The Mountain Goddess Read online

  The Mountain Goddess

  Copyright © 2016 by Shelley E. Schanfield. All rights reserved.

  First Edition: October 2016

  Lake House Books,

  Ann Arbor, Michigan

  (The Sadhana trilogy; book 2)

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9968491-3-5

  ISBN: 0-9968491-3-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9968491-4-2

  ISBN: 0-9968491-4-9

  Mobi ISBN: 978-0-9968491-5-9

  ISBN: 0-9968491-5-7

  1. Yaśodharā (Wife of Gautama Buddha)--Fiction.

  2. Women heroes--Fiction. 3. Yogis--Fiction.

  4. India--History--To 324 B.C.--Fiction. 5. Epic fiction. 6. Religious fiction.

  I. Title. II. Series: Schanfield, Shelley. Sadhana trilogy ; bk. 2

  PS3619.C326M68 2016

  813’.6

  QBI16-900022

  LCCN 2016911316

  Cover, Map, Lineage Chart, and Interior Formatting by Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Author’s Note

  The setting of this novel bears some resemblance to the land between Himalaya’s kingdom and Ganga’s river that some 2500 years ago produced Prince Siddhartha, who became the Buddha. However, this work is a fantasy. The author makes no claim of accuracy, but rather has borrowed freely from the myths, religions, and history of ancient India. Anachronisms, geographical anomalies, and misspellings are intentional. Interpretations of the teachings are those of the writer.

  “… a story is a flame that burns no less brightly if strangers light their candles from it.”

  Wendy Doniger

  The Hindus: An Alternative History

  Principal Characters*

  Dhavalagiri

  Dhara, daughter of the Koli chief

  Sakhi, her dearest friend, her “heart’s sister”

  Dandapani, Dhara’s father, the Koli chief

  Atimaya, Dhara’s mother

  Bhrigu, Sakhi’s father, the village Brahmin

  Agastya, Sakhi’s mother

  Mala, a wandering yogi

  Rani, a tigress

  Garuda, the village shaman

  Ghosha, the shaman’s wife, a midwife

  Tilo, Dhara’s and Sakhi’s friend

  Mitu, a low-caste village woman

  Jagai, the weapons master

  Bhallika, a Sakyan merchant who passes through the village

  Virudha, a Kosalan prince

  The desert hermitage

  Nalaka, a yogi, spiritual brother of Mala

  Varanasi, the city sacred to the Great God Shiva, the Lord of Yoga

  Harischandra, the keeper of the cremation grounds

  Maitreyi, a hermit and healer

  Atri, a hermit and Maitreyi’s husband

  Prasenajit, king of the Kosala clan

  Valmiki, a Brahmin of the Kashi clan who serves Prasenajit

  Yajna, a Brahmin sorcerer

  Bhadda, a famous woman sage

  Matsya and Matsyani, fisherfolk

  Kapilavastu, capital of the Sakyan kingdom

  Siddhartha, prince of the Sakya clan

  Chandaka, Siddhartha’s charioteer and best friend

  Suddhodana, Siddhartha’s father, the Sakyan king

  Prajapati, Suddhodana’s chief queen, Siddhartha’s aunt

  Nanda, Prajapati and Suddhodana’s son

  Sundari, Prajapati and Suddhodana’s daughter

  Bhela, the king’s priest

  Uttara and Udayin, Bhela’s children

  Sukesa, a Sakyan general

  Jivaka, physician to the royal Gautama family

  Dhaumya, a Sakyan warrior, friend to Chandaka

  Tissa, a concubine

  The outlaw camp

  Angulimala, queen of the outlaws, worshipped as the black goddess Kali

  Rohit, one of her men, a former lover

  Lila, a priestess to the Nagas, a hidden tribe

  * Please visit http://shelleyschanfield.com/glossary/ for a more complete list of characters, places, and terminology in the Sadhana Trilogy

  The sacred cave

  Dhara

  The scouting party found the wild-looking woman asleep at the waterfall, near the pool.

  “Stay, daughter,” Dandapani hissed.

  Dhara pulled her pony’s reins and halted next to her father’s sturdy horse.

  “Who is she, Father?” Dhara whispered back, unable to look away from this apparition whose skin was as dark as the fearsome goddess Kali’s. The woman wore a deerskin around her loins, and her long, tangled black hair covered her breasts. Well-muscled arms and legs lay akimbo, as if she had fallen in exhaustion.

  The sun emerged from behind a cloud and its dazzling light reflected off the mountain goddess’s snowy peak high above. Something glinted near the pool’s edge.

  Dhara pointed. “What’s that?”

  They dismounted. The sun gleamed off Dandapani’s long, dark warrior braid and his bronzed forehead as he stepped past the sleeping woman and crouched to pick up a shining, sharp knife. A formidable weapon, almost the length of a sword. He glanced at the sleeping figure. “Perhaps she bathed in the pool and left it here.”

