The Pole and the Prisoner

There was a king named Vasu, of the line of Puru. He loved hunting, and he loved doing right, and Indra was fond of him. It was on Indra's advice that he had conquered the pleasant country of Chedi.

Then, one year, Vasu put down his weapons. He left his palace, went to a lonely place and began to live as a hermit, with fasts and hard vows.

The gods grew uneasy. A man who gathers that much power by his vows may be reaching for a throne, and the throne they thought of first was Indra's. So they came down to him, Indra at their head, and spoke gently.

"Lord of the earth," said the gods, "do not let right grow less among men. Guard it, and it will guard the world."

Then Indra spoke for himself.

"King, I belong to heaven and you belong to earth, and still you are my friend, and dear to me. Go back. Live in Chedi. It is a good land, full of cattle and corn and jewels. Its people are honest and do not lie even in fun. Sons there look after their fathers. Nobody yokes a thin ox to a plough."

Vasu listened.

"And I will not send you back empty-handed," said Indra. "I give you a chariot of crystal that travels through the air. Of all men, you alone will ride the sky in your own body, as the gods do. I give you a garland of lotuses that never fade. Wear it in battle and no weapon will wound you. People will call it Indra's garland, and know you by it."

There was a third gift. It was plainer than the other two. It was a pole of bamboo.

"This is for the protection of the honest and the peaceful," said Indra.

Vasu went home and ruled Chedi. When a year had gone by, he took the bamboo pole and planted it upright in the ground, to honour the one who had given it. He dressed it in cloth of gold. He hung garlands and ornaments on it and scented it with perfumes, and he worshipped Indra there.

Indra was so pleased that he came to see it. He came in the shape of a swan, and in that shape he accepted the worship.

"Kings and common men who keep this festival of mine with joy, as the king of Chedi has done," he said, "shall have glory and victory for their countries. Their cities shall grow, and be glad."

From that day, the Mahabharata says, every king followed Vasu's example and raised a pole for Indra. Vasu himself rode the sky in his crystal chariot, and ruled the world well from Chedi, and kept the festival every year.

In Kathmandu they raise the pole too, a tall trunk brought from the forest at Nala, and its festival is called Indra Jatra, or Yenya. But the story the Newar people tell about it has no king and no gift in it. It has a thief.

Indra's mother was keeping a rite in heaven, and for it she needed parijat, the white night-flowering jasmine. It grew in the gardens of the Kathmandu Valley, and Indra went to fetch it.

He wrapped himself in cloud, came down looking like any ordinary man, and began to pick.

The people of the city caught him at it.

"A flower thief!" they said. They did not ask who he was. They tied him hand and foot and stood him in the market for everyone to see.

In heaven, his elephant missed him first. It came down and went up and down the streets of Kathmandu, looking for its master. Then his mother came down herself, sick with worry.

"That is my son you have tied up," she told them. "That is Indra, king of the gods."

The people untied him at once.

"Ask for something," said his mother.

They asked that she take with her to heaven the souls of everyone who had died that year. She agreed. And she gave a second gift of her own choosing: a soft mist every morning through autumn and winter, to ripen the crops.

So for eight days each September the pole stands in the palace square. Figures of the captive Indra are set up on high platforms, bound. A dancing elephant made of wicker runs through the lanes, searching. And a procession for the mother walks the old streets, with the families of the year's dead following behind.