Born from the Jar

Two gods stand behind the birth of Agastya: Mitra and Varuṇa, the lord of the waters. Their story begins far from either of them, in a quarrel between a king and his priest.

King Nimi, the twelfth son of Ikṣvāku, chose Vasiṣṭha as the priest of a great sacrifice. Vasiṣṭha was already engaged for a sacrifice of Indra, the king of the gods, and told Nimi to wait, and Nimi had the seer Gautama carry out the rite in his place. When Vasiṣṭha came and found that Gautama had done it, he was angry, and because the king lay asleep and did not come to see him, he cursed him. Because you passed me over and chose another, king, he said, your body will be without life. Nimi woke and heard the curse, and in his anger he cursed Vasiṣṭha in return, that his body too would be without life. So both of them lost their bodies. Vasiṣṭha went without a body to his father Brahmā, the creator, and asked for another, and Brahmā told him to enter the seed of Mitra and Varuṇa. He would be born again, Brahmā said, not from any womb.

At that very time Mitra was sharing the rule of the waters with Varuṇa, and Urvaśī, an apsaras, one of the women of heaven, came by chance to Varuṇa's dwelling, playing among her friends. Varuṇa saw her and asked her to come to him. She told him with folded hands that Mitra had already asked for her. Then Varuṇa, burning with desire, said he would let his seed fall into a jar the gods had made, and so be content even if she would not come to him. Urvaśī was glad. My heart is with you, she said, and my feeling for you is the greater, but my body belongs to Mitra. So Varuṇa let his seed fall into the jar, shining like a flame. Mitra was angry with Urvaśī for choosing another after he had asked first, and he cursed her to live for a while in the world of men, where she became the wife of King Purūravas.

In that jar two seers came into being. Agastya came first. He said to Mitra, I am not your son, and he went away, for Mitra's seed had gone first to Urvaśī. That seed of Mitra's came afterwards into the jar where Varuṇa's lay, and after a time Vasiṣṭha was born from the same jar, the son of Mitra and Varuṇa, full of power. As soon as he was born, Ikṣvāku, Nimi's father and the first king of the line, chose him as the priest of his house, for the good of his family.

The hymns of the Veda remember the same birth. At a sacrifice, they say, Mitra and Varuṇa poured their seed together into a jar, and from the middle of it Māna rose up, and from it the seer Vasiṣṭha was born. Māna is Agastya's own name in the hymns, the name of his family, and the hymn adds that it was Agastya who brought the newborn Vasiṣṭha to the people.

So Agastya was called Kumbhayoni, the one whose womb was a jar, and Kumbhasambhava, born from a jar. Because he was born from the jar of Mitra and Varuṇa he was called Maitrāvaruṇi, and Vāruṇi, son of Varuṇa. He was small of body, and the Tamil poets call him Kuṟumuṉi, the short sage. Everything else about him was large.