The Ring and the Milkmaid

The Gajapati king of Puri, Purushottama Deva, sent to the king of Kanchi in the south asking for his daughter in marriage. The answer came back with an insult in it.

"I will not give my daughter," said the king of Kanchi, "to a man who sweeps the road like a sweeper."

He meant the oldest duty of the kings of Puri. On the day of the Rath Yatra, before the chariots move, the king comes out with a golden broom and sweeps the platforms of the chariots, as the first servant of Jagannath.

Purushottama was furious.

"Then I will take her," he said, "and marry her to a sweeper."

He marched south, and he was beaten. The army of Kanchi drove him back, and he came home humiliated, with the insult still ringing in his ears. He went to the temple, and lay on the stone floor before Jagannath, and would not get up.

"It was for your sake that he mocked me," he said. "Come with me this time."

He marched again. On the road south, the army's scouts saw two riders going on ahead of them, two young soldiers, one dark on a black horse and one fair on a white, riding easily, as if they knew the way.

By Lake Chilika the two riders stopped at the house of a milkmaid, Manika. They were hot and thirsty, and they asked her for curd. She gave them all she had, and they ate it gladly.

"We have no money with us," said the dark one. "Take this." He gave her a ring, gold, set with jewels. "The king is coming behind us with his army. Show him the ring, and he will pay you."

Then they rode on.

When the king came by with his army, Manika stood at the roadside with the ring in her hand.

"Two of your soldiers ate my curd," she said. "They said you would pay."

Purushottama took the ring and looked at it, and his hands began to shake. It was Jagannath's own ring, from the god's own finger in the temple at Puri. He knew then who had been riding ahead of his army.

He gave the milkmaid a village for her curd, and it is called Manikpatna after her still. Then he went on to Kanchi, and this time he won.

The temple chronicle of Puri, the Madala Panji, and the Odia poem called Kanchi Kaveri tell how the story ended.

The princess of Kanchi was brought back to Puri as a captive. The king had sworn to marry her to a sweeper, and he gave the order to his minister.

The minister was a wise man, and he waited. When the day of the Rath Yatra came, and the king came out before the chariots with his golden broom and began to sweep, the minister brought the princess forward.

"Here is a sweeper, lady," he said. "The king has told me to give you to one. Here he is."

So the princess of Kanchi married the king of Puri after all, while he was sweeping, and his oath was kept to the letter.

The chronicles add that Purushottama brought an image back from the south with him, the Gopala who stood witness. That image has its own story, which the Bengali Chaitanya Charitamrita tells.

Two brahmins, it says, an old one and a young one, went on pilgrimage to Vrindavan. The young one looked after the old one so well that the old man promised him his daughter in marriage, before the image of Gopala, Krishna the cowherd. At home, the old man's family refused, and he denied ever having promised.

"Gopala was there," said the young man. "He heard it."

He went back to Vrindavan and begged the image to come and bear witness. Gopala agreed, on one condition. He would walk behind the young man all the way, and the young man must never look back. He would know the god was there by the sound of his anklets.

They walked for days. Then, near the town, the anklets went silent in the sand, and the young man turned round. Gopala stood there, and did not move again. But he had come far enough, and he bore his witness, and the marriage went ahead.

It was this Gopala, the chronicles say, that Purushottama carried home from his war. He stands now at Sakshigopal, the witness Gopala, on the road to Puri.