Shunashepa and the Brahmarshi

Trishanku's story ended, but Shatananda did not stop.

Some years later a boy came running towards Vishvamitra's hermitage.

His name was Shunashepa. A king's ceremony had been left unfinished, and to complete it a human offering had been chosen. The offering was this boy. He was being taken to the sacrificial post.

He ran and fell at Vishvamitra's feet.

"Save me," he said. "I do not want to die."

Vishvamitra lifted him up. Then he called his own sons.

"One of you go in this boy's place," he said.

His sons refused. They asked why they should give their lives for a boy they did not know.

Vishvamitra filled with anger. He cursed his own sons.

Then he turned to Shunashepa. He taught him two prayers and told him to repeat them in his mind when they tied him to the post.

The boy was bound. He repeated the prayers. The gods were pleased, and his life was spared.

In a single day Vishvamitra had saved a child and cursed his own sons.

His practice went on.

Once Menaka came near his hermitage. They lived together for years. Then one day Vishvamitra understood how far he had travelled from what he had set out to do. He did not harm Menaka and did not blame her. He rose, took his leave, and began again.

Much later, during another test, Rambha came before him. This time Vishvamitra suspected a trap, and in anger he cursed her.

The moment the curse left him, he stopped.

He understood that desire was no longer what stood in his way. What stood in his way now was anger.

So he chose a harder discipline — not fasting, not difficult postures, but refusing to let anger speak for him.

That discipline was tested too. At the end of a long fast, just as he was about to take food, a beggar came and asked for it. The beggar was Indra.

Vishvamitra gave him the food. He said not one word of complaint, and carried the fast further.

Brahma called him a great sage.

But Vishvamitra was waiting for a single word, and Brahma could not give it to him.

At last Vashishtha came himself — the same Vashishtha whose cow he had once tried to take by force, whose staff had quietened every weapon he owned.

Vashishtha addressed him as Brahmarshi. There was no rivalry left in him at all.

Shatananda finished.

Ram looked at his teacher — at the man who had brought him from Ayodhya to this hall. Vishvamitra had been able to teach him how to call a weapon back because he had spent a lifetime learning that power without self-command cannot finish what it starts.