The Rivers That Bowed

Two rivers came down out of the mountains side by side.

The hymn says they ran like two mares let loose in a race, and like two mother cows hurrying to lick their calf. Their names were Vipash and Shutudri. Today we call them the Beas and the Sutlej. They were full to the banks, and each was reaching for the other, for a little further on they would join and go to the sea together.

On the bank stood a singer. He had come a long way, with wagons and chariots, and a whole people behind him waiting to cross. They were the Bharatas, a band of fighting men on the march. The hymn mentions no bridge and no boat. There was the singer, who was a son of Kushika, and what he could say.

He went down to the water's edge.

"I have come to the most motherly of rivers," he called. "I have reached Vipash, the broad and blessed. Stay a little, holy ones. Rest a moment on your journey, because a friend asks it."

The rivers answered him. The hymn gives them a voice, and they speak together.

"We are on our way to the home the gods made for us," they said. "Once we are set moving, our flood is not to be held back. What does this singer want, shouting to the rivers?"

"I am Kushika's son," he said, "and I am calling to you with the best hymn I have."

"Indra dug these channels for us," said the rivers. "He has the thunderbolt in his arm. He struck down Vritra, who had shut us in. Savitar of the beautiful hands led us out, and at his sending we run wide."

The singer knew what to say to that.

"That deed of Indra's should be praised for ever. He cut the dragon to pieces. He struck away what was holding you, and you ran free."

The rivers were pleased, and they asked something of him in return.

"Do not forget these words of yours, singer. People who are not yet born will repeat them. Be kind to us in your hymns. Do not make us small among men. Honour to you."

Now he could ask.

"Sisters, listen to the singer who has come to you from far away with wagon and chariot. Bow down low. Be easy to cross. Rivers, keep your waters beneath our axles."

"We will listen," said the rivers. "You have come from far away with wagon and chariot. I will bend down for you as a mother bends to feed her child."

The Bharatas went over, the whole war band, and Indra sped them on. The singer had won the favour of the rivers.

When they were across, he turned back to the water.

"The Bharatas have crossed. Now run again as fast as you like. Swell and fill your channels. I ask your favour, for you deserve our worship."

The hymn ends with a small prayer for the animals that pulled the wagons through. Let the wave stay below the yoke pins. Let the waters spare the harness. And may the two oxen, who did no wrong, come to no harm.

The Mahabharata knows these two rivers as well, and tells how they came by their names.

The sage Vasishtha had lost all his sons. A king named Kalmashapada, who was under a curse and possessed by a demon, had killed and devoured them one after another, beginning with the eldest, Shakti. Vasishtha would not destroy anyone in anger. He chose to bear his grief instead, and the grief was more than he could carry. He decided to die.

Nothing would kill him. He threw himself from a mountain peak and landed as if on a heap of cotton. He walked into a fire and it felt cool. He tied a stone to his neck and went into the sea, and the waves put him back on the shore.

He wandered on until he came to a river swollen by the rains, tearing trees from its banks.

"In this one I shall surely drown," he thought.

To make certain, he bound himself with cords. Then he threw himself in.

The river would not have it. The current broke the cords and cast him on the bank, alive and unbound. Vasishtha stood up and gave the river a name. He called it Vipasha, the breaker of cords.

He walked on over mountains and past lakes, and came to a second river, fierce and full of crocodiles. Again he threw himself in. This river took the sage for a mass of fire. She fled from him in a hundred directions and left him standing on dry ground. She has been called Shatadru ever since, the river of a hundred courses.

"I cannot die by my own hand," said Vasishtha.

He turned for home. On the road he heard a voice behind him reciting the Veda, and it sounded like his dead son. It was the child of Shakti, still in the womb of Shakti's wife. Vasishtha had a grandchild coming, and he gave up the wish to die.