In this episode, we’re doing a story from the Brihatkatha, featuring a tomato bath, an ego clash between Kings, and a Trojan White Elephant!
The story starts with a Queen. Mragavati, the Queen of Kausambi. Everything is perfectly normal in this Kingdom – the King was happy, Taxes were flowing in, but people weren’t grumbling too much. In fact the only one who was grumbling, according to the King was Mragavati. She had this intense desire to take a bath. The King, who didn’t really listen, dismissed his wife’s requests without even fully listening to her. She was asking him to take a bath and to drink tomato juice or something. Naturally he didn’t want his lifestyle to be dictated by his wife. He had had enough of that growing up from his own parents. He was an adult now and King of the land, it meant he should be able to choose whether or not to bathe.
It’s a pity he didn’t listen to his wife. She wasn’t asking him to take a bath and to drink Tomato juice. She, herself wanted to bathe in Tomato juice. It was an odd request, but her therapist who was seeing her through the Mrigavati’s difficult pregnancy had encouraged her to act out ton these little harmless whims and fancies. It was okay, nothing to worry about. It was only the ordinary citizens of the land paying for excesses like these, just like they were going to pay the therapist’s exorbitant bill.
So anyway, tired of being dismissed over and over by the King, Mrigavati threatened to put him on a diet and exercise regimen and that’s when he finally listened. And understood.
Relieved at not having to subject himself to a bath, the King easily agreed to her request. To keep things simple, he ordered that their swimming pool in their garden be drained of water and replaced with tomato juice.
Sure, it meant stealing from the stockpiles his having to of tomatoes they were saving for a heavily requested tomato carnival at the children’s hospital but the King didn’t care. The ketchup and fries industry would take a hit too, but the King figured that was a small price to pay compared to having to diet and exercise.
So, when the pool was finally ready, Mragavati dived in. She had just come up for air when something shocking happened!
A bird, a huge bird swooped down, grabbed Mragavati in its talons and flew off with her. I guess to the bird which was the size of a house, Mragavati covered all in red looked like meat. The bird had never known meat to wiggle the way Mragavati was wiggling. Upon suddenly realizing that she wasn’t meat after all, the bird dropped Mragavati. Just like that. Unfortunately for the Queen, in just those few seconds the bird had covered a tremendous distance. She was very far from home.
Luckily though when she fell from the sky, she fell into a pond that was deep enough that she wasn’t really harmed. And the baby inside her seemed okay too. It was kicking like normal.
She swam to shore, and planned her next steps. She had to find the nearest signpost so she could at least figure out where she was. Then she had to find a way to send a message to Kaushambi. And then get to Kaushambi. And finally resume her tomato juice bath. But first she needed to find some clothes quickly because she would catch a cold wandering about in her swimsuit. And society’s views of women being what they were in Ancient India, it was unlikely anyone was going to help her, dressed the way she was.
She walked a bit until luckily she found clothes hanging out to dry. That must mean people were nearby, but first she grabbed the driest of those clothes and draped herself. Next, she hunted about until she saw a small cluster of houses.
She knocked on the first one. The door was answered by a kindly old rishi and his wife. They took her in and treated her like the royal guest that she was. The rishi and his wife didn’t know their guest was really royal. But they treated every guest like God. Selfless hospitality is just natural in Indian culture. The Rishi’s wife also remarked that it was a marvelous coincidence that she had the exact same saree as Mrigavati. But Mrigavati didn’t flinch.
The Rishi’s wife said they might have bought their sarees from the same store. Which was good, because that meant her they could explore this common link and find the location of this “Kaushambi” kingdom that Mrigavati talked about. The Rishi and his wife had never heard of that place. It was lucky they were at least speaking the same language. The Rishi and his wife had never heard of tomatoes before. If they also felt it strange that Mrigavati needed to continue bathing in this “Tomato” juice, they were careful not to show it.
Over the next few days all of their efforts to locate Kaushambi were in vain. They searched, they quizzed every passerby and traveler but no one had heard of Kaushambi.
