The City the Fire Guarded

Yudhishthira wished to hold the royal sacrifice that would make him emperor, and for that every king had to pay him tribute. He sent his four brothers out in four directions. Sahadeva, the youngest, went south.

Sahadeva won kingdom after kingdom. Then he came to Mahishmati, where King Nila ruled, and there his campaign stopped.

The battle was fierce from the start. And then something happened that Sahadeva had never seen in war. His chariots began to burn. His elephants, his horsemen and his foot soldiers in their coats of mail all seemed to be on fire. The army was ringed with flames, and the men were terrified.

Sahadeva did not know what to do. It was Agni himself who was fighting for King Nila.

The king who is listening to the Mahabharata, Janamejaya, interrupts here, and his question is a fair one. "Sahadeva was fighting for the sake of a sacrifice. Why would Agni, of all gods, turn against him?"

So the storyteller goes back in time.

King Nila had a daughter, and she was very beautiful. She liked to stay near her father's sacred fire. People in the palace noticed a curious thing. However hard the priests fanned that fire, it would not blaze up. It blazed only when the princess blew on it gently with her own breath.

Soon it was said in the palace and in every house in the city that Agni wished to marry the girl. And the girl, the epic says, accepted him.

Agni took to visiting her in the form of a brahmin. One day the king found the young brahmin with his daughter and was furious. He ordered the stranger punished according to the law.

At that the brahmin flamed up in anger, and the king saw who he was. Nila bowed his head to the ground. After a time he gave his daughter to the god in marriage.

Agni was pleased. "Ask a boon of me," he said.

"Let my soldiers never panic in battle," said the king.

From that day, any king who tried to take Mahishmati without knowing this was burnt by fire. Other kings learned to leave the city alone.

That was the fire now surrounding Sahadeva's army.

Sahadeva stood still as a mountain. He purified himself, touched water and spoke to the flames.

"I bow to you whose path is marked with smoke. All this effort of mine is for you. You are the mouth of the gods. You are the sacrifice itself. They call you Pavaka because you make all things pure, and Jatavedas, and Vaishvanara. Purify me by your truth, Agni. Give me contentment and prosperity, knowledge and gladness."

Then he added, more plainly, "Carrier of the offerings, you should not stand in the way of a sacrifice."

He spread sacred grass on the ground and sat down on it, in front of his frightened men, to wait for the fire.

The fire came on. It reached him. And like the sea that never crosses its shore, it did not pass over his head.

Agni came up to him quietly and spoke.

"Rise, prince of the Kurus. I was only testing you. I know what you want, and what Yudhishthira wants. But as long as there is one descendant of King Nila's line, I must protect this city. Even so, I will give you what your heart desires."

Sahadeva stood, joined his hands and bowed to him. Agni vanished. Then King Nila came out, at the god's command, honoured Sahadeva with due rites and paid the tribute.

Sahadeva accepted it and marched on to the south.

Long after the war, the dying Bhishma tells Yudhishthira about the same city, and the marriage goes differently.

In this telling the king of Mahishmati is not Nila. He is Duryodhana, a just and generous king of the line of Ikshvaku, and no relation to the Duryodhana of the war. The river Narmada herself loved him, and their daughter was named Sudarshana. No girl so beautiful had ever been born.

Agni saw her and wished to marry her. He came to the king as a poor brahmin and asked for her hand.

The king refused. The man was poor, and not of his rank.

Agni made no threat and said nothing. He simply disappeared from the king's great sacrifice. The altar had no fire.

The king was shaken. "What wrong have we done," he asked his priests, "that Agni has left us? The fault is either mine or yours. Find out."

The priests kept silence, gathered their minds and called on the fire god for shelter. Agni appeared before them, bright as the autumn sun.

"I want the daughter of Duryodhana for myself," he said.

The priests were astonished. In the morning they told the king. And the king, far from being angry, was delighted.

"So be it," he said. He asked only one thing as the bride's gift. "Stay here with us always, Agni."

"So be it," said Agni.

The king dressed his daughter in new clothes and jewels and gave her to the god, and Agni received her with the Vedic rites, the way he receives the butter poured at a sacrifice. That is why, Bhishma says, Agni has lived in Mahishmati to this day, and why Sahadeva met him there on his march to the south.

A son was born to them, and he too was named Sudarshana.