king ordered sweets. His wife laughed, saying,
“I never knew I had such an ignorant husband!
How can we eat sweets when we are so wet? You
don’t understand Sanskrit well enough to know
that I said, ‘Stop splashing me!’ ‘Stop splashing’
in Sanskrit sounds like ‘bring sweets’ if you don’t
understand the simple grammatical rule that two
words often run together!”
The king thereupon returned to his palace
and shut himself in his rooms. For the rest of the
day he sat silently staring into space, refusing all
food. When his two wisest ministers, Sarvavarma
and Gunadhya, arrived to help, the king broke
his silence, asking, “How long, my ministers, will
it take me to learn Sanskrit if I work hard? What
good is it to be a king, to have all this wealth,
all these wives, these lands, if I am ignorant?”
First Sage Gunadhya answered: “Most people
need 12 years to learn Sanskrit grammar, but I
will teach you in six years!” Sarvavarma jealously
retorted, “The king does not have time to spend
six years in such hardship. I will teach you in six
months!” Gunadhya made this vow: “Sarvavarma,
if you accomplish such an impossible feat, I shall
renounce Sanskrit, Prakrit, and all the vernacular
languages.” Sarvavarma replied angrily, “And if I
don’t accomplish this, I shall carry your shoes on
my head for 12 years!”
The king was happy, feeling he would soon
be rid of his ignorance. Sarvavarma knew that
what he had promised was impossible. He prayed
to SARASVATI, goddess of learning. As a result of
her intervention Sarvavarma was able to teach
the king Sanskrit very quickly. The king bowed
down to Sarvavarma, calling him “great teacher.”
Gunadhya, having lost the bet, left the kingdom
with two of his disciples.
Gunadhya traveled in silence since he had
vowed to give up all known languages. During
his wanderings, he entered a wild forest, where
he met a group of Paishachas, demons who spoke
their seemingly incomprehensible demon lan-
guage, used only in remote parts of India. The
sage was able to learn this unusual language and
begin speaking again, since the language was not
one of the three types he had sworn to give up.
Gunadhya was now able to understand the
words of a wild-looking old forest dweller. This
man greeted Gunadhya joyfully as if he had been
awaiting this moment for many years, and in fact
he had. He was a celestial who had been cursed to
become a man, but he knew the curse would be
lifted if he told a certain story to Gunadhya, who
had been the cursed man’s companion in a previ-
ous life. The curse would end if Gunadhya could
make the story famous.
When Gunadhya realized the man’s true iden-
tity, he appealed to him: “Tell the story told by
SHIVA so that our curses will all end!” As the man
recounted the divine tale, which comprised seven
stories in the Paishachi language, the area where
he sat seemed covered with a canopy of celestial
beings hovering as they listened in the air above
his head. Finishing his story the forest man
returned to the celestial realm.
For the next seven years, Gunadhya recorded
the story he had heard in 700,000 couplets, using
the demon language. Since he had no ink and no
paper, the great poet wrote the story’s verses on
tree bark in his own blood. When he finished he
sent it to the king Satavahana, so that it would
spread through the world. But when the king,
who now knew Sanskrit, saw this disgusting book
written in blood in a low language, he ordered it
thrown away.
Gunadhya grew sad and depressed. He went
with his students to the top of a hill and made a
sacred fire. He had saved the last seventh of the
tale, consisting of 100,000 verses, because his stu-
dents loved it. As he was reading this tale aloud
and beginning to burn its pages, every animal in
the surrounding area listened and wept.
In the meantime, the king had fallen ill and
needed meat, but because all the animals were lis-
tening to Gunadhya and not eating, they were too
lean to kill. When the king heard this, he asked the
hunters to lead him to the man telling the tale. He
recognized Gunadhya, who appeared to be a forestK 172 Gunadhya