While Suntaresvaran was instructing the goddess in the meaning of the Vedas, she paid little attention, at which he, being angry, denounced on her as a punishment, that she should be born of the fishermen's tribe. The goddess humbling herself, and asking a mitigation of punishment, the god promised himself to come and take her for his wife. She was found at the foot of a Pinna tree, (Calophyllum Inophyllum) in the shape of a young infant, by the head of the tribe of Parawas, (or fishermen), who having been long childless, took the child to his wife; and both were attached to it, and reared it with care. Afterwards, when the child was grown up, the head of the tribe promised her in marriage to anyone who should catch a very troublesome fish, which broke the people's boats and destroyed the fishermen.

 

 

This fish was Nandi, the god's vehicle. When the god had denounced punishmetn against the goddess, the two children, Subramaniyan and Vinayagan, (Ganesa) said, "It is because of our father's books that this has happened; hence Subramaniyan snatched the book from his father's hand, and Vinayagan took up those on the floor, and both together cast the books into the sea. The god, angry at Nandi, the porter, for admitting the children, sentenced him to become a shark in the ocean; and condemned Vinayagan to the penalty of dumbness; but denounces nothing against Subramaniyan, because of the gift he had previously received, that is, that the curse pronounced against him should always recoil on the pronouncer.

In consequence of the reward offered from the head of the fishermen's tribe, the god came in the guise of a fisherman, saying the he came from Madura. On the first throw of the net the shark was caught and brought to land; and the head of the tribe publicly, before the people assembled, gave his daughter to the fisherman in marriage. The god now reassumed his form, and received the homage of the head man, saying, " I took pity on you, since you had been so long childless, and now, after remaining a certain time on earth, you shall be received into my paradise." The goddess proved able to understand the sense of the Vedas; and the god besides instructed sixty thousand disciples. Afterwards the god and goddess, mounted on the bullock Nandi, (restored to its own shape), were graciously pleased to return and dwell at Madura.

 

                                                                                       << PREV         Table of Contents         NEXT >>