The Pot That Never Emptied

The Pandavas had lost everything at dice, and they walked out of the city into the forest with their years of exile ahead of them. They did not walk alone. A crowd of Brahmins followed them and would not turn back.

Yudhishthira went to his priest, Dhaumya, with his brothers standing round him.

"These men who know the Vedas are following me into the forest," he said. "I cannot feed them. I cannot abandon them either. Tell me what I should do."

Dhaumya thought for a while.

"Long ago," he said, "when the creatures were first made, they were starving. The Sun took pity on them like a father. He went north and drew up water with his rays. He came south again and stood over the earth, and the Moon turned that heat into clouds and rain, and the plants came up. All food is the Sun's own energy, changed. He is the father of everything that eats. Take refuge in him."

Then he taught the king the hundred and eight names of the Sun, which begin Surya, Aryaman, Bhaga, Tvashtri, Pushan, Arka, Savitr, Ravi.

Yudhishthira went down to the Ganga. He offered flowers. He stood in the stream and turned his face to the Sun. He ate nothing and lived on air, and he steadied his breath and began his hymn.

"You are the eye of the world. You are the soul of everything that has a body. You are a door without bolts for those who want to be free. If you do not rise, the world is blind. In summer you draw the water up, and in the rains you pour it down. Neither fire, nor a roof, nor a woollen cloak comforts a man in the cold wind as your rays do. Lord of all food, I have guests, and I want to feed them. Give me food."

The Sun was pleased. He showed himself to the king, blazing like fire.

"You shall have all you want," he said. "For twelve years I will feed you. Take this copper pot. Fruit, roots, meat and greens, whatever is cooked in your kitchen, will not run out each day so long as Draupadi holds the pot and has not yet eaten from it herself. And in the fourteenth year from now you will have your kingdom back."

Then he vanished.

Yudhishthira came up out of the water. He touched Dhaumya's feet and embraced his brothers. Then he went with Draupadi to the cooking place and cooked the day's meal himself.

It was a little food. It grew as it was served, and it did not end.

The Brahmins ate first. Then the younger brothers ate. Then Yudhishthira ate what remained, and last of all Draupadi ate. When she had finished, the pot was empty until the next day.

So it went in the forest. The hymn, the epic adds, had come down from Brahma to Indra, from Indra to Narada, and from Narada to Dhaumya. And in the middle of the hymn Yudhishthira says something that people in the east of India have not forgotten: whoever worships the Sun with a quiet mind on the sixth or the seventh day of the moon wins good fortune.

In Bihar, when people are asked where Chhath comes from, many of them begin with Draupadi. The Pandavas were in trouble, they say, and Draupadi kept the fast and made her offering to the Sun, and their fortunes turned. At Nagdi, near Ranchi, people show a spring where they say she did it, and Chhath is still offered at that spring and not at a river. Others say it was Sita who first kept the fast, and a temple on a rock in the Ganga at Munger marks the place.

But Chhath means "the sixth", and the festival has a second figure in it beside the Sun. She is Chhathi Maiya, Mother Sixth, whom people call the Sun's sister. Her story comes from the Puranas.

King Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, had no child. The sage Kashyapa performed a sacrifice for him and gave the blessed rice to Queen Malini. She carried the child a long time, and when he was born he was the colour of gold, and he was dead.

The king took the small body in his arms and went to the burning ground. He could not put it down. He stood there weeping and was ready to die himself.

Then he saw a chariot in the sky, white as crystal, and in it a woman who shone like the summer sun. He laid the child on the ground and bowed to her.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Devasena, the daughter of Brahma's mind," she said. "Because I am the sixth part of Nature, I am called Shashthi, the Sixth. I give children to those who have none."

She took the dead boy on her lap, and he lived, and smiled.

"Make my worship known in the three worlds," she told the king, "and I will give him to you." He promised, and she gave the child back.

So on the sixth day of the bright half of Kartika, six days after Diwali, families go down to the water. On the first day they have bathed and eaten one plain meal. On the second evening they have broken a day's fast with rice cooked in jaggery. On the third evening they stand at the river with baskets of fruit and the wheat cakes called thekua, and offer them to the setting Sun. They come back before dawn and offer again to the rising one. Then the fast ends.