The Garland in the Dust

The sage Durvasa was walking the earth, and for once he was in a good mood.

A nymph of the air came past him carrying a garland of flowers from the trees of heaven, and the scent of it filled the forest.

"Give me that," said Durvasa.

She gave it to him, and he hung it round his own neck and went on, pleased with it.

On the road he met Indra, king of the gods, riding the great elephant Airavata with the whole company of heaven about him. Durvasa took the garland off and threw it up to him. The Purana says that Shri herself, the splendour of the three worlds, lived in those flowers.

Indra caught it and hung it on the elephant's forehead.

Airavata smelt the flowers, reached up with his trunk, pulled the garland down and let it fall, and the procession walked over it.

Durvasa stopped where he stood.

"You are drunk on your own greatness," he said. "I gave you the thing that carries Shri, and you let your animal throw it in the dust. Then let your kingdom go the way the garland went. Your rule over the three worlds is finished."

Indra was off the elephant in a moment, bowing to the ground.

"Forgive me. It was a careless hand, not a careless heart."

"I am not a forgiving man," said Durvasa. "Everybody knows it. Bow as long as you like." And he walked away.

Indra rode home to Amaravati, and the three worlds began to go grey.

The plants lost their sap. People stopped offering sacrifice, then stopped giving, then stopped wanting to. The gods grew weak without knowing why, and the sons of Diti, who had been waiting a long time, came up and beat them in battle after battle.

The gods ran to Brahma, and Brahma took them to the northern shore of the sea of milk, where they praised Vishnu until he appeared.

"You cannot win this on your own," Vishnu told them. "Go to the asuras and make peace. Tell them there is nectar at the bottom of this sea and that it takes both sides to bring it up. Promise them a share. Take Mount Mandara for a stick and the serpent Vasuki for a rope, and churn. I will see to it that only you drink."

They did as he said, and Vishnu went under the water as a tortoise and held the mountain on his back while it turned.

One after another the gifts came up. Surabhi the cow. Varuni. The Parijata tree. The dancers of heaven. The moon, which Shiva took. A poison, which the serpents took. Dhanvantari, walking up out of the water with the cup of nectar in his hands.

Then the water opened once more, and Shri came up out of it, seated on a lotus, with a lotus in her hand.

The whole of creation seemed to have been waiting. The sages began the hymn that starts with her golden colour. Ganga and the holy rivers came to bathe her. The elephants of the sky poured water over her from golden pots, the ocean gave her a garland that would never fade, and Vishvakarma brought her ornaments. And she went to Vishnu and settled on his breast.

Across the water Viprachitti and his asuras burned. She had looked at the gods and not at them. The fight over the cup is told in Mohini and the Pot of Nectar; how she looked into every face on that shore before she settled is told in The Day Lakshmi Chose.

When the nectar was drunk and the asuras driven under the earth, Indra sat on his throne again. He had one thing left to do, and he did it standing.

"Mother of everything that breathes," he said to Shri. "Whoever you look at, things go well for him. Whoever you turn from goes dark. We have seen it now. We were on the edge of ruin."

"Ask," said Shri.

"Two things. That the three worlds are never again without you. And that you never leave anyone who sings this song of mine."

"I will not leave the three worlds again," she said. "And whoever says this hymn of yours, morning and evening, will not look for me and find me gone."

Narada wanted to know how the eternal goddess, who had never been born, came to be called the daughter of the sea. So the Devi Bhagavata tells it, and it tells it differently.

There was no garland. There was one flower of the Parijata tree, and it had been Vishnu's own gift to the sage Durvasa.

Indra was in a grove with the dancer Rambha when Durvasa came by and, as a blessing, handed him the flower. Indra was full of himself that day. He tossed the flower onto the head of Airavata without a glance. The elephant, with that flower on him, shone like Vishnu for a moment, then turned and bolted into the forest and was gone.

"You threw it away," Durvasa said. "Out of vanity. Then hear this: Lakshmi will leave you. She will go back to Narayana, where she came from."

Indra was frightened enough to ask for teaching instead of mercy, and the sage gave it to him: wealth is a rope, it said, and a man tied with it cannot see the way out. Brihaspati, the gods' teacher, added his own lesson on the long road of karma.

And Lakshmi, angry and grieved, left the heaven of the gods and went home to Vaikuntha.

Indra took his teacher and the gods to Brahma, and Brahma did not spare him. "The flower had been offered to Krishna," he said, "and you threw it on an animal. Of course she went." Then he led them all to Narayana.

Narayana was gentle with them, and plain.

"Durvasa is a part of Shankara, and he is my devotee. Your house had become a place where devotees are slighted, and she will not live in such a house. Here is what sends her away: the conch not sounded, the tulasi forgotten, brahmins not fed, Shiva and Durga not honoured. Here is where she stays: where I am worshipped and my people are welcome."

He turned to Lakshmi. "Go to the ocean of milk. Be born there, in part, as its daughter." And to Brahma: "Churn it, and give her to them when she rises."

So the gods and the Daityas churned the ocean of milk together, with the golden mountain for a rod, the tortoise under it and the serpent Ananta for a cord, and it took a long time. Dhanvantari came up, and the nectar, and the white horse, and the jewels, and Airavata, and at the end of it all Lakshmi.

She rose from the water, and there was Narayana asleep on the sea. She put her garland round his neck and chose him. Brahma and Shiva and all the gods sang to her, and under her glance the gods took back from the Daityas everything they had lost.