Chapter 99 — The Mountain's Change

Lakshmana had told Rama how the horse sacrifice had released Indra from the stain that followed Vritra's death. Rama listened with pleasure. The precedent, he said, was as Lakshmana had described it. But it was not the only old account in which the rite's power had been made known.

Then, before Bharata and Lakshmana, Rama began another tale.

Long before, he said, there had been a king named Ila, child of Kardama and lord of Bahlika. Ila had brought the whole earth under royal authority and guarded the realm as a father guards a child: with watchfulness, care, and power held ready against harm. Gods and great beings honored this ruler. The daityas, nagas, rakshasas, gandharvas, and yakshas—all the formidable peoples named in the old world—paid respect. Even the three worlds feared the force of Ila's anger.

Ila was not a ruler made only of gentleness. In Chaitra, the bright spring month, the ordered kingdom was left behind for a forest. The king entered it with retainers, troops, and vehicles. The woods were lovely, but the hunt that passed through them was not a small royal diversion. Ila killed animals in immense numbers. Hundreds of thousands fell; still, the king was not satisfied.

The pursuit drove farther into a wild mountain country, toward a place where another power governed the ground itself.

There Shiva was with Uma, another name for Parvati, daughter of the mountain. To delight her, Shiva had taken female form. In the mountain spring and the woods around it, that play had altered every creature described as male. Beasts, birds, and all other living things within the place had become female.

Ila entered without knowing this condition had been laid upon the mountain.

Then the king saw it. The creatures about the party had changed. The companions who had ridden and marched in behind their ruler had changed. Ila looked down, and the same change had come to the king's own body. The royal hunt had passed into a place where its former order no longer held.

The sight brought deep distress. Ila recognized Shiva's work and was afraid. With the transformed retinue gathered behind, the king went to the god for protection.

Shiva stood with Uma and smiled at the royal petitioner.

“Rise, royal sage,” he said. “Ask for a boon—anything but the return of male form.”

The refusal struck at the one thing Ila had come to seek. Nothing was offered in its place. Ila, still in grief, did not choose another favor from Shiva. Instead, turning to Uma, Ila bowed with the whole self before the goddess.

“Lady of boons,” Ila said, “you are the giver of what is sought. You are gracious to the worlds. I honor you. Be favorable to me.”

Uma understood the desire that remained unspoken. She answered in Shiva's presence.

“The god may grant one half of a boon, and I the other,” she said. “Take as much of womanhood and manhood as you desire.”

The opening was strange, but it offered Ila a path where Shiva's first answer had offered none. Ila chose an alternating life: one month in female form, then one month again in male form.

Uma granted the request. Yet the boon carried a condition that would shape every scene that followed. In the months when Ila was male, Ila would not remember the life lived in female form. In the months when Ila was female, the earlier male life would be equally absent from memory.

The king of Bahlika accepted this divided gift. One month, Ila would be a woman of beauty beyond ordinary comparison; the next, again a man. But neither life would be able to look directly into the other.

Thus the ruler who had entered the mountain with an army began the first month in female form. The old kingdom, the hunt, the changed companions, and the divine words did not vanish from the story. They remained its cause. But their place in Ila's memory had closed, and the first month had begun.