The Hunter in the Bilva Tree

In a forest there lived a hunter called Gurudruha, who killed animals for his living and was not known for kindness. One day there was no food in his house, and his mother and father and his wife and children were hungry. He took his bow and went into the forest, and he hunted from morning until sunset and found nothing at all.

He did not know that the day was Shivaratri, the great night of Shiva.

At dusk he came to a pool where the animals came to drink. He filled a pot with water and climbed a tree at the water's edge to wait. The tree was a bilva, and at its foot, half hidden in the leaves, stood a Shiva linga.

In the first watch of the night a doe came to drink. Gurudruha drew his bow, and as he moved some water spilled from his pot and some bilva leaves fell, and they fell on the linga below.

The doe looked up and saw him. "Don't kill me yet," she said. "My little ones are waiting at home. Let me give them to my sister and say goodbye to my husband, and I will come back to you."

"I have heard animals make promises before," said the hunter.

"If I do not come back," said the doe, "may every sin of a man who breaks his word be mine." He let her go.

In the second watch her sister came, and he drew his bow again, and again water and leaves fell on the linga. She too asked to go home first, and swore to return, and he let her go. In the third watch the stag came looking for his wife, and the same thing happened. Each time the hunter shook the tree, each time water and leaves fell on the linga, and each time the night went on and he stayed awake.

By the fourth watch something had changed in him. The fasting, the waking and the water falling on Shiva had done their work, though he knew nothing of it.

At dawn the whole deer family came out of the trees together, the two does, the stag and the fawns. "We have come as we promised," they said. "Kill us, and feed your family."

The hunter lowered his bow. "You are animals," he said, "and you kept your word. I am a man and I have done nothing but kill. Go home. I am done with it."

As he said it, Shiva stood before him in the light of the linga. "You fasted on my night, and kept awake through its four watches, and worshipped me with water and bilva leaves," he said. "It does not matter that you did not know. Ask for anything."

The hunter could only bow. Shiva gave him the name Guha and told him that one day he would serve the god Rama, and that Rama would stay in his house. The deer were taken up to heaven. And Shiva stayed at that place on Mount Arbuda as Vyadheshvara, the lord of the hunter.

A king named Chitrabhanu was keeping the Shivaratri fast with his queen when a sage came to visit and asked why he kept it so strictly. The king said he remembered his last life.

"I was a hunter called Suswara," he said, "and I lived by selling the animals I killed. One day I chased a deer into the forest until dark, too far to get home, so I climbed a bilva tree to wait for morning, with the deer I had already killed tied to my back.

"I was hungry and thirsty and could not sleep. I thought of my wife and children starving at home, and I wept, and to pass the night I picked the leaves off the tree and dropped them to the ground. The tears and the leaves fell on a linga at the foot of the tree. I never saw it.

"Some time in the night a deer came to the foot of the tree, and then another, and I could not bring myself to shoot them. I only sat and watched them drink, and they went away into the dark.

"In the morning I went home and sold the deer I had killed the day before. As I was about to eat, a stranger came to the door hungry, and I gave him the food first.

"When I died, two messengers of Shiva came for me. They told me I had kept the Shivaratri fast all night, without knowing it, and had worshipped the linga. I went to Shiva's heaven and lived there a long time, and then I was born again as the king you see. That is why I keep the fast."