Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c15.6

v2.c15.6

eaten a bite but only cooked and listened. Then the god showed himself in his own shape, and spoke to the seven Rishis: "The tapas (asceticism, ascetic merit) that ye have heaped up on the ridge of the Himālaya is in my belief not so great as the tapas of this woman. For this poor woman (or: woman rich in tapas) has practised a tapas hard indeed to carry out: fasting and cooking, she has spent twelve years."—Earlier the same chapter gives another form of the same legendary account, which was thought out to explain the badarapācana (badara-cooking) of Tīrthanamen. Çrutavatī, the virginal and peerlessly lovely daughter of the holy man Bharadvāja, undergoes a strict penance to win Indra for a husband. In the shape of the Brahman Vasistha he at last visits her hermitage, and is hospitably welcomed by her; but she cannot give him her hand to take, because she is wholly dedicated to Indra in worship and love. The disguised god smiles, and offers her five badara-fruit with the bidding to cook them. The whole day long she cooks them, but the heavenly one has made the fruit impossible to cook so as to make trial of the pious woman. The day comes to its end, and her supply of wood is used up. But she is bent on faithfully carrying out her cooking duties, puts her feet in the fire, and keeps on pushing them further in when a bit is burnt off. Not a muscle does she move, there is no dejection in her soul, in her heart abides only the guest's bidding, although the fruit will not get cooked. Mightily rejoiced, Indra now reveals himself in his glory to the maid; she lays aside the shell of the body, and goes with him to dwell as his wife in heaven. To the glorification of this housewifely self-denial the bathing-place where it happened is still world-renowned to-day; to bathe there wipes out all sins, nay, whoever spends but one night there and carries out his washing attains to heavenly worlds hard to attain to.