Purūravas (Kūrma Purāṇa)
Purūravas was the first great king of the Candra-vaṃśa, the Lunar dynasty. He was the son of Ilā and Budha, who was the son of Candra (the Moon). The Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa names him as the forefather of the Lunar line and gives his six sons, born of the apsarā (celestial dancer) Urvaśī.
From his son Āyu came Nahuṣa, then Yayāti, and then Pūru. Through them the line of Candra-vaṃśa kings descends, including the Pāṇḍavas and the Yādavas. Other Purāṇas and the Mahābhārata also speak of him, and each account is given below.
Lineage
Purūravas was born from the union of Ilā and Budha. Ilā was the first-born of Manu Vaivasvata, called the eldest and best of Manu’s children. She came to Budha, son of Candra, as his wife. Their union gave birth to the great Purūravas. (Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa, Pūrvārdha, Chapter 20)
The Kūrma Purāṇa also says that Ilā, in her female form, pleased the pitṛs (ancestors) through the birth of Purūravas, who gave contentment to his forefathers. In her changed form Ilā also bore the sons Utkala, Gaya and Vinata. (Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa, Pūrvārdha, Chapter 20)
Rule and sons
Purūravas became king and ruled his realm with distinction. The Kūrma Purāṇa says he had six sons, as bright as Indra, all born of the apsarā Urvaśī. They are Āyu, Māyu, Amāyu, the brave Viśvāyu, Śatāyu and Śrutāyu. The text calls them divya Urvaśī-putras (divine sons of Urvaśī). (Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa, Pūrvārdha, Chapter 22)
Descendants
The Kūrma Purāṇa follows the Candra-vaṃśa from Purūravas to his son Āyu, and then to Āyu’s son Nahuṣa, who shone like Indra. Nahuṣa had five sons by Virajā, the daughter of the pitṛ-devas: Yātī, Yayāti, Saṃyāti, Āyāti and Aśvaka. Of these, Yayāti became the most powerful and famous. (Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa, Pūrvārdha, Chapter 22)
From Yayāti’s son Pūru came the Paurava line. From Yadu came the Yādavas, the dynasty of Śrī Kṛṣṇa himself.
The Urvaśī account in the Kūrma Purāṇa
The Kūrma Purāṇa calls the six sons “Urvaśī-putras” and so links Purūravas with the apsarā Urvaśī. The account of their union, the conditions, the separation, the kindling of the three sacred fires and Purūravas’s Aila Gīta on vairāgya (detachment) is not told in the Kūrma Purāṇa chapters given here. These chapters follow the line of descent of the Lunar dynasty. (Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa, Pūrvārdha, Chapter 22)
The Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa account
The Brahmāṇḍa Mahā Purāṇa (Madhyama Bhāga, Chapter 66) tells of Purūravas’s time with Urvaśī. It speaks of sixty-four years of life together in five regions of the earth. The gandharvas stole Urvaśī’s two goats, and this led to the discovery of the three sacred fires. Purūravas met Urvaśī again at Kurukṣetra, and six sons were born to them. The six sons of Purūravas by Urvaśī are Āyu, Dhīmān, Amāvasu, Dṛḍhāyu, Vanāyu and Śatāyu. (Brahmāṇḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Madhyama Bhāga, Chapter 66)
The Vāyu Purāṇa account
The Vāyu Mahā Purāṇa (Uttarārdha, Chapter 2) begins with the character of Purūravas. He was tejasvin (full of splendour) and known for generosity. He was a yajvā (one who performs yajña) who gave lands to yajvā brāhmaṇas. He was a brahmavādin (speaker on Brahman) whom enemies could not defeat in battle. He was handsome beyond compare in all the worlds, and truthful in speech. Ūrvaśī, the famous apsarā, put aside her shyness and chose this king, who knew dharma and ruled his senses, as her beloved.
Ūrvaśī had been cursed by Brahmā to live in the mortal world. She came to Purūravas only under a formal agreement, which she needed as the means of her release from the curse. She set four conditions:
- Purūravas must never be seen by her naked.
- He must not force union when she did not wish it.
- He must always guard two rams kept near her sleeping place.
- She would live on ghee alone as food.
As long as these conditions held, she would stay with him.
For sixty-four years Purūravas and Ūrvaśī lived together in great happiness. They lived in Kubera’s Caitraratha gardens, on the banks of the Mandākinī, in the great city of Alakā, in Indra’s Nandana-vana, on the slopes of Gandhamādana, on the divine peaks of Meru, in the northern region of Uttarakuru, and in the holy Kalāpa-grāma. These were all the most beautiful regions of the three worlds, visited by the devas. The gandharvas were troubled to see one of their finest beings held for so long by a mortal, and decided to part them.
Viśvāvasu, the gandharva most skilled in speech, went by night to the place where Purūravas and Ūrvaśī slept. He stole one of the two rams, which she guarded as her own sons. Ūrvaśī, lying beside Purūravas, cried out: “Someone is stealing my child!” Purūravas thought that rising naked from bed would break the first condition, and lay still. The gandharvas came back and stole the second ram. Ūrvaśī cried again: “My children are being stolen as if I had no husband!” Purūravas could hold back no longer. He jumped up naked and ran after the gandharvas in the dark. At that moment the gandharvas made a great flash of light. Ūrvaśī saw Purūravas wholly without clothes, and the condition was broken. She vanished. The gandharvas let both rams go and disappeared.
