Arundhatī
The Ṛṣikās · Ṛṣis and Ṛṣikās
Vasiṣṭha's wife, whose austerity through a twelve-year drought Śiva held greater than the seven seers', whose form no one could take, and whose name became the measure of a faithful wife.
Arundhatī was the daughter of Kardama and Devahūti and the wife of Vasiṣṭha. Her name was the one the old poets reached for when they wanted to say what a faithful wife was. When the seven seers left her alone through a twelve-year drought, she kept up her austerity and cooked jujubes for a guest who was the god Śiva himself, and he declared that her austerity was greater than all of theirs. She stood with the seven seers through famine and refused a king's gold beside them.