramayan of Valmiki, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1870-74) § 1.34; The Ramayan of Valmiki, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1870-74) § 1.35

Primary text (translation)

Xuanzang's Record, Book 5: the Great Tree rishi

North India · Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh Buddhist recorded by a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, 7th century

At Kanyakubja the Chinese pilgrim is told that the city was Kusumapura under King Brahmadatta, who had a thousand sons and a hundred daughters. An ascetic so long in trance that a banyan grew on his shoulder sees the princesses and asks for one. All refuse but the youngest, who offers herself to save the kingdom. The sage, insulted at being brought a child, curses the other ninety-nine to be hunchbacked and unmarriageable, and the city takes its name.

What is different here:

No Vayu: the suitor is a human ascetic. Brahmadatta is the father, not the bridegroom. The youngest daughter consents; ninety-nine are cursed and never cured.

Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, by Xuanzang, tr. Samuel Beal (1884) § 5.1

Sources: The Ramayan of Valmiki, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1870-74); Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, by Xuanzang, tr. Samuel Beal (1884)

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