The Daughter of the Mountain

Mena had been asking for twenty-seven years.

Every spring she began again: a fast on the eighth day, the brahmins fed on the ninth, and the rest of the time on the bank of the Ganga below her husband's city with a clay image of the Goddess before her, some days on water, some days on air. Himavat, king of the mountains, fasted beside her.

At the end of the twenty-seventh year the Goddess stood in front of her, smiling.

"Ask," she said.

"A hundred sons, brave and long-lived," said Mena. "And a daughter who will make both houses glad." Then the real thing. "Be my daughter yourself. Be born to me, and be Rudra's wife."

"I will," said the Goddess, and was gone.

The sons came first. Then Mena conceived again, and the gods came to praise the child in the womb. She arrived at midnight on the ninth of Chaitra, in spring, with every lotus on the mountain open. Drums sounded and flowers fell. For one moment she stood in the room in her own shape and looked at her mother, so that Mena would always know her. Then she was a crying infant like any other, and the lamps dimmed beside her.

Himavat came running with priests and musicians and could not stop looking at the dark, lotus-blue child. He named her Kali. The household called her Parvati, the mountain's own. She played with dolls on the river sand, and when she was put to a teacher, the learning of a life she could not remember came back to her.

Narada came down the mountain, and Himavat brought the girl out, made her bow, and asked.

"Read her future for me. Tell me who she will marry."

Narada turned the small hand over and looked at it for a long time.

"Every good sign," he said. "There is one line here I do not like. Her husband will be a yogi. Naked. No parents, no qualities, no wish for anything. He will care nothing for honour, and his manners will frighten decent people."

Mena put her hand to her mouth. Himavat went grey. Only the girl was pleased; she knew at once whom the lines described and studied the floor to hide it.

"What can be done?" said Himavat.

"Nothing. The lines do not lie. But hear me out. The naked yogi is Shiva. In him a fault weighs the same as a virtue. Does the sun do harm because it burns? Give her to him. She will win him herself, by her own penance, and one day half of his body will be hers."

"He swore to Sati that he would never take another wife."

"She is Sati," said Narada.

Shiva came when she was eight. He sat down on the ridge where the Ganga comes off the mountain, with Nandi and a few silent ganas, and closed his eyes, and Himavat cleared that side of the mountain. Then he went up with fruit and flowers and the girl.

"Let her serve you, lord. She asks nothing else."

Shiva kept his eyes shut. Asked again, he opened them briefly.

"Come every day if you like. Leave the girl at home. A woman is a trick of illusion. She is the end of an ascetic. Do not ask me twice."

Himavat, a king and a mountain, could not find a word. His daughter watched him fail, then bowed and spoke for herself.

"Your penance is an energy, lord. That energy is Prakriti. She makes the world and keeps it and ends it. Your speaking is hers, and your hearing, and your seeing. If you were beyond her, why would you sit here? I am Prakriti and you are Purusha. And if you really are the greater, you need not be afraid of me sitting near you."

For the first time since Sati, Shiva laughed.

"I am Brahman," he said. "Illusion is my servant. What will you do about that?"

"Serve you," said Parvati.

He let her. Every morning she came up with two maids, washed his feet, laid out the offerings, brought grass and flowers, and sometimes, when she had finished, simply stayed and looked at him. He saw her every day, and did not see her. What she did when looking was not enough is told in How Parvati Won Shiva.

Kalidasa does not begin with the girl. He begins with her father.

The Himalaya, he says, is a god who happens to be a mountain, stretched across the whole north of the land like a measuring rod. Lions and elephants walk in his forests. The bark of his birch trees carries lovers' letters. Nymphs bathe in his mists, and his caves hum with music when the wind goes through them. The Ganga waters his pines. When the Lord of Life gave the mountains their share in the sacrifice, this one was made their king, and he took the nymph Mena for his queen.

Their first child was Mainaka, who later hid under the sea from Indra's thunderbolt. Their second was a daughter, and she was the wife Shiva had lost come back again. The sky went rosy at her birth, the breeze turned sweet, music was heard, and flowers came down. They called her simply the Child of the Mountain. Her other name, Uma, came years afterwards, when her mother cried out against her penance, and the cry stuck.

She played with dolls and balls on the Ganga's sand, and as she grew, the memories of her earlier life came back to her one by one. The poet spends a long time on her beauty, her walk, her eyes, a voice sweeter than the koel's, and says the Creator must have made her with particular care.

Narada came by, looked at her once, and told her father what she was for.

"That girl is going to be half of Shiva. She will share his throne."

Himalaya was proud, and said nothing. A great god is not offered a daughter he has not asked for. He waited, the poet says, like a devout man who fears his prayer will not be heard, and looked for a way.

The way came up the mountain on its own. Shiva, grieving, had taken a skin coat and a sacred fire and a few attendants and his bull, and sat down on the slopes to do penance. Himalaya sent Uma to attend him, with two companions.

"Serve him," he told her. "Bring what he needs."

Shiva received her courteously and let her. She gathered flowers and sacred grass, swept the altar and carried water, every day. When the work tired her, she looked up at the pale moon on his forehead, and her strength came back.