The Fire That Could Not Lie

The sage Bhrigu had gone to the river to bathe. His wife Puloma was alone in the hermitage, and she was expecting a child.

A stranger came to the door. Puloma welcomed him as a guest and set roots and forest fruit before him. She did not know that he was a rakshasa, or that he had come for her. Long ago her father had promised her to him. Then her father had changed his mind and given her to Bhrigu with the proper rites, and the rakshasa had carried the grudge ever since.

Now he had found her alone. But first he wanted someone to say he was in the right.

In the next room the household fire was burning. The rakshasa turned to it.

"Agni, tell me whose wife this woman rightfully is. You are the mouth of the gods, so you are bound to answer. I chose her first. Her father gave her to Bhrigu afterwards. Is she his wife or mine?"

The fire said nothing.

The rakshasa asked again, and again. "You live inside every creature, Agni, and you see what each one does, good and bad. You are a witness. Answer truly."

Agni was in misery. If he lied, he would be a false witness. If he told the truth, he could guess what Bhrigu would do to him. When he spoke at last the words came slowly.

"You chose her first, rakshasa. That is true. But you never took her with the holy rites. Her father gave her to Bhrigu, and Bhrigu married her with the Vedic rites, in my presence. I know her. This is she. I dare not speak a falsehood."

It was enough for the rakshasa. He turned himself into a boar, seized Puloma and ran with the speed of the wind.

The child inside her was angry. He slipped from his mother's womb, blazing like the sun, and the rakshasa looked at him once, let go of the woman and fell to the ground as a heap of ashes. Because the child had dropped to the earth, he was named Chyavana.

Puloma picked up her son and walked home weeping. Brahma, the grandfather of the worlds, saw her and comforted her. Her tears ran together into a river that followed her footsteps, and Brahma named it Vadhusara.

Bhrigu came back and saw his wife and the newborn child.

"Who told that rakshasa you were my wife?" he demanded. "He could not have known. Tell me, so that I can curse him."

"It was Agni," said Puloma.

Bhrigu's anger went past all reason. He turned on the fire. "You shall eat everything," he said. "Clean and unclean alike."

Now Agni was angry too.

"What is this rashness, brahmin? What did I do wrong? I was asked, and I told the truth. A witness who knows a thing and says otherwise ruins seven generations of his family, behind him and ahead. A witness who knows and stays silent is guilty as well. I could curse you in return. I will not, because I honour brahmins. But think. The gods and the ancestors eat through me. I am their mouth. How can their mouth be made to eat everything?"

Then Agni thought for a while, and withdrew.

He left the morning and evening offerings. He left the great sacrifices and the wedding rites. No fire would take an offering anywhere. The sages went to the gods in alarm, and the gods and sages together went to Brahma.

Brahma sent for Agni and spoke to him gently.

"You are the stay of the three worlds. Do not let the rites stop. You will not eat everything with your whole body. Only the flame in your lowest part will do that, and the fire in the belly of flesh-eating creatures. And hear this. As everything the sun's rays touch is made pure, so everything burnt by your flames shall be pure. Let the sage's curse come true in that way, and go on taking your share and the gods' share at your mouth."

"So be it," said Agni.

The fires took the offerings again, and Agni himself was glad.

The Mahabharata comes back to this curse much later, in a few lines, and shows a different Agni.

Balarama, Krishna's elder brother, is on a pilgrimage, bathing at one holy ford after another and giving gifts at each. At every stop the epic pauses to say why the place is holy. One of them is called Agnitirtha, the ford of fire.

Here, says the epic, Agni once vanished.

In this telling there is no speech in his own defence and no strike. Agni was simply frightened. Bhrigu's curse had terrified him, and he hid himself deep inside the wood of a sami tree and could not be seen anywhere.

The light of all the worlds had gone out. The gods went to Brahma.

"Agni has disappeared," they said. "We do not know why. Do not let every creature perish. Make fire for us again, lord."

King Janamejaya, who is listening to the whole Mahabharata, breaks in at this point with the questions anyone would ask. "Why did Agni disappear? And how did the gods find him?"

The answer he gets is short. The gods searched in great distress, with Indra in front. They found Agni lying in the heart of the sami wood. With Brihaspati leading them they rejoiced, and then they went home to the places they had come from.

And the curse? It simply came true. Agni became an eater of everything, the epic says, just as Bhrigu had spoken.

Balarama bathed at the ford, gave gifts and walked on to the next one.