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वसिष्ठोपाख्यान (vasiSThopAkhyAna)

 
Mahabharata
English
[Vasishṭhopākhyāna(ṃ)]
(“the episode relating to Vasishṭha”). § 223 (cf. Caitrarathap.). Arjuna asked: “Why did Kalmāshapāda command his queen to go to Vasishṭha? And was this an act of sin on the part of Vasishṭha?” The Gandharva said: Under the influence of the curse, Kalmāshapāda, in anger, went out of his capital, accompanied by his wife. In a solitary part of the woods he saw a brahman and his wife (Āṅgirasī, v. 6908) embracing each other. The couple ran away, but Kalmāshapāda forcibly seized the brahman. The brāhmaṇī asked him to liberate her husband, but he cruelly devoured him. The tears that the woman shed blazed up like fire and consumed everything in that place. The brāhmaṇī cursed the rājarshi, saying that he should meet with instant death when cohabiting with his wife, and that his wife should have a son from Vasishṭha, whose children he had devoured, and that child should be the propagator of his race. Then she entered the fire. Vasishṭha, by his ascetic power, immediately knew all about it. And long after this, when the rājarshi became freed from his curse, he approached his wife Madayantī, not remembering the curse of the brāhmaṇī. Hearing, however, the words of his wife, he recollected the curse, and, therefore, he appointed Vasishṭha to beget a son on his queen (I, 182).