More days passed until finally Mrigavati gave birth to a baby boy. She named him Udayana. The boy grew up and was everything you might expect from the hero of a folk tale – intelligent, charming, wise. While growing up, he also had free education. The rishi and his wife had provided years of free boarding and lodging to Mrigavati and her son. But they also provided the boy with an education. You might appreciate that especially given the rising costs of education, of housing and food prices these days. But that wasn’t all. There was a bonus. The Rishi had a few tricks up his sleeve. He taught the boy one of those tricks. And that was how to control elephants. The answer was music.
That shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve read Harry Potter or if you’ve read the Tintin comics. Hagrid plays a flute to manage his massive three headed dog – Fluffy, and Tintin plays a trombone to control elephants. Just like that, Udayana learned that by playing very specific notes on his veena, which is an indian music instrument, Udayana could get an elephant to do anything.
As a veena player myself, I can attest to the difficulty that Udayana had overcome here.
One of the first things he did as he mastered the skill was to summon his elephants and ask them for tomatoes, loads of tomatoes. That would finally make his mother shut up.
The Rishi, the expert in Elephant communication, smacked his forehead and wondered why he didn’t think of asking the elephants. He could have avoided 15 years of nagging from his guest about Tomato juice baths. Truly he had shown great restraint to continue to be hospitable. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been thinking rationally.
Or maybe this time the student was just a step ahead of the teacher. Udayana certainly showed that when he played more notes on the Veena, asking the elephants if they knew the path back to Kaushambi. The Elephants, who ever avid travelers, knew exactly where Kaushambi was.
It was a nice holiday city, they said. A little commercial. A decent place to get a good bite to eat. They rated it four stars. They would have rated it five stars if the grass had been just a little bit greener.
Udayana was on the Veena again, giving out more commands. Soon, Udayana and Mrigavati were on one of the elephant’s backs, making the long trip back to Kaushambi. Mrigavati agreed to leave only after she realized that Kaushambi probably still had her tomato juice swimming pool.
It took a few days. And when they got there, they introduced themselves to the crowd. Now, you might expect that people would be a little suspicious. A Queen disappeared 15 years ago. And now this lady appeared with a boy who claimed to be the heir to the throne? But the people of Kaushambi easily believed Mrigavati and Udayana’s story. The King had gotten a little too old to remember Mrigavati. But the mention of the Tomato juice swimming pool rang a faint bell, and he used that as an excuse to give up his throne to Udayana. He had had enough of ruling, and was desperately looking forward to returning to a life of quite retirement full of Golf and fishing.
The gamble paid off for Kaushambi because under Udayana’s leadership the Kingdom prospered. Udayana was able to use his elephants to control everything that made it impossible to defeat his armies in battle. Because Elephants were the equivalent of tanks in Ancient Indian warfare.
A neighboring King Pradyota of Ujjain was getting increasingly worried about Udayana’s suddenly growing influence. Pradyota and his ministers hatched a plan. So, Udayana could control elephants, yeah? His strength was exactly what they were going to exploit as a weakness.
A couple of days later, some people rushed in to Udayana court to report something remarkable. It was a white elephant. Literally. A white colored elephant. And it was spotted in the forest that lay between Kaushambi and Ujjain.
Udayana was excited by this news. He had all kinds of elephants, and they did a lot of the work for him. But he’d never had a white elephant before. He quickly summoned his veena grabbed an elephant and went off into the forest. He had some bodyguards naturally but not his entire army. And that was exactly what King Pradyota had hoped for.
Udayana found the elephant. Which wasn’t doing much. It seemed very much like a statue. Except once or twice it moved its trunk and tail.
Udayana got down from his own elephant, took his veena and sat close to where the white elephant was. He started playing his veena, but the white elephant did not move. Something was off, maybe the white elephant couldn’t hear properly? Udayana tried again. He gave the elephant the command to nod its head. A simple command really. It just went “Sa re ga ma” on his veena. But it didn’t work.
Udayana wondered if maybe the command was “Sa ga re ma”? “Sa Re ga ma” seemed to be the command for the elephant to open its belly and let soldiers come tumbling out, and the elephant didn’t nod its head yet.
Wait a minute, thought Udayana. An elephant with a belly full of soldiers? Soldiers dressed in the Ujjain army uniform? “Uh oh,” he realized what was going on. But it was too late now.
Udayana was taken prisoner. His 3 bodyguards were no match for the 20 Ujjain soldiers hidden in the fake elephant.
