The Three Wives of Vaikuntha

Narada lived in Vaikuntha, and there was one thing there he could not explain.

"Saraswati lives here," he said to Narayana. "I see her every day. And in Bharata she is a river. People bathe in her and are the better for it. How is she in two places? And how did the goddess of speech, of all the goddesses, come to quarrel with Ganga?"

"It began with a smile," said Narayana, "and it ended with three rivers." And he told it.

Hari had three wives in Vaikuntha, Lakshmi, Ganga and Saraswati, and he loved them equally. One day Ganga looked at him sidelong and smiled. Hari was startled by it, looked back at her, and smiled too. That was the whole of it.

Lakshmi saw, and thought nothing of it. Saraswati saw, and could think of nothing else. Her face flushed. She shook, and her lips trembled. Lakshmi, who is made of calm, tried to settle her and could not, and at last Saraswati turned on Hari himself.

"You love Ganga," she said. "You love Padma. Anyone can see it. I am the one of the three you do not love, and the people who call you even-handed have never looked. What is a wife's life for, without her husband's love? Mine is of no use to me."

Hari considered that for a moment. Then he got up and left the room.

Saraswati turned to Ganga.

"Are you proud?" she said. "Proud of being the one he looks at? Then let everybody see what his favour is worth." And she went for Ganga's hair.

She did not reach it. Lakshmi was there first, and took her two hands, and held them.

Then the goddess of speech said the thing she would pay for. She looked at Lakshmi, who had sat through it all without a word, and cursed her.

"You stood there like a tree," she said. "You stood there like a river, and never opened your mouth. Then be both. Go down to the world of men and be a tree, and be a river."

Lakshmi was not angry. She was sorry. She kept hold of Saraswati's hands, and she still said nothing.

Ganga said a great deal. "Let her go, Padma. She is the goddess of speech, so naturally she loves a quarrel. Let her hear one. Go down to the world of men, Saraswati, and be a river, and let every sinner there wash himself in you and leave his sins behind in your water."

"Then so will you," said Saraswati. "A river, in the world of men, with their sins in you."

Hari came back. He came four-armed, with four attendants behind him, and took Saraswati to his breast. Then he told the three of them plainly how the afternoon had begun, and when they heard it they knew why they had cursed one another, and were sorry.

"What is said is said," Hari told them. "It will hold. This is how it will hold."

To Lakshmi he said: a part of her would be born in Bharata without a womb, as the daughter of King Dharmadhvaja. For a time she would be a tree, Tulasi, who purifies the three worlds. The asura Shankhachuda, born of Hari's own parts, would be her husband, and afterwards she would come home to Hari. A part of her would also be a river, Padmavati. The rest of her stayed where she was. She was peaceful, he said, and free of anger, and his.

To Ganga: a part of her would be a river in Bharata and wash the sins of its people away. Bhagiratha would pray for her a long time and bring her down, and they would call her Bhagirathi. The Ocean would be her husband, and King Shantanu, both born of Hari's parts. And the whole of her would go to Shiva.

To Saraswati, last: a part of her would go to Bharata as a river, because Ganga had said so. And the whole of her would go to Brahma, and be his wife.

"That," Narayana said to Narada, "is why she is here when you look, and there when the pilgrims look."

The Bengal text tells it shorter, and from a different corner of the room.

Lakshmi, Saraswati and Ganga were the wives of Hari in Vaikuntha from the beginning, all three. After a while Saraswati began to feel that Hari was growing fonder of Ganga than of her. She did not take it to Hari. She took it to Lakshmi.

"He looks at her more than he looks at us," she said. "Tell me I am wrong."

Lakshmi would not tell her anything. She had seen what there was to see and had chosen to see nothing, and she would not take a side. The more she said nothing, the less Saraswati could bear it, until she cursed her for it.

"Nothing moves in you," she said. "Then be a thing that nothing moves. Be a tree."

Ganga had heard enough. "This was never your business," she said, and cursed Saraswati, and Saraswati cursed her straight back.

Hari heard the three curses and gave each of them its shape. Lakshmi would be born as a tree in the house of King Dharmadhvaja, and be the wife of the asura Shankhachuda, and live on as the tulasi plant and as the river Padmavati, and be his dear wife after. Ganga, because Saraswati had cursed her, would be a holy river that carried away the sins of all who bathed in her. Bhagiratha would bring her to Bharata, and she would be Bhagirathi there, and the Ocean's wife, and she would rest on Shiva's head. Saraswati, because Ganga had cursed her, would be the wife of Brahma. And Lakshmi, in whom there was no anger and no jealousy, would stay his own wife to the end.

Then he counted the parts, because this text likes to count. Half of Saraswati went to Bharata and half to Brahma, and the whole of her stayed with Hari. Half of Ganga went to Bharata as Bhagirathi, and the rest stayed with Hari and lay on Shankara's head. One part of Lakshmi went down as tulasi and as the Padmavati, for the five thousand years of the age of Kali, and no longer.

When he had finished, the three goddesses put their arms round one another. They were ashamed of what they had said and of what it had come to, and they asked him the only question left.

"When does it end?"

"What each of you said to the other will stand," Hari said. "I will not unsay it. But none of you loses her place here. The three of you stay in Vaikuntha with me, with the same care and the same love, and when the parts have done their work they come home."

The rendering adds what it thinks the story is for. The world already had its holy places; it needed rivers that could wash a sin off quickly, where a cheat or a false witness could go and begin again. Three goddesses quarrelled, and the earth got its three rivers.