A Thousand Horses

There was a great king in Kānyakubja named Gādhi, who went to live in the forest, and there a daughter was born to him, as lovely as an apsaras, a woman of heaven, named Satyavatī. Ṛcīka, a sage of the line of Bhṛgu, asked for her hand.

The king said to the brahmin: There is a custom in our family, set by our forefathers. The bride price is a thousand swift white horses, each with one black ear. Yet I cannot ask a holy man like you to pay it, and my daughter ought to be given to a great man such as you. I will give you a thousand such horses, said Ṛcīka; let your daughter be my wife.

He asked Varuṇa, the god of the waters, for a thousand white horses with one black ear for a bride price, and Varuṇa gave them, and the place where the horses rose from the water became known as the Ford of Horses. On the Gaṅgā at Kānyakubja, Gādhi gave Satyavatī to Ṛcīka, and the gods themselves came as the bridegroom's party. So Ṛcīka won his wife by dharma and lived happily with her.