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Skandha 4, adhyayas 2-7 · Saptah day 2
A father invites every god but his daughter's husband, and Sati goes anyway — the insult that ends in fire.
The quarrel began with a man who did not stand up.
The Prajapatis, the lords of creation, had gathered for a great sacrifice, and when Daksha entered the hall, shining with his own importance, the assembly rose to greet him. Two did not. Brahma kept his seat because he was Daksha's father. Shiva kept his seat as well, and Shiva was Daksha's son-in-law, married to his daughter Sati.
Daksha took it as an insult before the whole world. He spoke against Shiva at length: a shameless man who haunts burning grounds among ghosts, smeared with ash; a man to whom he had given his daughter only because Brahma had urged it. Then he cursed him to have no share in the offerings the gods receive. Shiva said nothing. His attendant Nandishvara answered with a curse of his own, that Daksha would one day wear a goat's face; Bhrigu cursed Shiva's followers in return; and Shiva left the hall, saddened. The bitterness lasted a very long time.
Later Brahma made Daksha chief of the Prajapatis, and Daksha began a sacrifice of his own. He invited every god, sage and ancestor, and left Shiva out. Sati, on Kailasa, watched the wives of the gods flying past in their aerial cars, dressed for a festival, and learned where they were going. It was her father's house. Her sisters would be there, and her mother.
She asked Shiva to go with her. His answer is one of the gentlest speeches in the book, and one of the most exact. One may visit a relative's house uninvited, he said, but not when the host's eyes are already hot with anger at you. Wounds from arrows heal; the harsh words of one's own people go on hurting. He explained, too, why he had not risen in the assembly: the reverence he pays is offered in the mind, to the Lord who dwells in a pure heart, not to a body walking into a hall. And he told her plainly that if she went, it would end in harm to her.
Sati stood torn between the two, and went. Shiva's attendants followed her with the bull Nandi.
At the sacrifice no one welcomed her. Only her mother and sisters embraced her; everyone else was afraid of Daksha. She looked at the altar and saw that no portion had been set aside for Rudra. Then she spoke before them all: that her father hated the one being who hates no one; that the two syllables of Shiva's name destroy the sin of whoever says them; that she was ashamed to carry a body that came from him. She sat down facing north, drew her breath and attention inward in yoga, and a fire rising from within consumed her body.
Narada carried the news to Kailasa. Shiva tore out a lock of his matted hair and struck it on the ground, and from it rose Virabhadra, huge and dark. Shiva's host fell on the sacrifice and broke it apart. Bhrigu lost his beard, Bhaga his eyes, Pusha his teeth. Virabhadra cut off Daksha's head and threw it into the sacrificial fire.
Many retellings stop there. The Bhagavatam does not. The gods went to Brahma, who had stayed away from the sacrifice, as Vishnu had, and Brahma told them the only way forward was to ask Shiva's pardon. They found him seated calmly beneath a banyan tree on Kailasa, and Brahma praised him.
Shiva's reply holds no anger at all. He does not count the faults of the ignorant, he said, any more than one counts the offences of children. Then he restored them one by one. Daksha would live, with the head of the goat from the sacrifice. Bhaga would see his share through Mitra's eyes. Pusha would eat food ground fine. Bhrigu would wear a goat's beard.
Daksha woke, saw Shiva, and could not speak at first for the feeling that rose in him. When he could, he praised the son-in-law he had cursed and said the punishment had been a kindness. The sacrifice was completed, and Vishnu appeared at it. He told Daksha that he, Brahma and Shiva are one, and that whoever sees them as separate does not see truly.
Sati did return, though not in that body or to that father. The chapter closes by telling that she was born again as the daughter of Himavan and Mena, and came back to Shiva as his wife. It is the fourth book's first great story, and it states a question the book keeps asking: what a sacrifice is worth without humility. Its answer is the rebuilt altar, with the Lord standing at the centre of it and the insulted god restored to his share.
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