The Moon and the Twenty-Seven Sisters

Daksha, a lord of creatures, had twenty-seven daughters, and he gave every one of them in marriage to Soma, the Moon.

They were the twenty-seven star groups that the moon passes through in a month, and people counted their days by them. All of them were beautiful, with wide eyes. But Rohini was the loveliest of the sisters, and Soma could see nobody else. He stayed in her house night after night. The others waited, and he did not come.

At last the twenty-six went home to their father.

"Soma does not live with us," they said. "He pays court to Rohini and to no one else. Let us stay here with you and live by fasting and prayer."

Daksha went to his son-in-law. "Treat all your wives alike," he said. "Do not let a great wrong stain you." Then he turned to his daughters. "Go back to him. He will do as I have said."

They went back. Soma went on exactly as before.

The sisters came to their father a second time. A second time Daksha spoke to Soma, and now there was an edge in it. "Treat them all alike. Do not make me curse you."

Soma took no notice. He lived with Rohini alone.

The sisters came a third time and bowed their heads to the ground. "He sets no value on your words. Protect us."

Then Daksha grew angry, and he threw a wasting sickness on the Moon.

From that day Soma grew thinner. Each night there was a little less of him. He performed sacrifice after sacrifice to free himself, and none of them helped.

The trouble did not stop with him. The Moon is the lord of plants, and when he faded the herbs stopped growing. Their juices dried up and their taste went out of them. The creatures that lived on the plants began to grow thin as well, and then the gods themselves.

The gods came to see him. "Why have you lost your beauty? Tell us what has happened and we will do what we can."

Soma told them about the curse.

So the gods went to Daksha. "Be gracious to Soma. Only a small part of him can still be seen. The creepers and herbs are wasting, the creatures are wasting, and so are we. What will the world be without us?"

"I cannot make my words untrue," said Daksha. "But there is a way. Let him treat all his wives alike. And let him go to the western ocean, to the place where the river Sarasvati meets the sea. Let him bathe there and worship the God of gods. He will grow again. For half of every month he shall wane day by day, and for the other half he shall grow day by day. These words of mine are true."

Soma went down to the shore where the Sarasvati runs into the sea. He bathed there on the day of the new moon, when he was at his thinnest, and his cool light came back to him.

All the creatures brought him to Daksha, rejoicing. Daksha looked at his son-in-law, pleased at last.

"Do not slight women, my son," he said, "and never slight a Brahmana. Go, and do as I have told you."

The place where he bathed has been called Prabhasa ever since, from prabha, which means radiance, because the Moon got his radiance back there. The epic says he still goes down to bathe at Prabhasa on every new moon day, and comes up again with his form restored.

Years later Balarama, Krishna's elder brother, began his pilgrimage along the Sarasvati at that same shore. This is the story he was told there.

The oldest telling is only a few lines long. It sits in the Yajurveda among instructions for a healing rite, and many things in it are different.

The father here is Prajapati, and his daughters number thirty-three. He gave them all to King Soma. Soma kept company with Rohini alone.

The sisters did not complain and wait. They went home in anger, and Soma had to come after them.

"Give them back to me," he said to Prajapati.

"I will not," said Prajapati. "Swear an oath that you will live with all of them equally. Then I will return them."

Soma swore the oath, and Prajapati returned his daughters.

Soma went back to Rohini alone.

Nobody cursed him. The text says simply that illness seized him. People said, "Illness has seized the king," and that, the priests explain, is where the name of the "king's illness" comes from. He grew worse, and because the trouble had come to him through his wives it was also called the wife's disease.

Now it was Soma who had to go and ask. He approached his wives with respect.

"Let us choose a boon," they said. "Live with all of us equally."

He had no choice left but to agree. Then an offering was made for him to the Adityas, the sons of Aditi, and the Adityas freed him from his sickness.

The passage ends as an instruction. A person seized by a wasting illness should have this same offering made to the Adityas, and it should be made at the new moon, so that the sick man grows as the moon grows. One of the verses to be recited is about the moon itself. He is born new, it says, again and again.

At Somnath, on the coast of Gujarat, the story is told as the beginning of the temple. This is the telling of the Shiva Purana.

Daksha gave his twenty-seven daughters to Chandra, the Moon, and Chandra loved Rohini alone. Daksha came and reasoned with him gently, and then came a second time. Chandra did not listen. So Daksha said, "You shall waste away," and the Moon began to fade that same moment.

A cry of alarm went up among the gods and sages. Indra, Vasishtha and the others hurried to Brahma.

"What has happened cannot be undone," Brahma told them. "But there is a remedy. Take the Moon to the holy ground of Prabhasa. Let him set up Shiva there and worship him with the Mrityunjaya mantra, the prayer to the conqueror of death."

The gods brought Chandra to Prabhasa and called the sacred waters there, the Sarasvati first among them. Then they went home and left him to his work.

For six months Chandra stood in prayer. He repeated the mantra a hundred million times with his mind fixed on Shiva.

Then Shiva appeared before him. "Ask for what you want. I am pleased with you."

"Stop the wasting of my body," said Chandra. "And forgive my offence."

"In the dark half of the month you shall lose a little of yourself each day," said Shiva. "In the bright half you shall gain it back. So it will go on, without end."

The gods gathered again, full of joy, and bowed to Shiva. "Stay here, Lord, with Uma," they asked.

Shiva stayed. He is worshipped there as Someshvara or Somanatha, the Lord of the Moon, first of the twelve jyotirlingas. The gods made a pool beside him, the Chandrakunda. The Purana promises that those who bathe and worship there are freed from wasting illness, as the Moon once was.