Urvaśī and Purūravas

Summary

Urvaśī is an apsaras, one of the women of water and sky in Hindu myth, who married a mortal king, Purūravas, and lived with him under conditions; when the conditions broke, she left him. Theirs is the oldest love story in Indian literature: a dialogue between the two in Ṛgveda 10.95, then a full story in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 11.5.1 that explains the dialogue verse by verse.

The Śatapatha says Urvaśī loved Purūravas, son of Iḍā, and when she married him told him: you shall embrace me three times a day, you shall not lie with me against my will, and I must not see you naked, for such is the way to behave to us women. She lived with him a long time, until she was with child by him. Then the Gandharvas, the apsarases' companions, said: Urvaśī has lived too long among men; let us find a way to bring her back. A ewe with two lambs was tied to her couch, and the Gandharvas stole one of the lambs; she cried: they are taking my darling as if I lived where there is no man; then they stole the other. Purūravas thought: how can a place where I am be without a man? and sprang up after them naked, too hurried to put on his garment; the Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, she saw him naked as by daylight, and vanished.

He wandered weeping all over Kurukṣetra until he came to a lotus lake, where he saw the apsarases swimming in the shape of water-birds; Urvaśī recognised him, and they showed themselves to him. He said: stay, my wife, let us speak together. She said: what am I to do with your words? I have gone from you like the first of the dawns; go home, Purūravas; I am like the wind, hard to catch. He said: then your friend will go away today and never come back, to lie in the lap of destruction or be eaten by wolves. She said: do not die, let the wolves not devour you; there is no friendship with women; theirs are the hearts of hyenas. Then her heart softened, and she said: come on the last night of the year; you shall lie with me one night, and your son will have been born.

He came on the last night of the year and found a golden palace; he lay with her, and she said: tomorrow the Gandharvas will grant you a boon; say, let me be one of you. They gave him fire in a pan and said: sacrifice with it and you will become one of us. He took the fire and the boy, set the fire down in the forest and went into the village with the boy; when he came back the fire had become an aśvattha tree, the sacred fig, and the pan a śamī tree. He went back to the Gandharvas, who taught him to make the upper and lower fire-drilling sticks from the wood of that tree; he kindled fire with them, sacrificed, and became one of the Gandharvas.

The idea their story turns on is that a wife from the other world stays while the condition holds and goes when it breaks. The one who breaks it is not the husband alone: the Gandharvas steal the lambs and send the lightning that shows her what she forbade. Then the loss ends in fire: the man who lost his wife from heaven gains a way to her people by a fire he drills with his own hands, so the love story of the Śatapatha is also a story of the origin of the sacrificial fire.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, a reading proposed on the method, since none of the project's essays reads her name. Without its feminine ending, Urvaśī leaves u, r, v and ś, which are the letters of Arabic ʿarūs in order: the ʿ drops and leaves a u, as it drops in most correspondences in the Juthoor table; the w is the w of the pattern faʿūl; and ś answers s. In Lane ʿarūs is the bridegroom and the bride in the days of their wedding, ʿirs is a man's wife, aʿrasa bi-ahlihi is he went in to his wife, and ʿarrasa al-qawm is they alighted in the last part of the night to rest, then journeyed on. Urvaśī is a bride who stays among men and then departs, and returns to her husband on the last night of the year for a single night. Purūravas means in Sanskrit "crying much": purū, much, and ravas, a cry. We read the first part as wafr, abundance, with p answering f.

Linguistic Root

Monier-Williams gives two views of Urvaśī. In the larger dictionary she is from uru, wide, and aś, to pervade, "widely extending", a name of the dawn. In the first edition, and in Macdonell, she is uru-vaśī, from vaś, to desire, meaning "ardour, desire". In Ṛgveda 10.95.17 Purūravas calls her "her who fills air and measures out the region", and in verse 2 she says "I have gone from thee like the first of Mornings", so each view finds support in the dialogue.

The Arabic reading ʿarūs counts the four sounds in order: the dropped ʿ as the first u, r as r, w as w, and ś as s. The limit that keeps it open is that it reads the whole name as one stem, while the Indian grammarians divide it in two, uru and -vaśī or -aśī, so the reading crosses the line between them. Purūravas has a half reading: purū, much, answers wafr with f and r, the initial w dropped. For ravas, a cry, the nearest we found is Lane's rasīs, love that has entered the heart and settled there, with r and s and the v unanswered; it describes his state, not his crying, and is weak.

Key Mythic Narratives

Purūravas and the sacrificial fires

Monier-Williams says Purūravas is the son of Budha and Iḍā and ancestor of the kings of the lunar race, among them Puru, Bharata and Kuru, forebears of the heroes of the Mahābhārata, and that he is said to have instituted the three sacrificial fires. So the king who drilled fire from the tree to reach his wife's people is the forefather of the brothers whom Draupadī, born from fire, married.

Urvaśī in Kālidāsa

Their story became a play by Kālidāsa, the Vikramorvaśīya, "Urvaśī won by valour", as Monier-Williams notes.

Symbolic Reading

Monier-Williams says, after Yāska's Nirukta, that Purūravas belongs to the middle region of the universe and may be connected with the sun as Urvaśī is with the dawn. On that reading the story is the dawn leaving the sun every morning: "I have gone from thee like the first of Mornings". Here Urvaśī meets Uṣas, the dawn of the Ṛgveda.

The Śatapatha gives another reading in its own words: the story explains why the fire-drilling sticks are made of aśvattha wood, so it is the story of a rite, and the text ends: let him therefore make himself an upper and a lower stick of aśvattha wood. The fire of Agni is the road between men and the people of the sky.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In an Amazigh tale from the Sous and the Atlas a woman from the sky comes to the youth Hammu Unamir by night; he catches her, and she agrees to marry him on condition he build her a house no one can enter; his mother finds the key and opens the room, the woman goes back to the sky, and he climbs after her. Urvaśī marries Purūravas on conditions, the conditions break, she goes back, and he follows her to the lake.

In the Norse Völundarkviða swan-maidens come to Völundr and his brothers by a lake, live with them as wives seven winters, and fly away. In the Śatapatha the apsarases swim in the lake in the shape of water-birds, and Eggeling notes that scholars have compared the veil by which Urvaśī becomes invisible with the veil by which the swan-maidens change their form.

In Japan the sea god's daughter marries Hoori; when her labour comes she tells him not to look at her; he looks and sees her as a wani, and she leaves her child, closes the sea road and goes back. Purūravas is seen naked in the lightning, and Urvaśī vanishes. In both stories the broken condition is a sight, and the child stays with the father.

In the Roman Apuleius, Cupid comes to Psyche in the dark and tells her never to seek to see his face; she raises the lamp, sees him, and he flies from her, and she wanders in search of him. Both are the story of a spouse who visits by night on condition that his form not be seen, and who goes when it is.

In Japan Kaguya-hime, the woman come down from the moon, lives a while among people until her own people come from the sky and take her, and two thousand soldiers cannot stop them; see Kaguya-hime.