The King Who Rode on Sages

There was a time when Indra had to leave his throne. He had killed Vṛtra, the great demon who wanted to swallow the worlds, but he had killed him by deceit, against a pact of peace he had made with him, and the guilt of that falsehood, and of a brahmin he had killed before, came over him. He hid himself away in the waters, and the gods and the ancestors and the seers, afraid of a world without a king, went to Nahuṣa, a king of the earth, and asked him to rule them. Nahuṣa said he had not the strength for it. So they gave him strength from their own austerity and their own power, and Nahuṣa became king of the three worlds.

Power went to his head. He wanted Indra's queen, Śacī, for himself, and Śacī, on Indra's advice, told him she would come to him if he came to her in a carriage such as no god or demon had ever had: a palanquin carried by seers. Nahuṣa was delighted. No one of little power, he said, makes seers his bearers. He yoked the seers, men who kept their vows, to his carriage, and had them carry him.

The seers carried him and grew weary. As they went, the divine seers and the brahmin seers put a question to him. There are mantras spoken by Brahmā for the sprinkling of cows, they said. Are they binding, or are they not? They were asking whether the sacred words handed down from Brahmā and the seers of old still bound him. Nahuṣa, his mind clouded, said they were not. You are set on what is against dharma, the seers said. You do not hold to dharma. For us these mantras are binding; the great seers spoke them long ago.

Agastya was among the bearers. As Nahuṣa argued with the sages, he touched Agastya on the head with his foot. In that moment his power and his glory left him. Agastya saw him shaken and afraid, and spoke. You defile what the seers of old made and the brahmin seers kept, which was without defect, he said, and you touched my head with your foot. You have made seers, who are like Brahmā himself and whom none should approach without care, into your beasts of burden, and you ride them. For that, fall from heaven, sinner, with your merit spent. You will wander the earth for ten thousand years in the form of a great serpent, and when those years are full you will come to heaven again.

So Nahuṣa fell from the kingdom of the gods. Then Agastya came to Indra, who had returned, and found him already planning how to deal with Nahuṣa. Indra welcomed him and offered him water for his feet and a cow, and asked how Nahuṣa had fallen, and Agastya told him. You are fortunate, he said. The thorn in the side of the brahmins is gone. Go up to heaven and protect the worlds. And the gods and the ancestors, the yakṣa spirits and the serpents and the gandharvas who sing in heaven, the apsaras, the lakes and rivers and mountains and seas, all came to Indra and said, Fortune is with you. The wicked Nahuṣa has been struck down by the wise Agastya and made a serpent on the earth.