Trishanku's Heaven

Shatananda went on.

Vishvamitra was no longer a king. He was an ascetic now, and he wanted to be called a sage. But his practice kept breaking — sometimes on anger, sometimes on an old rivalry.

It was in those years that King Trishanku came to him.

Trishanku had a wish, and it was an unusual one. He wanted to go to heaven — not after dying, but in this same body.

He had gone first to the sons of Vashishtha, his family's teachers. They had refused him. They told him it was not done, and sent him away.

Now he stood in front of Vishvamitra.

Vishvamitra said yes.

There was kindness in it — a man stood before him who had been turned away. But there was something else in it too. The ones who had refused him were Vashishtha's sons.

Vishvamitra began an enormous ceremony. Fires burned, offerings were made, the verses rang out. He called the gods.

The gods did not come.

Vishvamitra did not stop. By the force of his own austerity he lifted Trishanku upward.

The king began to rise into the sky.

But the gates of heaven did not open for him. Indra turned him back, and Trishanku began to fall headlong.

"Stop," said Vishvamitra.

And Trishanku stopped, halfway up the sky.

Then Vishvamitra did what nobody expected. He said that if that heaven would not take this king, he would build another one.

He began making new stars. New lights came up in the southern sky. He would have raised an entire second heaven.

Then Brahma and the gods came.

They asked Vishvamitra to stop. They offered a compromise — Trishanku would stay exactly where he was, among the very stars Vishvamitra had made. He would hang upside down, but he would stay.

Vishvamitra agreed.

Trishanku is still there, in the southern sky.

Shatananda paused here and said that Vishvamitra had shown power that day such as nobody had seen. But he said something else as well: that one man's wish had turned, that day, into a contest between two sages.

And Vishvamitra was not yet a Brahmarshi.