King Hariścandra

This story is not in the Rāmāyaṇa. It is told in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, and there Viśvāmitra is quick to anger; the vow he makes in the Rāmāyaṇa, never to give way to anger again, has no place in this story.

There was a royal sage named Hariścandra who ruled long ago in the Tretā, the second of the four ages of the world. In his kingdom there was no famine, no disease, no untimely death, and no one took pleasure in wrong. One day, hunting in the forest, he heard women crying, Save us! The cries came from the sciences themselves, powers of knowledge never mastered before, which Viśvāmitra was winning by his austerity. They cried out in fear because he was so mighty and they so weak, and Vighnarāja, the lord of obstacles, entered the king to break the sage's work. Possessed, the king shouted, as against a man courting his own ruin, Who is this wicked man who ties fire in the hem of his cloth while I am king? My arrows will put him to sleep for good. Viśvāmitra heard him and grew angry, and in that moment the sciences he had been mastering were lost.

The king saw Viśvāmitra and trembled like a leaf. This is my dharma, he said; it is no offence. A king who knows dharma must give, and protect, and fight. Viśvāmitra asked, To whom must you give, whom protect, whom fight? The king said, I must give to the best of brahmins and to those in need, protect the frightened, and fight enemies. Then, said Viśvāmitra, if you keep a king's dharma, give me the gift I want. The king was glad, and told him to name anything, gold or son or wife or body or life or kingdom. Viśvāmitra asked first for the fee of the royal consecration, the gift a king owes the brahmins at the great sacrifice that consecrates him, and the king promised it. Then Viśvāmitra asked for the whole earth with its seas and mountains and cities, the kingdom with its chariots and horses and elephants, the storehouses and the treasury, everything except the king's wife, his son and his body. The king agreed with a glad heart.

Then Viśvāmitra said, If the whole earth is mine, you must leave my lands. Take off your ornaments, put on bark, and go with your wife and son. As the king went, the sage stopped him on the road. Where are you going without paying the fee for the consecration? The king said he had nothing left but three bodies, his own, his wife's and his son's, and asked for time. Viśvāmitra gave him a month, and the king left the city on foot with his queen Śaivyā and their little son Rohitāśva, while the people wept and begged him to take them too. When the king stopped on the road out of pity for them, Viśvāmitra came up in anger and called him a liar who gave a kingdom and then tried to take it back, and when the king hurried on, pulling his weary queen by the hand, Viśvāmitra struck her with his staff. The king said only, I am going. The Viśvedevas, five gods, cried out in pity, What worlds will this wicked Viśvāmitra reach, who has driven the best of sacrificers from his kingdom? And Viśvāmitra in his anger cursed them to be born as men.

When the month was over and Hariścandra had come to Vārāṇasī, Viśvāmitra was there demanding his fee. The king's wife told him, Keep your word. I have borne you a son, and a son is the fruit a good man looks for in a wife. Sell me and give the money to the brahmin. The king fainted at her words. In the end he sold her, and the boy, who clung to his mother's clothes, to a brahmin, and gave the money to Viśvāmitra, who looked at how little it was and demanded more before a quarter of the day was gone. Then Dharma himself, the god of dharma, came in the form of a caṇḍāla, foul and rough, and offered to buy the king. Hariścandra would rather have burned in the fire of a curse than serve a caṇḍāla, but Viśvāmitra came and threatened to curse him if he did not pay. The king fell at the sage's feet and begged to be his slave instead. If you are my slave, said Viśvāmitra, then I give you to the caṇḍāla for this wealth. And the caṇḍāla paid Viśvāmitra, bound the king and took him away.

Hariścandra lived in the caṇḍāla quarter and worked at the cremation ground, taking the shrouds of the dead and the fees for burning them, filthy and rough, until he forgot even his wife and son. One day a woman came to the burning ground weeping, carrying her son, who had been bitten by a snake. Neither knew the other at first, so changed were they. Then he knew the child for his son Rohitāśva, and she knew him for her husband, and they wept together. They decided to die on the boy's pyre. Hariścandra was afraid that if he entered the fire without his master's leave he would be a caṇḍāla's slave again in another birth, and still he made ready.

As he stood there thinking, all the gods came, with Dharma at their head and Indra with them, and Viśvāmitra too. Do not do this rash thing, Dharma said. I am Dharma, and I am pleased with your patience, your self-control and your truth. Indra said, You have won the eternal worlds, with your wife and son. Come up to heaven. Indra poured down a rain of nectar on the pyre, and the boy rose up, well and whole. Hariścandra said he would not go to heaven without his master's leave, and Dharma told him that he himself had taken the form of the caṇḍāla. Then Hariścandra said he would not go to heaven and leave behind the people of his city, who were grieving for him; whatever merit he had, let it be shared with them, even if they had it together for only a day. So it shall be, said Indra, and Dharma and Viśvāmitra were pleased. Viśvāmitra brought Rohitāśva and consecrated him king in Ayodhyā, with the gods and sages, and Hariścandra went up to heaven with all his people.