Udayana was promptly put into a prison in Ujjain. He was regularly visited by Pradyota who only came there to gloat. And to ask him for the secret of controlling elephants.
Udayana’s reaction initially surprised Pradyota. Yes, Udayana would love to share the secret to Pradyota. All that Pradyota had to agree to do was to admit that Udayana was better than him.
Not much of an ask really, but Pradyota had one BIG ego. He refused to admit anything of the sort. Upon realizing that Udayana was willing to teach his skills to anyone who could accept Udayana’s superiority, Pradyota sent his own daughter. Her name was Vasavadatta.
Vasavadatta politely admitted to Udayana that as he was about to become her teacher, she gladly accepted that he was better than her. Udayana immediately agreed to teach her. “See, that was easy” Vasavadatta whispered to her Dad.
After that Vasavadatta had private lessons from Udayana everyday. In a part of the prison where no one else could hear them.
This went on for a while. And while Pradyota was convinced that his daughter had almost learned the full secret, the reality was a little different. Udayana wasn’t teaching anymore. And Vasavadatta wasn’t really learning Elephant-controlling spells on the Veena. She was learning about Udayana, and Udayana was learning about her. The two had fallen hopelessly in love.
The couple decided they were made for each other. And that they must escape back to Kaushambi. That was the only way out. Luckily for them the path forward was easy. Vasavadatta herself suggested it, but Pradyota himself had given her the most important tool here.
Vasavadatta spent the next few days with Udayana planning and writing out exactly the sequence of notes that would get her to freedom.
So finally the appointed day arrived, when she was going to demonstrate her new skills to her very proud father. In fact, Pradyota was a good father. He clapped and encouraged his daughter even when she seemed to misdirect the test elephant so badly. She had it smash the prison walls instead of smashing Udayana who was behind them. But Pradyota cheered on. It was only after the elephant picked up first Udayana and second Vasavadatta herself, and zoomed off in the Kaushambi direction, that Pradyota realized that he had been had. His own daughter had betrayed him. He sighed and wondered where he’d gone wrong in parenting her.
That’s where the story ends. Kinda. There is a bit more to Udayana and Vasavadatta, but that’s a story for another time.
Some notes on the show
I have to admit I’ve taken a little liberty with the whole Tomato obsession that Mrigavati had. In the original story she only cared about being painted red all over. You might have already figured this out if you know that Tomatoes only came to India via Portugese explorers in the 16th century.
In case you are not familiar with the Trojan horse, it features in a story of a war between the Greeks and Trojans. The story goes that Helen, the wife of a King ran away with Parris of Troy. The Greeks didn’t like that, naturally. So they fought a war. Only the city of Troy did a pretty good job holding the fort and the Greeks laid seige but despite attempting for years they could not find a way in. Finally one day, all of the Greek ships left. That’s it, they had packed up and sailed away, in apparent defeat. The Trojans even received a gift. A giant wooden horse, on rollers! So it was easy to move. The Trojans brought the horse into the fort. They celebrated that night, and that’s when Greek soldiers – who had been hiding inside the giant wooden horse emerged and open the gates from inside. The Greeks had only pretended to sail away, they were all hiding just outside the gates. They slaughtered the Trojans.
Initially regarded as mythology it turned out to be fact when the city of Troy was in fact discovered in Turkey.
The Trojan war happened many centuries before this story, but it’s injudicious to say that the plot element of the soldiers hiding inside the fake elephant is based on the story of the Trojan war.
The elephant in today’s story was so well made that it fooled people into thinking it was a real Elephant. I guess the science of Taxidermy and Animatronics had advanced a little in the intervening centuries.
As for the tomato bath, that has no relation to the famous festival in Spain that was even featured in Bollywood – in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The giant bird that carried off the Queen was a bit of a mystery.
The Brihatkatha are a series of stories that have not survived but have morphed into derivative works like the Kathasaritasagara which we have also covered before on the show. But they live on in the minds of people who have the ability to travel back and forth in time. Like I do.
We’ll cover more Brihatkatha stories in the future but for next time….
Next Time
We’ll do a Gujarati Folk Tale. This one is about a prince who is cheated out of his throne and changed into a fish. He compensates first by becoming very large very quickly and second by demanding a human wife. This story also features a seven-headed snake and magic rocks.