The Fire She Carried

The sage Dadhichi gave his life so that the gods could make weapons from his bones. He left a son who had never seen him.

The boy grew up in a grove of pippal trees and lived on their fruit, and so he was called Pippalada. One day he watched the other children of the hermitage playing in their fathers' laps.

"Where is my father?" he asked his mother.

She wept, and then she told him. "The gods took his life for their weapons."

Pippalada went up into the Himalaya and stood without moving for a year, thinking of one thing. At the end of that year a fire came out of his body, a blaze like the fire at the end of the world. It is called the Vadava, the mare's fire.

"You made me," the fire said. "What shall I do?"

"I give you all the gods," said Pippalada. "Eat them."

The gods ran to Vishnu, and Vishnu went to the fire and spoke to it politely.

"Eat the Waters first. They were made first, so they are the eldest."

"Show me where they are," said the fire. "I keep my word."

"How shall I carry you there?"

"No horse and no chariot," the fire said. "I will go only in the hands of a maiden."

Vishnu asked Ganga. "I have not the strength," she said. "He burns too fiercely." He asked Yamuna, and Sindhu, and river after river, and all refused.

Then he asked Saraswati.

"I am not free to say yes," she answered. "I am my father's daughter. Without his word I will not move a step."

So Vishnu went to Brahma, and Brahma called her and kissed the top of her head.

"Go, child. Take this fire and throw it into the salt sea."

"I will go," Saraswati said. "But he will scorch me. And this is the dark age. I do not want to walk among cruel people."

"Then go under the earth," said her father. "When the fire burns you past bearing, break through the ground and show yourself, and the holy waters of every land will come to cool you."

She dressed in white, and conches sounded. Ganga walked a little way with her.

"Friend, when will I see you again?" Saraswati asked.

"When you turn east," said Ganga. "Do not grieve."

Then Saraswati became a river. She came down in the Himalaya at the foot of a plaksha tree, took up the fire, and ran. She ran under the ground. Wherever the heat grew too great she surfaced, and that is why, people say, the Saraswati is seen in some places and not in others.

Near the sea a proud mountain blocked her path.

"There is no road here," he said. "But you are lovely. Marry me."

"My father lives," she said. "I cannot choose for myself. Let me pass."

"Then I will marry you by force."

Saraswati thought quickly. "At least let me bathe first," she said. "Hold this for me."

She put the fire into his hands. The mountain was burned to ash on the spot. The stone of that place is soft to this day, and masons cut it for houses.

At Prabhasa four sages were calling her to four places at once. She split into five streams to please them all. Then she stood before the sea, and the fire looked at the waves.

"The sea is afraid of me," it said, pleased. "Ask a boon."

Saraswati thought of Vishnu, and he answered in her heart.

"Then drink with a mouth as small as a needle's eye," she said.

The fire agreed. The Ocean rose in the form of a man and took the fire from her hands, and it lies in the deep, sipping the sea through a needle's eye. Vishnu made the waters without end. The fire is still drinking, and it has not reached the gods.

The Padma Purana does not say where the fire came from. It begins with the gods already frightened.

"Go west, to the salt sea," they told Saraswati, and Vishnu spoke for them. "Take the Vadava fire and drop it in. Otherwise it will burn us. Be a mother to the gods."

"I am not free," she said. "I am a maiden under a vow, and I obey my father. Ask him."

They asked Brahma. He set his daughter on his lap and told her what the gods wanted.

In this telling Saraswati wept. The Purana says her face, wet with tears, was like a white lotus with drops of water on it. All the gods grieved to see her.

"Do not cry," said Brahma. "There is nothing here for you to fear."

She bowed to him. "I will go."

She put on white, and the conches and drums sounded. Ganga followed her a little way and promised that the two of them would meet again when Saraswati turned east. Yamuna, Gayatri and Savitri came to see her off.

Then she became a river. She came to earth at the hermitage of the sage Uttanka, under a fig tree, and stood in her own water and called to Vishnu.

"Give me the fire."

"You will not be burned," Vishnu said. He placed the fire in a golden pot, and he set the pot down inside her stream.

She carried it west. Soon she sank out of sight under the earth. She came up again at Pushkar, in the forest where her father had held his great sacrifice. Her water rose into the pools where Brahma had made his offerings and filled them. That, Pushkar says, is how the lake came to hold the Saraswati.

She did not stay. She went under again and on toward the sea, and the next place she surfaced, in a grove of date palms, people called her Nanda.