  “You always say to keep your weapon close,” Dhara murmured.

  “Indeed.”

  She knelt next to her father and narrowed her eyes. “A Maghadan blade. I’m sure of it.”

  “You know weapons as well as any young Koli warrior, daughter.”

  Dhara frowned to hide her pleasure at the compliment. “We should bind her while she sleeps.”

  “No one else around, Chief Dandapani!” a warrior called out to Dhara’s father. Monsoon clouds had yet to thunder against Himalaya’s peaks and drench the high forests, and twigs and dry branches crackled as the young man crashed out of the underbrush. “She seems to be alone.”

  The woman opened her eyes. She blinked at Dandapani in surprise and fumbled at her sash. When her hand came up empty, she sat up straight, jaw clenched.

  “Look! She’s awake,” Dhara called out as several warriors rode into the glade. They drew swords and notched arrows.

  The woman stiffened, then rose with slow and deliberate calm to stand tall and magnificent. She swiveled her head, as if measuring her chances against four armed men. Dhara, rose as well, trying to look older than her twelve years.

  “Indeed,” her father said softly. “She is awake.”

  Dandapani stood. His height matched the woman’s. A powerful current passed between her father and this fascinating stranger that Dhara didn’t understand.

  Look at me, Dhara wanted to shout, but the woman had locked eyes with her father.

  “Alone? A woman made this trip alone? Are you human or divine? You must be divine. Or the Devi gave you powers.” In her excitement, Dhara couldn’t stop talking. “It’s very dangerous to travel these mountains alone! Especially for a woman.”

  The woman laughed. “If I were divine, I would have burnt you to ashes with my third eye.”

  “Your third eye?” This gave Dhara pause. “Are you a yogi then?”

  “I am. My teacher, Asita, has sent me to live at the cave on Dhavalagiri.” The woman looked up at the high peak, immense and white against the blue
sky and scudding clouds.

  “Father, a woman yogi!” Dhara exclaimed, staring at her. The very idea was thrilling. A woman seeking knowledge that would make men touch their foreheads to her feet. “I remember Asita,” she said. “He was a funny old man.” If she had only known that the wizened, skinny yogi who lived in the mountain cave when she was little would teach a girl. Dhara loved learning things girls weren’t supposed to know—like how to fight better than the boys, which her father was teaching her. It was hard to imagine Asita as a guru to this extraordinary creature who resembled a warrior more than a solitary truth-seeker.

  “Daughter, what does the dharma command us to do?”

  “Oh! Yes.” Dhara put her palms together and bowed. “Please come and sit by our fire and tell us stories.” She bit her lip, half expecting a bolt of lightning to shoot from the woman’s forehead. She didn’t mean to sound like she was telling a village boy to fetch her arrow from the field.

  “Dhara,” Dandapani said.

  She cleared her throat and half-bowed. “I mean, if it would please you, we would like you to sit by our fire and enjoy a meal with us. That is, as many meals as you like, yogi-ji—”

  “I am called Mala.”

  “Namaste, Mala-ji.” Dhara bowed over her joined palms.

  Mala returned the bow. “Namaste, Dhara.”

  The weapons master scowled. “I don’t like this, Chief Dandapani. How do we know who she is? It could be that outlaw bitch Angulimala. Rumor is she’s hiding in the foothills with picked men, making bloody sacrifices to Black Kali and plotting war against the lowland clans.”

  Dandapani grinned. “How do we know she’s not a demoness? A mortal woman wouldn’t dare such a journey alone.”

  Mala laughed again. The warriors tensed.

  “Either way, we have no quarrel with her.” The chief signaled his men to lower their weapons. “What Angulimala or anyone else plots against the other clans and their kings doesn’t concern us. If she’s a demoness, so be it. Even they may seek wisdom.”

  That current passed between her father and the yogi again. It made Dhara’s hair stand on end.

  “Come, Mala-ji,” Dhara said. She was suddenly eager to bring the yogi to the village and show the boys this wild creature she’d caught. “Food and shelter await you.”

  That evening the whole Koli clan gathered around a great bonfire in the field by the river, just outside the village gates, to listen to the yogi’s teachings. The Brahmin Bhrigu, father of Dhara’s heart sister Sakhi, stood draped in his priest’s robe at the edge of the circle of firelight, watching with wary eyes.

  “You may ask the wanderer one question, daughter, as custom allows,” Dandapani said, crouching on his haunches next to her. Firelight gleamed on his broad forehead and black hair, which was drawn back in a long warrior’s braid. His dark eyes crinkled above his clean-shaven cheeks. Dhara was certain there was no other warrior in all the Sixteen Clans so handsome or so brave.

  “Only one?” Dhara gave him the earnest look that usually made him give in.

  “One, my child.” His tone did not allow argument. “Then we must let Mala-ji rest for her long climb tomorrow.”

