Kacha and Devayani

The gods and the Asuras were at war for the three worlds, and each side had a priest. The gods had Brihaspati, son of Angiras. The Asuras had Shukra, whom the epic also calls Ushanas and Kavya.

Shukra knew something Brihaspati did not. He had the science called Sanjivani, which brings the dead back to life. Every Asura the gods cut down stood up again and went back to the fight. The gods who fell stayed fallen.

So the gods went to Kacha, Brihaspati's eldest son.

"Go to Shukra," they said. "Become his student and learn this knowledge. He has a daughter, Devayani, whom he loves more than anything. Please her as well, and you will succeed."

"So be it," said Kacha, and he went to the city of the Asura king.

He did not hide who he was. "I am the grandson of Angiras and the son of Brihaspati," he told Shukra. "Take me as your pupil. I will keep a student's vow for a thousand years."

"You are welcome, Kacha," said Shukra. "In honouring you I honour your father."

So Kacha served his teacher, and he was kind to Devayani. He sang for her and brought her flowers and fruit, and she sang for him. Five hundred years went by.

Then the Asuras understood why he had come.

They found him alone in the forest, herding his teacher's cows. They killed him, cut him in pieces and threw the pieces to the wolves and jackals. At dusk the cows came home alone.

"Father," said Devayani, "the fire is lit and the sun has set, and Kacha has not come. He is lost or dead. I will not live without him."

"I will call him," said Shukra, and he spoke the words. Kacha came back whole, tearing his way out of the wolves.

The Asuras killed him a second time when he went to gather flowers. They ground him to a paste and mixed it into the sea. Again Devayani went to her father, and again Shukra called him back.

The third time the Asuras were cleverer. They burned Kacha to ash, stirred the ash into wine, and gave the cup to Shukra himself. He drank it.

When Devayani wept, Shukra called once more. The answer came, faintly, from inside his own body.

"Be gentle with me, master. I am Kacha. They gave me to you in your wine."

Shukra saw the trap. "Daughter, I can only give you Kacha by dying. He cannot come out unless I am torn open."

"If he dies I cannot live," said Devayani. "If you die I cannot live either."

There was one way. Shukra taught the Sanjivani to the student inside him. "Come out as my son," he said. "And when you are out, do what is right."

Kacha came out, bright as the full moon, and his teacher lay dead on the ground. Then Kacha spoke the words he had just learned, and Shukra rose. The first thing Shukra did was lay down a rule that no brahmin should ever drink wine again.

When the thousand years were over, Kacha asked leave to go. Devayani stopped him.

"Your vow is finished," she said. "Remember how I cared for you. Marry me."

"You are my teacher's daughter," said Kacha. "I honour you as I honour him. And I have lived inside his body, where you lived before you were born. That makes you my sister. Do not ask this."

"Then the knowledge you came for will never work for you."

"You curse me out of anger, and I have done nothing wrong," said Kacha. "So hear mine. No sage's son will ever marry you. As for the knowledge, it may fail in my hands. It will work for whoever I teach."

He went home. The gods, with Indra at their head, came out to meet him, and gave him a share in the sacrifice.

The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore took this story and kept only its last hour. His short play in verse opens when everything else is over. The lessons are finished. Kacha has come to say goodbye.

"Give me leave to go," he says. "I have what I came for."

"And you want nothing else?" asks Devayani.

"Nothing."

She does not believe him. She makes him look at the forest he is leaving: the banyan tree where he rested at noon when he took the cattle out, and the river Venumati that ran beside them all those years. He bows to the tree and speaks fondly of the river. He says the right things about both.

Then she reminds him of the first day. He had stood at the garden hedge, hardly more than a boy, and found her gathering flowers, and asked if he might help. It was she who had begged her father to accept him.

"Three times they killed me," says Kacha, "and three times you had me brought back. I will always be grateful."

Gratitude is the one word she cannot bear. She tells him she has watched him for years and knows that he loves her. She asks him to stay.

Here Tagore changes the old story. The Kacha of the epic calls her his sister. Tagore's Kacha admits that she is right. He has loved her in secret all this time. But he gave his word to the gods, and he will keep it, though heaven will never feel like heaven to him again.

"Forgive me," he says.

She does not. She tells him he sat in her garden through the sunny hours and wove its flowers into a chain, and now he snaps the thread and lets them fall in the dust. Then she curses him. The great knowledge will be a weight he carries. He may share it with others, but it will never grow lighter, and it will never be part of his own life.

In the English version that Tagore himself made, the play ends there. Kacha says nothing back.