The Form No One Could Take

Once the god Agni came out of the sun's orb to a sacrifice held by the seven seers, and as he left he saw their wives sitting and bathing in their hermitages, bright as gold and as the crescent moon, as wonderful as stars. Agni's heart was shaken and he fell in love with them. He knew it was wrong to want the wives of brahmin seers, women who were good and did not want him, and he could not look at them or touch them without cause, so he entered the household fire and watched them from there, as if touching them with his golden flames. At last, burning with desire, he went away into the forest, resolved to leave his body.

Svāhā, a daughter of Dakṣa, had loved Agni for a long time, and she knew that he had gone to the forest burning with love. I will take the forms of the wives of the seven seers, she thought, and come to him in their likeness. That will please him, and I will have what I want. One by one she took the forms of the seers' wives and came to Agni. Six times she did it. But Arundhatī's heavenly form she could not take, because of the power of Arundhatī's austerity and her devoted service to her husband.

From what Svāhā did, the god Skanda was born. The people of the forest said that Agni had been with six of the seven seers' wives, and when the seven seers heard of the mighty child, they abandoned six of their wives. They did not abandon Arundhatī.