The Cow He Could Not Take

Once, travelling through his lands with a whole army, King Viśvāmitra came to the hermitage of Vasiṣṭha, and Vasiṣṭha fed the king and his whole army from his spotted cow of plenty, Śabalā, which gave whatever was asked of her. The king wanted the cow. He offered a hundred thousand cows for her, then elephants and chariots and horses and a crore of cows and all the gold Vasiṣṭha could wish for, and Vasiṣṭha would not give her. She is all I have, he said; my rites and my life depend on her. So the king had the cow dragged away by force.

The cow broke free and ran back to Vasiṣṭha, and at his word she brought forth warriors of many peoples, Pahlavas, Śakas, Yavanas, Kāmbojas and more, who destroyed the king's army. A hundred of Viśvāmitra's sons rushed at Vasiṣṭha with weapons in their hands, and with a single sound, hum, the seer burned them to ashes. Viśvāmitra was left like a sea without waves, a snake with broken fangs, a sun in eclipse, a bird with clipped wings, his pride and his strength gone. He set one son to rule the kingdom, went to the Himālaya, and did austerities to win the favour of the god Śiva, until Śiva granted him every weapon known to the gods and the demons. Full of pride, Viśvāmitra came back and loosed his weapons on Vasiṣṭha's hermitage, and the whole grove of austerity burned, and Vasiṣṭha met him with his staff alone, the staff of Brahman, the holy power a brahmin carries. One after another Vasiṣṭha's staff swallowed all of Viśvāmitra's weapons, and last of all the weapon of Brahmā itself.

Viśvāmitra, humbled, sighed and said, Shame on a kṣatriya's strength. The strength of a brahmin's power is strength. With one staff of Brahman all my weapons have been destroyed. Seeing this, I will take up great austerity, the kind that makes a brahmin.