The Jujubes

Once the seven seers, her husband Vasiṣṭha among them, left Arundhatī behind at a holy ford, a sacred bathing place, and went to the Himālaya to gather fruit and roots to live on. While they were living there in the mountain forest, a drought came that lasted twelve years. The seers made a hermitage in the mountains and stayed there, practising their austerities. Arundhatī, too, gave herself to austerity, and kept it up without a break.

Śiva, the great god, saw her holding to her hard discipline and was pleased with her, and he came to her in the form of a brahmin and said, Lady, I want alms. She answered him, Brahmin, our store of food is used up. Eat these jujubes. Śiva said, Cook them for me, you who keep your vows so well.

So, to please the brahmin, Arundhatī set the jujubes on a blazing fire and began to cook them, and while she cooked them she heard him tell stories, heavenly, delightful and holy. The terrible twelve-year drought passed while she cooked and listened, eating nothing, and to her that terrible time went by as if it were a single day.

Then the seers came back from the mountain with their fruit. Śiva was pleased, and said to Arundhatī, Go back to these seers as before, lady who knows dharma. I am pleased with your austerity and your discipline. Then he showed himself as he was and told the seers what she had done. The austerity you have earned on the slopes of the Himālaya, brahmins, he said, and the austerity of this woman, are not equal in my eyes. This ascetic woman has done an austerity very hard to do. Eating nothing, cooking, she has come through twelve years.

Then he said to Arundhatī, Choose a boon, lady, whatever is in your heart. And Arundhatī, before the gathering of the seven seers, said to him, If you are pleased with me, lord, let this place become a great holy ford, dear to the perfected ones and to the divine seers, called Badarapācana, the cooking of the jujubes. And let anyone who stays here for three nights, pure and fasting, gain the fruit of twelve years of fasting. So be it, said Śiva, and went back to heaven.

The seers were amazed when they looked at Arundhatī. She was not weary, her colour had not faded, and she had borne hunger and thirst. That was how the pure Arundhatī reached the highest perfection.