Two Sages from One Jar

The family of Vasishtha kept a hymn about themselves in the Rigveda. Most of it is pride in what they had done. They wore their hair knotted on the right. They had stood by King Sudas in the battle of the ten kings, and Indra had heard their prayer when no one else's reached him. Near the end, the hymn turns to the founder of the family and tells him how he was born.

It tells him in a few crowded lines. An old handbook to the Rigveda, the Brihaddevata, lays the same events out in order, and this telling follows the two together.

Mitra and Varuna were holding a long sacrifice. Both gods had been made ready for the rite, and among its vessels was a jar of water that had been left to stand overnight.

Urvashi came there. She was an Apsaras, a nymph of heaven.

The two gods saw her at the same moment, and the sight went through them both. Their seed of life was spilled. It fell into the jar of standing water.

"Both together," the hymn says, "they let it flow into the pitcher."

Nothing more is said of Urvashi here. She does not stay, and she is not asked to. Yet the hymn calls Vasishtha her child all the same.

"You are the son of Mitra and Varuna, priest," it tells him, "born of their love for Urvashi."

At that same moment, says the Brihaddevata, two seers came into being, both of them born to be great ascetics.

The first rose out of the jar itself. He was very small, no longer than a yoke-pin. Because he could be measured at a glance he was called Mana, the measured one, and the old handbook adds that a jar is a measure too. This was Agastya.

"From the middle of it Mana rose up," says the hymn.

The second came differently. When the water was being lifted out of the jar, Vasishtha was found there, standing on a lotus. The hymn gives the moment to the gods.

"As a drop that had fallen, all the gods held you on a lotus flower."

The Brihaddevata fills in the picture: the All-gods stood around on every side and kept the lotus steady. The child stepped out of the water, and the first thing he did was to give himself to long and hard discipline.

The hymn also says that he was a shape of light, sprung from the lightning, in the moment when Varuna and Mitra first saw him.

Some copies of the Brihaddevata know a third birth. The seed, they say, fell in three places: in the jar, in the water and on the ground. Agastya was born in the jar, Vasishtha on the ground, and a shining being called Matsya, the Fish, in the water. The editor of the text judged these lines to be a later addition, and the hymn knows nothing of them.

What the hymn does know is that Vasishtha owed his place among men to the other child of the jar.

"That was your one birth, Vasishtha," it says, "when Agastya brought you to your people."

So the two are brothers of a kind that has no other example. They have the same two fathers, the same vessel for a cradle and the same hour of birth. One rose from the jar and the other was lifted out on a lotus.

The epics ask a different question. Vasishtha was already an ancient sage. Why did he need to be born again?

King Nimi, son of Ikshvaku, planned a very long sacrifice and asked Vasishtha to be his priest.

"Indra has engaged me first," said Vasishtha. "Wait until I have finished."

The king said nothing, and Vasishtha took silence for consent. But Nimi did not wait. He began the rite with Gautama and other priests. When Vasishtha came back and saw it, he cursed the king, who was asleep, to lose his body. Nimi woke and cursed his teacher with the same fate.

So both were bodiless. Vasishtha went as a spirit to Brahma.

"Lord, without a body no rite can be performed. Give me another."

"Enter the seed of Mitra and Varuna," said Brahma. "You will be born without a mother."

In this telling Mitra was then ruling in Varuna's realm, and Urvashi came there with her friends. Varuna saw her and was filled with longing.

"Mitra asked for me first," she said.

Varuna would not force her. He put his fiery seed into a jar. She told him that her heart was with him, though her word was given to Mitra. When Mitra heard of it he was angry.

"I chose you first. Go and live in the world of men for a time, as the wife of King Pururavas."

Mitra's seed lay in the same jar. Two sages were born from it. Agastya came first.

"I am not your son," he said to Mitra, and went away.

Vasishtha came after, and the house of Ikshvaku took him as its priest again.

Nimi was offered his body back and refused it. He asked to live in the eyes of all creatures, and that, the story says, is why eyes blink.