The Girl with Three Breasts

Malayadhwaja, king of the Pandyas, had everything a king needs except an heir, and his queen Kanchanamalai had prayed for one until she had no prayers left.

"Then we will ask properly," said the king, and ordered a sacrifice for a son. The priests built the fire and fed it, and the king sat before it and asked for a boy.

What came out of the fire was a girl. She was three years old, she walked, and she had three breasts.

The king looked at her and looked at his priests. Before anyone could speak, a voice spoke from the air above the altar.

"Raise her as you would have raised a son. Teach her everything a prince is taught. The third breast will leave her the day she sets eyes on the man she is to marry. Do not fear for her. She will rule."

So Madurai got a prince who was a girl. She was taught everything a prince is taught, and when the time came she was crowned Pandya queen with the whole city shouting. They called her Meenakshi, the one with eyes like a fish, which in that country is high praise.

A queen with an army is expected to use it. She rode out of Madurai at the head of hers and conquered the kings of every direction, one after another, and when the earth was finished she went up into the sky and beat Indra too. Then she turned her elephants north toward Kailash.

Narada came down the road to meet the army, veena on his shoulder.

"Child, turn back. There is nothing on that mountain you can conquer."

"I have not found anything I cannot," said Meenakshi, and rode on.

Shiva came out to the gate of Kailash to see who was knocking, and the queen looked at him.

She did not decide anything. Her sword left her hand, and her bow after it, and she stood in front of him with her eyes on the ground, and the third breast was gone.

Her minister Sumati, who had ridden beside her through every battle, came up and said quietly, "My lady, this is the one. This is the husband."

Meenakshi did not answer. Shiva did.

"Go home to Madurai. I will come to you there on a Monday, and we will be married."

She went home, and he came on a Monday, and the gods and the sages came with him. At the wedding it was Vishnu who took her hand and laid it in Shiva's, and the sages sang. From that day Shiva stayed in the city and ruled it as Sundara, the beautiful lord, and the Pandya queen ruled it with him.

The great temple that grew up over their wedding is hers first and his second. A pilgrim in Madurai goes to Meenakshi before Sundareswarar, and nobody in that city thinks this strange. She was there first. She was its queen before he was its king, and she had beaten every army on earth before she ever dropped a sword.

Once a year, in the month of Chithirai, Madurai tells the whole story again, and it takes the city a month.

The flag goes up on the temple's mast and the first fifteen days are the queen's. Meenakshi is crowned, as she was crowned in the Puranam, and from that day she rules the city for four months of every year while Sundareswarar rules it for eight. Then she sets out on her conquest of the world, carried through the streets at the head of her army, and goes up to Kailash, sees Shiva on the field of battle and falls in love.

On the day of the Tirukalyanam the people bathe in the golden lotus tank, and the queen and the god are married and carried out on flower palanquins and on elephants. The morning after, king and queen ride the great chariot through the Masi streets to look at their people.

Then the second half begins, and it belongs to her brother.

Alagar is Vishnu as he lives in the Alagar hills, and in the festival he is Meenakshi's brother, setting out to give his sister away. He does not travel like a god. He comes disguised as a robber, hides from soldiers and is slowed in the forest, and the temple says that the delay was Sundareswarar's own doing: that Shiva, impatient, took Alagar's shape and gave the bride away himself, to show the city that the two are one.

Alagar reaches the Vaigai and is told the wedding is over. He is furious. The married pair come down to the river to pacify him, and he will not enter the city: he hands over his wedding gifts at a mandapa built in the middle of the river and goes back to his hills.

The Shaiva festival of the wedding, which used to fall in Masi, and the Vaishnava festival of Alagar's journey, which fell in Chithirai, were two festivals once. Tirumala Nayaka, who ruled Madurai, joined them into one and moved the river climax from Thenur to the city, and so a bride, a late brother and a river have made one story ever since.