Kusanabha's Hundred Daughters

The ceremony at Siddhashrama was finished. Vishvamitra, Ram, Lakshman, and the people of the hermitage now travelled towards Mithila.

The wagons carried what the community needed. When evening came they stopped beside whatever river was nearest. Ram kept asking about the places they passed, and Vishvamitra kept opening old histories inside the journey.

Near the River Sona they halted. The sage spoke of his ancestor Kusha, and of Kusha's sons, who had founded cities.

"One of them was Kusanabha," he said. "He had a hundred daughters."

Ram looked up to listen.

The hundred sisters were in their garden one day — singing, running about, the way anyone plays. The wind-god came there.

He told them they were beautiful and that they should marry him. He did not offer this. He demanded it.

The sisters answered him. They said that who they married would be their father's decision and their own, and not a thing anyone could order. They said it respectfully. But they refused.

In his anger the wind twisted their bodies.

They walked home bent and crooked and in pain. They hid nothing. They stood in front of their father and told him the whole truth.

Kusanabha did not ask them why they had been in the garden. He did not tell them they should have kept quiet. He did not even tell them what to do next.

He told them they had done right.

"You bore it, and you spoke the truth," he said. "That is not a small thing."

Time passed. King Brahmadatta came with an offer of marriage — an offer, not a demand. The hundred sisters said yes of their own will. On the day their hands were taken, the affliction left them and their bodies were as they had been.

Vishvamitra stopped there. Then he told them about his own line — which royal house he had come from, and whose the surrounding lands had once been.

Ram was quiet for a while.

The wagons moved on. Ahead lay the Ganga, and the Ganga had a long story of her own.