Gandharva Explains the Brahmani's Curse on Kalmashapada
The gandharva explains the second, fatal curse upon King Kalmashapada. After the king, in his rakshasa form, devours a Brahmana, the man's grieving wife curses him to die if he ever unites with his own wife — and prophesies that the sage Vashishtha will father his heir instead.
The gandharva began his answer by reminding Arjuna of the first curse. King Kalmashapada of the solar dynasty had been cursed by Shakti, the son of sage Vashishtha, to become a rakshasa. Under that spell, the king left his city with his wife Madayanti, his eyes rolling with anger, and entered a dense, deserted forest. He roamed there, a beast among beasts.
Once, gripped by extreme hunger and exhaustion, he came upon a Brahmana and his wife in a lonely part of the woods. They were about to unite to conceive a child. Seeing the monstrous king, the terrified pair ran, their desire unsatisfied.
The king pursued them. He forcibly seized the Brahmana. The brahmani, seeing her husband captured, pleaded with the rakshasa who had once been a dharma-observing king.
“O king who is always rigid in his vows!” she cried. “You have been born in the solar dynasty. You have always been established in the path of dharma. Though you have been deprived of your senses through a curse, do not commit an evil act. My season had come. I was about to unite with my husband to obtain offspring. I have not been successful and have great need. Be merciful. Let my husband go.”
As she cried, the king cruelly ate her husband, as a tiger devours a deer.
The brahmani’s anger was absolute. Tears of grief and rage fell from her eyes onto the ground and burst into a blazing fire that consumed everything around them. Grief-stricken, enraged, she cursed rajarshi (royal sage) Kalmashapada.
“O evil-minded one! Today, you have cruelly devoured before my own eyes my illustrious and beloved husband, even though I was not satisfied. Therefore, through my curse, you will meet with instant death when you unite with your wife when she is in season.”
Then she delivered the prophecy that would reshape a lineage. “Rishi Vashishtha, whose sons you have eaten, will unite with your wife and she will give birth to a son. O worst of kings! That son will perpetuate your lineage.”
Having spoken the curse, the woman of the Angirasa lineage entered the flaming fire in front of him.
The gandharva then turned to the conclusion Arjuna sought. The immensely fortunate Vashishtha knew all this — the devouring, the curse, the prophecy — through his great austerities and yogic powers. He saw the entire future laid out by the brahmani’s words.
A long time later, King Kalmashapada was freed from the first curse, the one that had made him a rakshasa. He went to his wife Madayanti when she was in season, but she repulsed him. The king, deluded, had no memory of the brahmani’s curse. When Madayanti reminded him of the words that doomed him to death upon union, he remembered and was seized with great alarm.
It was for this reason, the gandharva concluded, that the king requested Vashishtha to accept his wife. The curse made union with his own queen fatal. The prophecy made union with the sage the only path to an heir. The king was not arranging a transgression. He was arranging the fulfillment of a curse to save his lineage from extinction.