Purūravas came back, found Ūrvaśī gone, and wandered the whole earth, weeping and searching. At last he reached the Plakṣa-tīrtha at Kurukṣetra. There he found Ūrvaśī bathing in a pool with five apsarā companions. Ūrvaśī saw him and pointed him out to her friends as the king with whom she had lived in great love. He wept and spoke many words of longing before her. She said: “I am carrying your child. A son will be born within the year. Come back then.” They spent one night together. When Purūravas returned a year later, she received him again for one night. He begged to stay with her for good. She told him to ask the gandharvas for a vara (a boon).
The gandharvas offered Purūravas a vara. He asked to live permanently in their world. They agreed, and gave him a fire vessel (agnikuṇḍa) with fire already burning in it. They told him to perform a yajña from it. Purūravas took the fire vessel home, but set it down for a moment in a forest. When he looked again, the fire had changed: an aśvattha tree (the sacred fig) stood where the vessel had been. Astonished, he went back to the gandharvas and told them what had happened. They told him to take that very aśvattha tree, make an araṇī (fire-drill) from it, churn fire from it in the Vedic way, and then honour that fire in its three forms: Gārhapatya, Dakṣiṇāgni and Āhavanīya. By performing yajñas with these three sacred fires, they said, he would reach a world equal to theirs. Purūravas did exactly this. He churned fire from the aśvattha araṇī, set up the three sacred fires, and through many yajñas reached the world of the gandharvas. From this came the ancient Vedic practice of kindling fire by churning aśvattha wood, and the tretāgni, the system of the three sacred fires. (Vāyu Mahā Purāṇa, Uttarārdha, Chapter 2)
The Viṣṇu Purāṇa account
The Viṣṇu Mahā Purāṇa (Chaturdhāmsa, Chapter 6) tells of Purūravas and Ūrvaśī. It says their union lasted twenty-one years. It gives three conditions: the two lambs, the ban on nakedness, and a diet of ghee alone. The gandharvas stole the lambs in two stages on two successive nights. Purūravas broke the condition on nakedness when he chased the thieves. At the reunion in Kurukṣetra Ūrvaśī told him to return in one year. The gandharvas gave him an agni-sthālī (fire vessel). Purūravas left the vessel in a forest without meaning to, and found in its place an aśvattha tree growing inside a śamī tree (aśvattha-śamī-garbha). He then set up the Tretāgni, the three sacred fires: Gārhapatya, Āhavanīya and Dakṣiṇa. The Purāṇa says that Purūravas first set up these fires in this manvantara (age of a Manu), and that this gave the Tretā Yuga its name. (Viṣṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Chaturdhāmsa, Chapter 6)
The Matsya Purāṇa account: past birth and tapas in the Himālaya
The Matsya Mahā Purāṇa (Chapters 114–119) tells of a king under the heading “Purūravas Maddra Caritraṃ”, the account of Purūravas, king of Madra. He was born as king of the Madra country. His character was just and noble, but he was ugly. This came from a small fault in a past birth. He had been a brāhmaṇa who kept the Dvādaśī vrata (vow) faithfully, but took an oil-bath on the day of fasting.
He wished to be freed from the rest of that karma. He travelled to the Himālaya, saw the lovely river Irāvatī (Rāvī), and went deeper into the mountains. There he found the āśrama of the ṛṣi Atri beside a wondrous lake. The lake had a floor of vaidūrya (cat’s-eye gem) and a golden island, and a temple holding a mūrti of Bhagavān Viṣṇu set up by Atri. He began pūjā and tapas (austerity) there. When gandharvas and apsarases came to play in those divine waters, he stayed unmoved. The gandharvas were pleased and offered him a vara. He asked only for the grace (anugraha) of Janārdana. After a full month of tapas in Māgha, Janārdana appeared to him in a dream and promised that his wish would be met. The next morning Atri appeared and blessed him, and Purūravas reached mokṣa (liberation). (Matsya Mahā Purāṇa, Chapters 114–119)
Purūravas as Aila in the Śānti Parva
In the Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Chapter 73, Purūravas appears under the name Aila (son of Ilā) in the Aila-Kaśyapa Saṃvāda, the dialogue of Aila and the ṛṣi Kaśyapa. He asks Kaśyapa the basic question about the relation of brāhmaṇa and kṣatriya: who gains strength when the two varṇas (classes) stand apart from each other? The chapter uses this question to teach that these two varṇas need each other for the stability of all four varṇas. It then moves into a deep discourse on the nature of Rudra, the force of destruction that rises from within human beings through kāma (desire) and krodha (anger). In the Śānti Parva this dialogue is the ground for the teaching that a king must keep a close bond with a qualified purohita (household priest). (Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Rājadharmānuśāsana Parva, Chapter 73)
Purūravas in the Anuśāsana Parva
In the Anuśāsana Parva, Bhīṣma teaches Yudhiṣṭhira about daiva (fate) and puruṣakāra (human effort). He names Purūravas, “known of old by the name Ailuḍu (Aila, son of Ilā)”, as a rājarṣi (royal seer) who reached svarga (heaven) through the blessings of brāhmaṇas. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 6)
Sources
- Kūrma Mahā Purāṇa, Pūrvārdha, Chapters 20, 22
- Brahmāṇḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Madhyama Bhāga, Chapter 66
- Matsya Mahā Purāṇa, Chapters 114–119
- Vāyu Mahā Purāṇa, Uttarārdha, Chapter 2
- Viṣṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Chaturdhāmsa, Chapter 6
- Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Rājadharmānuśāsana Parva, Chapter 73
- Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 6