The Boy Who Saw the Storm Gods

There was a king named Rathaviti, of the line of Darbha, who wished to hold a sacrifice. He went to the family of the sage Atri and asked for a priest. He chose Archananas, Atri's son.

Archananas came to the king's house and brought his own son with him. The boy's name was Shyavashva. His father had taught him all the Vedas, gladly, and everything that goes with them.

While the sacrifice was going on, Archananas saw the king's daughter, and a thought came to him. She would make a fine daughter-in-law. Shyavashva had seen her too, and his heart had already settled on her.

So the father spoke to the king. "Join your family to ours."

Rathaviti was willing. But he went first to his queen. "What do you think? I would like to give the girl to Shyavashva. A grandson of Atri is no poor match for us."

The queen thought otherwise. "I was born in a family of royal seers," she said. "Our son-in-law must be a seer. This young man has not seen a single hymn. Give her to a seer, and she will be a mother of the Veda."

In those days a seer was someone to whom a hymn had shown itself. A man could know every hymn by heart and still not be one.

The king came back and refused. "No one who is not a seer can be our son-in-law."

When the sacrifice was over, father and son went home. The story says that Shyavashva's heart did not go home with him.

On the road they met two kings, Taranta and Purumilha, who honoured them. Taranta's queen, Shashiyasi, gave the young man goats and sheep, cows and horses.

Father and son went on to their hermitage and bowed to Atri. But Shyavashva's mind was elsewhere.

"I have not seen a hymn," he thought, "and so I have lost her. If I could only become a seer."

He was thinking this in the forest when he found that he was not alone.

A troop of young men stood beside him. They were all of one age and all alike, and each one had gold on his chest.

Shyavashva stared. "Who are you?" he asked.

And as he asked, he knew. These were the Maruts, the sons of Rudra.

He was ashamed. He had seen the gods and had asked them their names, as if they were travellers, when he should have praised them at once. So he praised them now, and the words that came were new. They were a hymn that no one had taught him.

The Maruts were delighted. As they went on their way they took the gold from their chests and gave it to him.

Shyavashva was a seer from that moment. His thoughts went straight to the king's daughter, and he wanted Rathaviti to know. He had no messenger, so he asked the goddess Night, in two new verses, to carry his hymn to the king. With a seer's sight he could see where Rathaviti was living, far off on a ridge of the Himalaya.

Night carried the message.

Rathaviti came himself and brought his daughter. He clasped the feet of Archananas and stood with his palms joined.

"I am Rathaviti, son of Darbha. I refused you once. Forgive me. You are the son of a seer, a seer yourself, and now the father of a seer. Take this girl as your daughter-in-law."

He honoured the priest with water for his feet and the honey drink of welcome, gave him a hundred white horses, and saw him off to his home.

The hymn that the story explains is the sixty-first of the fifth book. It names its maker in passing, as Shyava. It tells no story. It reads like something said aloud by a man to whom several things have happened at once.

It begins with the question.

"Who are you, you splendid men, who have come one by one from the farthest distance? Where are your horses? Where are the reins? How did you get here?"

He seems to look more closely then, because he answers himself. There is a seat on the horse's back and a rein at its nose. The whip is laid on the flank. The riders sit with their legs spread wide.

Then the hymn turns, without warning, to a woman. He wishes her cattle, hundreds of sheep and horses and cows. She put her arms around the hero whom Shyavashva praised. "Many a woman," he says, "is steadier and better than a man who turns away from the gods and gives nothing." She notices the weak and the worn, the thirsty and the needy, and she sets her mind on the gods. The old index of the Rigveda says these verses are for Shashiyasi, Taranta's queen.

"She showed me the way," he goes on. "Two red horses carried me to Purumilha." And he remembers a gift of a hundred cows.

Then he is back with the Maruts. They are always young. They ride bright chariots, nobody finds fault with them and nobody stops them. "Who knows where they take their pleasure?" he asks. Their light covers both worlds, like gold shining in the sky.

The last three verses are spoken to the Night.

"Night, carry my hymn to the son of Darbha. Carry it like a charioteer. Tell Rathaviti from me, when he has pressed his Soma, that my wish has not gone away."

And the last verse says where to find him. Rathaviti lives among people rich in cattle, far back among the mountains.

That is the end of the hymn. It does not say whether an answer came.