Chapter 11

Dhruva

A child was lifted off a lap, and walked from there until he came to rest in the sky

The lap he did not get

King Uttanapada had two queens, Suniti and Suruchi, and Suruchi was the one he favoured.

One day five-year-old Dhruva, Suniti's son, tried to climb onto his father's lap.

Suruchi stopped him.

"This place is not yours," she said. "You were not born from me. If you want such a place, perform penance and be born as my son in another life."

The king said nothing.

To his mother

Dhruva went to his mother.

Suniti did not pretend the insult had not happened. But she also did not tell him that a king's affection could simply be demanded back.

Instead, she pointed him toward something larger: seek a place no one can take away from you.

That same night, a five-year-old child left home.

In the forest

Narada met him on the way and tried to persuade him to return. Dhruva was too young, he said, for such severe penance.

Dhruva would not turn back.

So Narada gave him a mantra and taught him how to proceed.

The austerity intensified month by month: first fruit, then leaves, then water, then air. By the fifth month Dhruva was standing on one leg and controlling even his breath.

At last Vishnu appeared before him.

The one who came to ask, and did not ask

And then comes the turn that gives the story its force.

Dhruva no longer asks for the thing that sent him into the forest.

His father's lap, the rivalry with Suruchi, the humiliation — all of it has become too small.

Instead, he is granted a place in the sky that does not move while the other stars turn around it.

That fixed point is remembered as Dhruva, the Pole Star.

Note: Dhruva's story is found in the Vishnu Purana (first amsha) and the Bhagavata Purana (fourth skandha) — it is the Puranas' own story and does not come from the Ramayana or the Mahabharata. The detail of the months of penance and Narada's giving of the mantra come at length in the Bhagavata. The connection of this story to the pole star is recorded in the texts themselves and is not a later addition.

Source: from several texts, Dhruva

Now — how much stayed with you?

What happened?

What made Dhruva leave home?

  • His father drove him out of the kingdom
  • He had been cursed
  • His stepmother lifted him off his father's lap and said the place was not his
  • He went to the forest with his mother
Read the whole story — One sentence, and a child

There is no asura in this story, no battle, no boon. Only a house, and something that was said.

What Suruchi said was cruel, but there was a challenge inside it — "go and do penance." Dhruva took that challenge literally.

And the story does not let the king off. He was present, he heard it, and he stayed silent. The story records that.

Who said it?

"A place nobody can take from you is not got by asking." — who said this to Dhruva?

  • Suruchi
  • His mother Suniti
  • Narada
  • King Uttanapada
Read the whole story — A mother who did not soothe him

Suniti's part in this story is small, and it is the most useful part of it.

She gave her son no false comfort and did not curse her rival. She kept it straight — what happened was harsh, and asking will get you nothing.

The whole story turns on that one sentence. What follows is not revenge, it is an attempt.

Who am I?

I met him on the road and told him to go back. When he would not, I gave him the mantra myself. Who am I?

  • Narada
  • Suniti
  • Shukracharya
  • Jamadagni
Read the whole story — Narada, again

Narada has already appeared in this gatha — cursing Nalakubara and Manigriva into trees, in the episode told in Krishna-Leela.

Here his work runs the other way. He comes to stop the boy, and on hearing the refusal, he helps.

It is his recurring manner: he sets a test, and when the test is passed he opens the road.

Why is that?

Why, when Vishnu stood before him, did Dhruva not ask for the thing he had left home for?

  • Because he had forgotten why he came
  • Because Vishnu stopped him from asking
  • Because he was afraid
  • Because the thing he had set out for had come to seem small to him
Read the whole story — The asking changed on the road

This is the best turn in the story, and it is often left out.

The child set out for a seat — his father's lap, a place above his stepmother's. Five months later that thing was of no use to him.

The story does not say he was happy because he got something better. It says the one doing the asking had changed.

Fact

What did Dhruva finally receive?

  • His father's throne
  • Immortality
  • The boon of being born Suruchi's son
  • A place in the sky that does not turn, around which everything else turns
Read the whole story — The star that does not move

The pole star appears in almost the same place in the north, and the other stars appear to wheel around it all night.

The story takes exactly that visible fact: the one who was lifted off a lap was given the place nobody can lift him from.

It is one of those places where a Puranic story and something actually visible in the sky are tied to each other.

Riddle

I was five years old when I left home. Five months later I no longer wanted the thing I had left for. Who am I?

  • Prahlada
  • Dhruva
  • Bali
  • Bharata
Read the whole story — Two children, two kinds of stubbornness

Two children hold out in this gatha — Prahlada and Dhruva — and their stubbornness is entirely different.

Prahlada asks for nothing; he only refuses to stop, and he stands his ground inside the house.

Dhruva sets out to ask for something, and loses the asking on the way. With one of them the world changes; with the other, he does.

Fact

Which texts is Dhruva's story found in?

  • Only in later folk tales
  • Only in the Mahabharata
  • Only in the Ramayana
  • In the first amsha of the Vishnu Purana and the fourth skandha of the Bhagavata Purana
Read the whole story — The Puranas' own story

Dhruva's story is among those episodes that belong to the Puranas themselves — they do not come from the Ramayana or the Mahabharata.

The Vishnu Purana places it in its very first amsha, which is to say very early in the sequence.

The Bhagavata Purana enlarges it, and it is there that the detail of the months of penance is found — the thing this story is best known by.

Why is that?

Why are stories like this placed in the second part of this gatha, after the avatars?

  • Because the Vishnu Purana is a book not only of those who came down but of those who stayed
  • Because the avatar stories had run out
  • Because these stories are short
  • Because there was nowhere else to put them
Read the whole story — Two halves, one book

The spine of this gatha was stated at the start: ten descents, and six who stayed.

The first ten chapters belong to those who came from above. The remaining six belong to those who were here and who did not let go.

Both kinds of story run side by side in the Vishnu Purana, which is why this gatha is built in two halves as well.

Put it in order

What is the correct order of this chapter's events?

  • Going to the forest → Suruchi's taunt → meeting Narada → the Dhruva star
  • Meeting Narada → Suruchi's taunt → going to the forest → the Dhruva star
  • Suruchi's taunt → his mother's words → going to the forest and meeting Narada → the penance → the Dhruva star
  • The penance → Suruchi's taunt → his mother's words → the forest
Read the whole story — A decision taken in one night

The fastest part of this order is the opening — a taunt, a word with his mother, and leaving home that same night.

After that the story slows down and runs in months.

That difference in pace is itself the meaning: an injury takes a moment, and the answer to it takes months to build.

Who said it?

"This place is not yours." — who said it?

  • Suniti
  • Narada
  • Suruchi, lifting Dhruva off the king's lap
  • King Uttanapada
Read the whole story — A sentence that became a story

The whole story begins from one sentence, and that sentence belongs to no battle and no curse — it is said inside a house.

The texts do not soften it and do not defend Suruchi.

But the end of the story turns that sentence over: the one who was told the place was not his is given the one place that could not belong to anybody else.