Chapter 6 — Ahalya

At dawn Vishvamitra left Siddhashrama.

The brothers went with him northward, toward the sacrificial gathering of King Janaka. Sages and followers travelled with them; carts moved along the road; at evening they stopped beside rivers or beneath trees, made the observances of the day, and listened when Vishvamitra spoke.

Rama asked questions as they passed through a country already thick with stories. In answer, Vishvamitra told of his own lineage, of kings and cities, of daughters who had endured injury without surrendering their dignity, of the Ganga and the long labor by which Bhagiratha brought its waters down to honor the dead. He told these tales on the road, where a riverbank, a hill, or a settlement gave them their occasion. The brothers did not receive a map of an empty land. They received a land whose rivers and kingdoms were remembered through story.

They stayed one night with Sumati, king of Vishala, and went on toward Mithila.

Near the city, Rama saw a hermitage set apart amid its grove. It was beautiful in the way an abandoned place can be beautiful: the old enclosure remained, the trees held their shade, dry leaves lay undisturbed along the paths, and no ascetic or student moved beneath them.

“Whose hermitage was this?” he asked Vishvamitra. “Why is it empty?”

Vishvamitra answered that it had belonged to the sage Gautama and his wife, Ahalya.

Then he told them what had happened there.

Gautama had lived in that place for many years with Ahalya, devoted to austerity. Indra, king of the gods, saw an opportunity when Gautama was away. He came to the hermitage wearing Gautama's form.

He spoke to Ahalya as if he were her husband and asked to join with her.

The moment is not easy to name. Ahalya recognized Indra beneath the borrowed appearance, and she acted from a curiosity or desire connected with the king of the gods. What she thought beyond that is not known, and it does not alter the fact that Indra had entered her home in the guise of her husband.

Afterward Indra hurried from the hut, afraid that Gautama would return. He met the sage at the entrance. Gautama had come back carrying the water and fuel of his daily practice; his austerity made him seem bright as fire.

He saw Indra wearing his form and understood what had happened.

Gautama cursed Indra. The punishment stripped him of the signs of his manhood. Then Gautama turned to Ahalya.

He told her that she would remain in the hermitage for many thousands of years, unseen by all beings. She would live on air and lie among ashes, sustained by austerity. Only when Rama, son of Dasharatha, came to the place would the curse end. Then, after she had welcomed him as a guest, she would regain her own form and come again into Gautama's presence.

Gautama left the hermitage for the high slopes of the Himalaya.

Indra, struck by the curse, went among the gods in fear. They found a remedy for his loss through the testicles of a ram.

Vishvamitra fell silent. Ahalya had remained there, unseen, living on air and lying in ashes, waiting through years beyond measure.

“Enter,” Vishvamitra said to Rama. “Bring Ahalya through the end of her curse.”

Rama and Lakshmana followed him into the former hermitage.

There they saw Ahalya.

She was difficult to see, as though smoke and mist had gathered around a full moon. Austerity seemed to shine through her, yet the solitude and punishment of the place had not been undone by being named. Rama and Lakshmana approached her and touched her feet in a formal gesture of reverence: an acknowledgement of her seniority and of the ascetic standing the curse had not erased.

Ahalya remembered Gautama's words. She received the two brothers as guests. She offered water for welcome, an honored seat, and the hospitality due to those who had entered her hermitage. Her first action after the curse's end is not a speech invented to explain the past, but the formal agency that is hers: she restores the obligations of a host in her own home.

Then the gods gathered. Flowers fell; celestial music was heard. They praised Ahalya as one purified through austerity.

Gautama returned.

Gautama came together with Ahalya and was happy. He honored Rama according to custom, then resumed his ascetic practice with Ahalya beside him.

Rama and Lakshmana left the hermitage with Vishvamitra and went on to Mithila.

At the edge of Janaka's great sacrificial enclosure they saw the evidence of a gathering drawn from many places: the shelters of learned guests, the carts of those who had travelled far, the ordered space prepared for ritual. Rama spoke of the richness of the rite, and Vishvamitra chose a quiet place near water for their party to stay.

The brothers had reached Mithila. They did not yet know what waited within it.