The Word on the Giant's Tongue

Long after the war, Rama asked the sage Agastya how the three sons of Vishravas had won what they won, and Agastya said that each of them had done penance after his own nature.

Kumbhakarna did it with his body. For two thousand years he kept at it with all his strength: in summer he sat among five fires, in the rains he stood in the hero's posture, in winter he stayed under water.

Vibhishana did it with his mind. He stood on one leg for five thousand years, and the Apsaras danced and flowers fell on him and the gods praised him, and then he stood five thousand more facing the sun, head and arms raised, thinking of the Veda. Ravana did it with his heads. He fasted ten thousand years, and at the end of every thousand he cut off one head and put it in the fire. Nine heads were in the fire. He had his hand on the tenth when the Grandsire came down with the gods.

"I am pleased with you," said Brahma. "What boon shall I give you today?"

"Not to die," said Ravana. "There is no fear like that one."

"That I cannot give. Choose another."

"Then let me not be killed by bird-kings or serpents, by Yakshas, Daityas, Danavas, Rakshasas or gods. Anything else that lives I do not fear. They are straw."

"So be it," said Brahma, and gave him back his nine heads, and the power to take any shape he liked.

Then he turned to Vibhishana, who asked for three things that were really one: to stand firm in what is right when everything was against him, to know the Brahma weapon without being taught it, and never to have a thought that was not fit to be acted on. Brahma, delighted, gave him those and added life without end. "Nothing," he said, "is out of reach of a man who keeps to dharma."

That left Kumbhakarna, and before Brahma could speak the gods closed round him.

"Grandsire, not him. He has eaten seven Apsaras in your own Nandana garden and ten of Indra's servants, and rishis, and men. If he gets a boon he will eat the three worlds. Pretend to give him one. Make him lose his head for a moment, and the worlds will have peace."

Brahma said nothing to them. He thought of his wife, and she was there, with her palms together.

"Lord, I am here. What shall I do?"

"You who are Speech," said Brahma, "go into the mouth of that Indra among Rakshasas, and say what the gods want said."

"I will," said Saraswati, and she went in.

Brahma looked down at the giant. "Kumbhakarna, what do you ask?"

Kumbhakarna opened his mouth, and the goddess of speech spoke with it.

"To sleep, Lord of lords. For years without number. That is my wish."

"May it be so," said Brahma, and he left with the gods behind him.

Saraswati left too, the moment he had gone, and Kumbhakarna was alone with his tongue again. He turned the words over. He had not meant them. He had not even thought them, and they had come out of him in his own voice.

"How can such words have passed my lips?" he said. "Those gods who came here with him. They have bemused me."

That is all Valmiki gives him: one moment of knowing, and no appeal. The three brothers went back to the Sleshmataka forest and lived there, the text says, happily, with what they had been given.

Nearly everyone in India knows this story, and nearly nobody knows it the way Valmiki wrote it. The version that goes round the dinner table is a pun.

In the telling Vettam Mani set down in his Puranic Encyclopaedia, the three brothers grew up at their father's hermitage on Mount Gandhamadana, jealous of their half-brother Kubera's glory, and went off to earn glory of their own. They stood on one foot for a thousand years. Brahma did not come. They stood a thousand more without food. Brahma did not come. Then Ravana cut off his ten heads one after another and laid them in the fire, and Brahma came, and gave the heads back, and gave Ravana what he asked, that no one should kill him but a man.

The gods shuddered. If the elder brother had got that, what would the younger one ask? And so, at their request, Saraswati danced on Kumbhakarna's tongue while he was making up his mouth to speak. He meant to say nirdevatvam, a world with no gods in it. What came out was nidravatvam, sleep. Brahma granted it before anybody could take it back, and that is why Kumbhakarna sleeps six months of every year.

The way it is told to children today sharpens the pun and gives it a villain's motive. Indra, worried by the giant's strength, ran to Brahma before the boon could be given. Saraswati, at Indra's request, tied the giant's tongue. Kumbhakarna opened his mouth to ask for Indrasana, Indra's own seat, and asked instead for Nidrasana, a bed to sleep in.

Then comes the part Valmiki does not have, and the part everybody loves: Ravana's plea. The elder brother went to Brahma on his brother's behalf. "He did not mean it. Undo it. Count that as my boon."

Brahma would not undo it, but he would shorten it. Six months asleep, six months awake. Or, in the other version of the same mercy, he wakes, and eats until he is satisfied, and the moment he is satisfied he sleeps again. A condensed Valmiki used in schools has Vibhishana say it the shortest way of all: Brahma, at Indra's request, made his brother sleep as if he were dead, and then let him wake for half the year.

Either way the tellers end on her, not on him. The goddess of speech did not need to fight a giant. She needed to be on his tongue for the length of one word.