The story of Jaratkaru & Jaratkaru

Sans the Sacred

If you thought we don’t have Romeo-Juliets in our world anymore (or should I say, Yayati-Sharmishtas?), I trust the past week has proven you wrong. For one, a woman from Bangladesh swam across a river to India to marry her lover, whom she had met online. She might be pleased to learn that she has much precedent in Sanskrit poetry. In the imagination of Sanskrit poets, women cross dense forests, step on snakes, disregard thorny roads, flooded rivers, and travel to meet their secret lovers in the darkness of the night.

A woman in Vadodara recently made news by announcing that she was marrying herself in a ceremony—she wanted to be a bride, but preferred to declare her commitment to herself rather than to anyone else. She even said that her parents supported her decision, leaving most of us really wanting to meet them! On the other hand, Sanskrit literature has many stories that tell a modern reader of the perils of parents forcing children to marry when the children don’t care for it.

One such story from the Mahabharata is that of Jaratkaru. Now, Jaratkaru was a sage, off doing penance by himself and with no intention to marry. He was so detached that he had given up eating food and subsisted on air alone. Unfortunately for him, he once came across a group of men hanging upside down over a cave that led straight to hell. The only thing stopping them from falling into hell was a few blades of grass to which they hung, and a rat was steadily gnawing at that grass, too.

Jaratkaru asked them who they were, and why they were in such a precarious position. The men told him they were his ancestors, and that he was responsible for their plight. If he didn’t marry and have children to continue their family line, they would plunge straight into hell.

Jaratkaru reluctantly agreed to marry and have a child but imposed so many conditions so as to make it almost impossible—that he would marry a woman only if she had the same name as him, if her family didn’t mind that he was an ascetic with no money, and if they were happy to financially support her since he had no intention of doing so.

As soon as he made the promise, the ancestors miraculously disappeared. Talk about emotional blackmail! Predictably, though, there turned out to be such a woman. Jaratkaru, the sister of Vasuki, the serpent, was given to the sage Jaratkaru in marriage. She agreed to marry him because of a boon that their son would save many serpents from death.

Now, Jaratkaru told his wife Jaratkaru at the very beginning that if she did the slightest thing that displeased him, he would leave her and go back to his penance. Then, one day, he fell asleep on her lap. It was nearly time for sunset and the poor wife was worried that he would not wake up in time for his evening rituals. She risked angering him if she woke him up (“Why did you wake me up?”), and if she didn’t, either (“Why didn’t you wake me up?”). She chose to wake him up with soft and gentle words, reminding him it was time for him to perform his evening rituals. Jaratkaru woke up, his lips trembling with fury. “Why did you wake me up? My penance is so great that the sun would not dare to set while I was asleep!”

And that was the end of it. Jaratkaru went back to his penance. But his wife Jaratkaru, already pregnant, had a son, who did save her family of serpents.

The story of Yayati and Sharmishta, legendary for their love, is also one of convoluted curses, boons, and emotional blackmail by affectionate parents, but we shall leave that for another time.

The University of Toronto doctoral student in Religion oscillates between scholarly pursuits and abject laziness @AnushaSRao2