The Road to Mithilā

So Śuka set out for Mithilā on foot, though he could have crossed the whole earth through the sky. He crossed mountains and rivers and lakes and forests full of wild beasts, passed through the lands of Meru and of Hari and the land of the Himālaya, and came into Bhārata, and on through many countries to the land of the Āryas. He passed fine towns and rich cities and every kind of treasure, and looked at them and did not see them. Thinking only of his purpose, he walked the road as if he were walking in the sky.

He came to the land of Videha, guarded by the just king Janaka, with its villages full of food and its pastures full of cattle, its fields of rice and barley and its lotus pools, and to the pleasure gardens of Mithilā, crowded with elephants and horses and chariots and men and women. He looked at it all as if he did not see it, and came to the city gate, carrying in his mind only his question, content in the Self.

The gatekeepers stopped him. He stood there, rapt in meditation, until they learned who he was, and let him in. He walked down the royal road to the palace, and there too the gatekeepers stopped him with rough words, and there too he stood without anger. The sun beat on him, and he was hungry and thirsty and tired from the road, and he did not suffer or droop or move out of the sun. Then one of the gatekeepers, seeing him standing there like the midday sun, was grieved; he honoured him, bowed with folded hands, and took him into the second court. Śuka sat there thinking only of freedom, the same in the shade and in the sun.

After a while a minister came with folded hands and led him into the third court, into the gardens of the inner palace, lovely as the gardens of the gods, with flowering trees and pools, showed him a seat, and went away. Then fifty young women came running to him, lovely and finely dressed, in fine red garments and gold ornaments, skilled in talk and dance and song and every art of love, as beautiful as apsaras. They gave him water for his feet and honoured him and served him good food, and when he had eaten they showed him the gardens one by one, playing and laughing and singing around him.

But Vyāsa's son, pure in heart, was neither pleased nor angry. His senses were his own and his anger was conquered. They gave him a splendid bed set with jewels. He washed his feet, said his evening prayers, and sat down on a clean seat, thinking only of his question. In the first part of the night he meditated; in the middle of the night he slept, as is right; and after a while he rose, purified himself, and sat in meditation again, with the women all around him. So he spent the rest of that day and that night in the king's house.