Once upon a time, in the days before Shiladitya was born, when the last king of Raja Kanaksen’s dynasty was still ruling Ballavipur, there stood a huge temple dedicated to Suryadev, the sun god, next to a sacred lake called Suryakund – the lake of Suryadev.
A very old priest lived there. He had no children or friends. Like the sun, alone in the infinite sky, the noble priest was a lonely being in that sun temple on the banks of the vast sacred lake, whose waters were as blue as the heavens above. The priest did everything himself – lighting the lamps in the temple, ringing the giant bell and performing the daily rituals at dawn and dusk. He had no servants, no followers and no disciples.
At daybreak and at twilight every day, the old Brahmin would perform the aarti dedicated to the god in the temple with a brass lamp that weighed thirty seers (roughly 30 kg). Every day the temple bell, as huge as the crown of a demon king, would be rung by his lean hand. “If I could get a companion,” he would think, “I could leave all these responsibilities to that person and die in peace.”
The god fulfilled his devotee’s wish. One evening, early in the winter month of Paush, when the sun had set and a dark fog obscured the world, the priest was locking the temple’s iron doors, as massive as the breast armour of the mighty Bhima. An ashen-faced Brahmin girl appeared before him – dressed in rags but very beautiful. It was as if the evening star, scared of the cold, was seeking refuge in the temple of Suryadev. The old man noticed that the girl, dressed in a widow’s garment, appeared to be well born.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked. The girl put her two small lotus petal-like hands together and said: “Lord, I ask for shelter. I am the only daughter of Devaditya, the Vedic scholar in the land of the Gurjars. My name is Subhaga, the lucky one. But I was widowed on the night of my wedding and my husband’s family threw me out as they believed that I had brought them ill luck. Lord, I had a mother, but she is no more now, please give me shelter.”
“My dear orphan,” said the priest. “What happy home can you expect here? I have neither food nor garments. I am very poor and have no friends.”
But even as the priest spoke these words a voice inside his head was telling him: “You poor lonely man, make this girl your friend, give her shelter.”
Let me give her a home, he thought. For eighty years I have worshipped the Sun God alone; now, at the end of my life, maybe I can leave that responsibility to this unfortunate girl.
Still, he hesitated. And then, suddenly, a single ray of the sun from the western sky pierced through the evening dark and fell on the desolate girl’s face. It was as if Suryadev were speaking directly to the priest – “Accept her, my dearest devotee. I have chosen this poor widowed girl to be in my service all her life.”
The priest bowed to his god and offered shelter in the Temple of the Sun to the daughter of Devaditya.
Years passed. Subhaga learnt all the temple tasks, but her soft, delicate hands could never manage to lift the thirty-seer lamp. So the old priest continued to perform the twice-daily aartis.
One day, Subhaga noticed that the priest’s frail body seemed to have reached its limits – the lamp was shaking in his hands. She went to the market at Ballavipur and bought a small lamp that weighed just one seer. “Father, please use this to do your aarti to Suryadev this evening,” she told the priest. He smiled and said: “The evening aarti has to be done with the same lamp that was used in the morning. Keep it. I will use the new lamp tomorrow, a new day.”
The next day, at noon, as the sun’s light flooded the earth, the priest taught Subhaga the holiest of all mantras to the Sun God. Suryadev himself would appear before his devotee when the mantra was uttered, but it could be used only once; a second utterance meant certain death. Then, as evening turned to night and the glow of the aarti lamp dimmed, the light of the priest’s life died softly. The sun sank, plunging the world in darkness. Subhaga was left all alone in the world.
She spent the first few days weeping over her loss. Then, one morning, she began clearing up the jungle around the temple and planting fruit trees and flowering plants. Many more days went by in cleaning the temple’s stone walls and painting leaves, flowers, birds, elephants and scenes from the Puranas and itihasa on them. Finally, Subhaga had nothing more to do. She would roam around in her orchard and among her flower beds. In some time, a few fruits started to ripen, a few flowers bloomed, and a few birds, colourful butterflies and a gaggle of children appeared.
The butterflies were happy with a little bit of nectar from the flowers, and the birds with pecking at one or two ripe fruits. The gang of naughty boys, however, would tear off the flowers, pluck the fruits and break the boughs of the trees. But Subhaga never scolded them and tolerated their mischief cheerfully. On the green grass under the trees, the little children would place their many-hued mats and play. And thus passed Subhaga’s days.
Excerpted with permission from Suryavamshi: The Sun Kings of Rajasthan, Abanindranath Tagore, translated from the Bengali by Sandipan Deb, Juggernaut.