Cūḍālā
Contents5 of 14
  1. The King and the Princess of Surāṣṭra
  2. What Am I?
  3. You Speak like a Child
  4. The Powers She Did Not Show
  5. The King Goes to the Forest
  6. Eighteen Years
  7. The Boy from the Sky
  8. Kumbha's Teaching
  9. The Fire in the Hermitage
  10. Still as a Rock
  11. A Woman by Night
  12. Heaven Refused, and the Lover
  13. I Am Cūḍālā
  14. The Return

The King Goes to the Forest

Without the knowledge of the truth, Śikhidhvaja fell into deep sorrow. He took no joy in his riches and looked for lonely places, waterfalls and caves. His servants had to coax him through his daily duties. He gave away cows and land and gold, performed fasts and penances, went to holy places and sacred forests, and found no peace. His kingdom seemed poison to him.

One day, in private, with Cūḍālā on his lap, he said to her: I have enjoyed my kingdom a long time. Now I have no more desire for it, and I will go to the forest. Pleasure and pain do not touch the sage who lives in the forest. The forest paths delight me as you do, fair one. A wife of good family does not stand in her husband's way, even in a dream.

Cūḍālā said: Every act shines in its own season, my lord. The flower shines in spring and the fruit in autumn. The forest suits those whose bodies are stiff and worn with age, not the young, as you are, and so this does not please me. When the time comes, we will go from home to the forest together, as swans leave a lake. A king who abandons his people before his time commits a great sin.

He would not listen. Women are not fit for life in the forest, he said. You are young. You must stay here and guard the kingdom; when her husband has gone, bearing the burden of the household is a wife's vow.

That day he carried out his duties. Night fell, and he did the evening rites with Cūḍālā, and they slept. At midnight, while she slept soundly, he slipped her from his lap and rose. He told the guards to stay at their posts, and went out of the city. Homage to you, Fortune of the kingdom, he said, and he left his realm and entered the wilderness alone.

For twelve nights he travelled past cities and provinces, mountains and rivers, until he came to a forest on the slopes of Mount Mandara, far from any town, with pools and streams, and the ruins of an old hermitage of brahmins, and fruit enough to live on. There he built a hut of flowering vines, and brought into it a bamboo staff, a bowl, a vessel for water of welcome, a flower basket, a rosary, a water pot, a patched cloak, a mat and a deerskin. In the first watch of the day he did his prayers, in the second he gathered flowers, bathed and worshipped the gods, and he ate forest fruit and roots and spent the night alone in prayer. And he forgot the pleasures of his kingship.