Markandeya and the Noose of Death

The sage Mrikandu and his wife had everything a quiet life needs except a child.

They prayed to Shiva for years. When at last he appeared to them, he did not simply grant what they asked. He gave them a choice.

"You may have a son who is wise and good, the kind of son every parent hopes for," he said. "He will live for sixteen years. Or you may have a son who is dull and unkind, and he will live a long, long life. Choose."

Mrikandu looked at his wife. It did not take them long.

"Give us the good son," he said.

The boy was born, and they named him Markandeya. He was everything Shiva had promised. He learned the scriptures as easily as other children learn games. He was gentle with everyone. Above all he loved Shiva, with his whole heart, without being told to.

His parents watched him grow, and every birthday was a joy and a wound together.

On the morning he turned sixteen, Markandeya found his mother weeping and his father unable to look at him.

"What is it?" he asked. "Tell me."

So they told him: the choice, the sixteen years, and that the years ended today.

Markandeya was quiet for a moment. He did not shout, and he did not run. He touched his parents' feet.

"Do not cry," he said. "I know where to go."

He went to the linga where he prayed every day, sat down in front of it and began to worship, exactly as he always did.

When his hour came, the messengers of Yama, the god of death, arrived to fetch him. But the boy was so deep in his prayer and shone so brightly that they could not come near. They went back with empty hands.

Then Yama came himself.

He rode in on his great black buffalo with his noose coiled in his hand. No one refuses Yama. Kings do not, and neither do gods when their time is up.

"Markandeya," he said. "It is time. Come."

The boy opened his eyes and saw Death in the doorway. He did not argue. He threw both arms around the linga and held on with all his strength.

Yama swung his noose. It flew through the air and fell around the boy, and around the stone he was holding. Yama had put a rope around Shiva.

The linga split open with a roar.

Out of it strode Shiva, his eyes blazing, his trident raised.

"You would throw your noose over me?" he thundered. "This child has taken shelter with me. Who are you to drag him from it?"

He struck, and Yama, the lord of death, fell lifeless to the ground.

For a while there was no death in the world at all, and that was not the blessing it might sound. Nothing ended. The old could not rest, and the earth groaned under the weight of everything that lived. The gods came hurrying to Shiva.

"Lord, give Yama back," they pleaded. "Without him the world cannot turn."

Shiva's anger was gone by then. He brought Yama back to life, on one condition.

"This boy you will never touch," he said. "He is sixteen. He will always be sixteen."

So Markandeya did not die that day or any day after it. They say he is living still, sixteen years old, somewhere in the world. And Shiva won a new name that day: Kalantaka, the one who put an end to Death.

A story like this needs a place to have happened in, and India has given it several.

Ask in the Tamil country and you will be sent to Thirukkadaiyur, a temple town near the coast. Here, they will tell you, is the very linga the boy held. This is the spot where the noose fell, where the stone broke open and where Yama lay on the ground. The story is told here just as the Puranas tell it, only with a finger pointing at the floor: there, on that spot.

Because this is the place where death was turned back, people come here to give thanks for long life. It has become the custom for couples to come here to mark a sixtieth birthday, with their children and grandchildren around them, and to ask for more years together. We could not trace the custom to any old text, but it is what the town is known for today.

Thirukkadaiyur is not alone in its claim. Thiruvanmiyur, also in Tamil Nadu, says the same of itself. So do Triprangode in Kerala, Parli Vaijnath in Maharashtra and Khandya in Karnataka. In Varanasi there is a temple of Markandeya Mahadeva, and on the mountain road to Yamunotri there is a bathing place that bears his name.

Not one of them is troubled by the others. Every one of these towns has a linga, and every one has had children whose parents were afraid for them. The boy who would not let go belongs to all of them.