Vishwamitraविश्वामित्र

Vishwamitra (विश्वामित्र) is the great example in Hindu tradition of status won rather than inherited. Born a kshatriya, a king of the Kaushika line ruling from Kanyakubja, he abandoned his throne to pursue the spiritual power of the brahmins, and after austerities spanning thousands of years by the reckoning of the stories, he was acknowledged as a brahmarshi, a brahmin seer, by his own great rival Vasishtha. To him tradition ascribes the Gayatri mantra, the most sacred verse of the Rigveda, and the third mandala of that Veda is attributed to his family.

The quarrel with Vasishtha

The story begins with a cow. Visiting the hermitage of Vasishtha, King Kaushika saw the sage's wish-fulfilling cow, Nandini, feed his entire army, and demanded her for himself. Vasishtha refused; the cow could not be taken by force, and the king's soldiers were routed by the powers she summoned. Humiliated, Kaushika understood that the might of arms was nothing beside the power of tapas, and he renounced his kingdom to acquire it. The rivalry between the two seers runs through the literature: again and again Vishwamitra's accumulated merit is spent in anger or pride, and he must begin again, until at last he conquers not Vasishtha but his own passions. Historians have noted that the feud may preserve a genuine Vedic memory, for the Rigveda associates both seers with the court of King Sudas, Vishwamitra as an earlier priest and Vasishtha as his supplanter at the time of the famous Battle of the Ten Kings — a professional displacement that legend transmuted into the contest of a thousand tales.

Trials and falls

The most famous interruption of his penance came from heaven itself. Indra, alarmed at the sage's growing power, sent the apsara Menaka to seduce him; from their union was born Shakuntala, mother of the emperor Bharata. Other episodes show the same volatile grandeur. For the king Trishanku, who wished to ascend to heaven in his mortal body, Vishwamitra created by his own power a rival heaven when the gods refused entry, leaving Trishanku suspended between worlds. He subjected the truthful king Harishchandra to trials that stripped him of kingdom, family and caste, only to restore everything when the king's integrity proved unbreakable. In each tale the sage's temper is the obstacle, and each fall lengthens the road to his goal.

Guru of Rama

In the Ramayana, Vishwamitra appears in his perfected form: the stern teacher who comes to Ayodhya to demand the young Rama's help against the demons defiling his sacrifices. Under his guidance Rama slays the demoness Tataka, receives from the sage an arsenal of divine weapons, and is led to Mithila, where he breaks the bow of Shiva and wins Sita. The seer who had once coveted a cow ends as the maker of the epic's hero, and his title, brahmarshi, stands in tradition as proof that the highest station is open to relentless effort.