The Mountain Princess

After Sati’s body was gone, the goddess waited. She would not stay disembodied forever. The world needed her, and Shiva — sitting in his long meditation on Kailash — would in time need her too.

Himavat, the king of the Himalayas — the mountain himself, alive as a person — was a great devotee. He had no daughter. He prayed for one. The goddess heard him, and chose to be born to him.

In due course his queen Mena gave birth to a girl. She was dark- skinned, beautiful, with eyes that had something old in them. Himavat recognised, the moment he saw her, who she was. He named her Parvati, “she of the mountain” — and gave her also the name Uma, which some traditions say his queen had cried in concern (“u-ma,” “do not” in Sanskrit) when she first heard her daughter was determined, like Sati had been, to do austerity.

Parvati grew up in the palace of Himavat. But unlike Sati, she did not have to hide her devotion. Her father knew. From the time she could walk, she would say one name: Shiva. Her father did not scold her. Her mother sometimes did — Mena was a queen, she wanted her daughter to marry well — but Himavat understood.

When Parvati was old enough, the sage Narada visited.

He looked at the girl. He looked at Himavat. He said, “She is the goddess. She is Sati come again. She will marry Shiva.”

Mena, the mother, was alarmed. She remembered what had happened in Sati’s life — the marriage to the ascetic, the fight with the father, the fire. She said, “No. Not him. Find her another.”

But Parvati had heard. Her mind was made up. Like Sati before her, she had loved him before she was old enough to argue about it. Mena’s worry would change nothing.

The trouble was that Shiva was not interested.

He was still in his long meditation. He had lost Sati. He had no intention of marrying again. He sat on Mount Kailash with his eyes closed, and even the gods together could not rouse him. Marriage was the last thing on his mind.

The gods, watching from above, were in their own kind of trouble. A demon named Tarakasura was tormenting the worlds — and a prophecy had been spoken about him: that only a son of Shiva could kill him. But Shiva had no son. He had no wife. He was in deep meditation. Unless the goddess could win him back, the worlds had no defender.

So the gods quietly arranged things. They sent Parvati to attend on Shiva. They told Himavat to let her go — to sit by him on the mountain, to bring him offerings, to be present.

Parvati did so. She went to Kailash with two of her companions and began the simplest possible devotion: she came each day, swept around his seat, brought him a flower, sat at a distance, and went home.

Shiva noticed nothing. He was deep in meditation. The presence of a quiet young woman a few paces away did not register.

This went on for some time.

Parvati saw that this was not going to work. She understood that to reach him she would need to do what Sati had done. She would have to practise austerity until the worlds themselves felt it. She would have to make him notice from the inside, since he would not notice from the outside.

She told her father she was going to the forest. Himavat let her go.

The next story is her tapasya — the austerity Parvati did to win Shiva for the second time.