The Woman Who Sang for the Twins

Before sunrise, while the house was still dark, a woman who was no longer young sat down to make a song.

Her name was Ghosha. She lived in her father's house, and she had lived there far too long. She had grown old at home, and nobody had come for her.

She knew which gods to call. The two Ashvins drive out at this hour, ahead of the dawn, and they are known for stopping where someone is in trouble.

She began with their chariot. "We call on your chariot, Ashvins, the way a child calls a father's name. It is easy to call. It should be called at evening and at dawn."

Then she told them what they were. "You are the good luck of the woman who grows old at home. You help the slow one, even the one who comes last. People say you heal the blind, the thin and the weak, and the man with broken bones."

She had a case to make, and she made it with their own deeds.

"You made old Chyavana young again. He was like a worn out cart, and you made him able to move. You lifted the son of Tugra out of the flood."

Everyone knew that story. Bhujyu, the son of Tugra, was left in the middle of the sea, where there is nothing to stand on and nothing to hold. One poet says his own father left him, as a dying man leaves his wealth. Another says false friends did it. He clung to a tree and called, and the twins carried him for three days and three nights, in ships that flew, and set him down dry on the far shore.

Ghosha went on. "You brought Vimada his bride in your chariot. You gave the weak man's wife a child. You raised Vandana out of the pit. In a moment you gave Vishpala the power to move."

Vishpala had lost a leg at night, in Khela's battle. It was cut off like a bird's wing. The twins gave her a leg of iron, and she was moving again when the fighting opened.

"You brought out Rebha when he lay hidden and almost dead. For Atri you made the burning pit a pleasant place to rest. You gave Pedu a white horse. You took the quail alive out of the wolf's throat."

In the middle of the list she stopped speaking of other people.

"Listen to me, Ashvins. I have cried out to you. Help me as a father and mother help their child. I am poor. I have no kin, no friend, no one of my blood. Save me from this curse before it is too late."

Her second song begins with questions. "Where does your bright chariot go? Where are you in the evening, and where at morning? Where do you rest for the night?"

Then she put her own name into the verse, so that there could be no mistake.

"The daughter of a king came to you, Ashvins. Ghosha came, and said, I beg this of you. Be near me by day and near me by night. Help me win a chieftain with a chariot and good horses."

She sang of a wedding, the young man resting in the rooms of the bride. "Of this we know nothing," she said. "Tell us of it."

Her last request was small and exact. "Make a ford where people can drink in safety. Take away the spiteful tree stump that stands in the road."

She had made her song with care, she said, the way a girl is dressed to meet the bridegroom, and she sent it out to them.

The Rigveda does not say in these hymns what happened next. Another poet, in another book, says it in one line. To Ghosha, growing old in her father's house, the Ashvins gave a husband.

The Brihaddevata, the old handbook to the hymns, gives the reason the hymns leave out.

Ghosha was the daughter of the seer Kakshivat. An evil disease had disfigured her. She stayed in her father's house for sixty years.

At last grief overcame her. "I have grown old for nothing," she thought. "I have no husband and no son. I will turn to the Lords of Light."

Then she remembered something about her own father. Kakshivat had praised the Ashvins, and by pleasing them he had won youth, long life, health and power.

"I am his daughter," she said to herself. "If the same kind of verses were shown to me, verses to praise the Ashvins with, I could win beauty and good fortune too."

A seer does not invent a hymn. The tradition says a seer sees it. As Ghosha sat thinking of the twins, she saw two hymns. They are the ones that begin with the chariot that goes all around. She sang them.

The two gods were pleased with her praise. They came to her and healed her. They made her free of sickness, free of age and beautiful. They gave her a husband. And they gave her a son, the sage Suhastya.

The handbook adds that they came on their two winged horses, which seems to mean that they came at once.

So the hymns are both the prayer and the proof. Ghosha asked in verse, and the verse stayed in the Rigveda. Her father's hymns are there too, in the first book, and they list the same rescues at greater length.