Born from the Fire-Sticks

Vyāsa wanted a son, and on a peak of Meru, the mountain far to the north beyond the Himālaya, in a forest of karṇikāra trees where the god Śiva lived among his hosts with the Goddess, his wife, the daughter of the king of the mountains, he practised austerity for a hundred years, living on air. May I have a son, he prayed, with the strength of fire and earth, of water and wind and sky. His colour did not fade and he did not tire, and his matted hair blazed like flames. At last Śiva was pleased and said to him, smiling, You will have such a son, Dvaipāyana. As fire, as wind, as earth, as water and as sky, so pure will your great son be, and he will win fame through the three worlds.

Then Vyāsa took up the fire-sticks to kindle a fire, and as he rubbed them he saw Ghṛtācī in her beauty, one of the apsaras, the dancers of heaven, and desire overcame him. She saw it, and took the form of a she-parrot, a śukī, and came near him. He tried with all his strength to master his desire, and could not. His seed fell on the fire-stick, and he went on rubbing it, untroubled, and from it Śuka was born, the great ascetic and great yogin, blazing like a fire at the sacrifice, with his father's form and colour, shining like a fire without smoke.

The Gaṅgā came in her own form on the slope of Meru and bathed him. A staff and a black deerskin fell from the sky for him. The gandharvas, the musicians of heaven, sang and the apsaras danced, and the drums of the gods sounded. Indra, king of the gods, and the guardians of the worlds came, and the gods and the sages, and the wind rained down flowers, and everything that moves and does not move rejoiced. Śiva himself, with the Goddess, gave the newborn child the sacred thread of a student of the Veda, and Indra gave him a water pot and garments of the gods. Swans and cranes and parrots by the thousand circled him. And as soon as he was born, the Vedas came to him, with all their secrets, as they had come to his father.