The Silent King

There was a king of the Pāṇḍya country, the best of the Draviḍa kings, named Indradyumna, who was given wholly to the worship of Viṣṇu, whose names include Hari and Nārāyaṇa. He lived as an ascetic with matted hair, in a hermitage on one of the great mountains.

One day, at the hour of worship, he had bathed and taken a vow of silence and was sitting alone, worshipping Hari, when Agastya came there by chance with his crowd of disciples. The king did not speak and did not offer the welcome due to a guest. Agastya saw him sitting there in silence and grew angry. This man is no good man, he said. He is wicked and his understanding is unformed. He has slighted a brahmin. Let him go into darkness, and since his wits are as stiff as an elephant's, let him become an elephant.

Then Agastya went on his way with his disciples, and Indradyumna, a royal sage, accepted what had been decreed for him. He was born as an elephant, the king of a great herd on the mountain Trikūṭa, and yet even in that body he kept the memory of his worship. When a crocodile seized him in a lake and held him for a very long time, and all his strength was gone, he remembered the prayer he had known in his former life and called on the Lord. Hari came and freed him, and by the Lord's touch the elephant was released from the bondage of ignorance and took on the Lord's own form, dressed in yellow, with four arms.