  “I’m not a child. I’m nearly thirteen,” Dhara retorted, tossing her silky black hair and straightening her slender shoulders. She glanced at Mala, but the yogi’s face remained expressionless. Low laughter rose from those gathered round the fire.

  “So you are.” Dandapani picked up a thick stick to stir the embers. He tossed another split log on the glowing coals. Erupting flames lit the gathered clan’s faces, still ruddy from a summer of hunting and tending the barley fields that terraced Dhavalagiri’s steep slopes.

  Mala sat on the other side of the open fire, her long bare legs crossed with a foot on each thigh, her palms down on her knees. Though the night air was cold, she wore nothing more than what she’d worn at the pool, a deerskin and a cloak of coarse hair that fell over her shoulders, barely covering her high breasts.

  In her excitement, Dhara was having trouble collecting her thoughts to form a question.

  “Mala-ji,” Dhara began, but her words fled when the woman turned hooded eyes to her. “Er—tell—would you tell us of how our ancestors came to this land?” Stupid question. Stupid.

  Sakhi, who had been huddling close to Dhara, poked her in the ribs and shook her head, her lips compressed in disapproval. It was a wasted opportunity. The two friends knew the answer full well. Hadn’t Sakhi’s father told it a hundred times, how the Sixteen Arya Clans rode with their horses and chariots to the land between Himalaya’s kingdom and Ganga’s waters? It was always the same. With the aid of the dazzling sky gods, they’d conquered the dark forest tribes who worshipped the ancient Earth Mother with offerings of human blood.

  The yogi let her gaze wander over the clustered villagers. There was quiet around the fire as the clan waited for her to begin.

  “Ah. Yes. How the Sixteen Clans came to the Land of the Roseapple Tree. Those who master yoga’s powers can see the riders’ dust, hear the chariot wheels rumbling as if it were today,” Mala answered. A log fell with a loud crack and sent snapping sparks up to join the millions of stars glittering in the cold, dark sky.

  Mala stared into the flames so long that Dhara wondered what she was seeing there. At last she couldn’t contain herself. “Did they look into the flames to see it? Like you’re doing now.”

  Everyone tensed. One did not disturb a truth-seeker or interrupt their meditations. That was the dharma, the Law.

  Sakhi gave her another poke. “One question,” she hissed.

  Dhara glared at Sakhi. So timid. So obedient. So annoying. Yet they were sisters of the heart, like twins born on the same day to different families, and never stayed angry at each other for long.

  Mala seemed not to care about the interruption. “Those who can truly see know that time exists all at once and forever, the warp and woof of space,” she said, her voice ringing over the surrounding cedars and hemlocks and up to the heavens. “Time is the loom of the universe.”

  Dhara didn’t know what the words meant, but they conjured something above and beyond Bhrigu’s gods, something that made Dhara shiver. The yogi’s voice vibrated in her very bones. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s good to admit you don’t understand,” Mala said, impassive and solid as a mountain.

  The yogi’s quiet approval silenced Dhara better than any of her mother’s tirades ever had. Once again words deserted her, and she waited in agony, gazing at this marvelous creature.

  Mala could be one of those dark-skinned worshippers of the Great Mother, those forest tribes conquered by the light-skinned Arya clans. The shaman’s wife had made Sakhi and Dhara shiver with horror and delight when she told tales of them, mysterious people who hung their victims from a sacred tree and slit them crotch to gullet. Conducting such a rite would be an easy task for someone with muscles like those that rippled under the yogi’s dark, oiled skin. She was not beautiful, at least not like Dhara’s mother, who was descended from a divine nymph. But Mala could be the warrior goddess herself who fought the demon for the sky gods, or King Himalaya’s blue-skinned daughter who won the heart of the god Shiva, the Lord of Yoga.

  “How many generations past did your ancestors settle the forests and plains? A hundred? A thousand? I will tell you what my guru Asita told me and his guru Saungi told him, and Parasari told Saungi, and Manduka told Parasari.” Mala continued the customary recitation of her guru’s long lineage back to the Seven Celestial Sages in a sing-song voice, with hardly a pause for breath. When she finished, the Kolis sighed and shifted, anticipating a good story from one with such a formidable memory.

  “Nothing could stop the fierce Arya warriors as they swarmed over Himalaya’s shoulders with their chariots and horses,” Mala began in a soft voice, “though the forest dwellers sacrificed many men to their ancient Mo
ther. But She did nothing while the invaders felled vast tracts of trees to create pastures for their cattle. Now, in these forests were sacred groves that sheltered many sages of both the Arya clans and hidden tribes, whose spiritual ardor surpassed even the sky gods’ burning tapas. The fire consumed the hermitage where the venerable rishi Kapila had made his retreat, and roused his fury at the warriors’ wanton violence. Kapila opened his third eye and with the fierce heat of his inner fire engulfed thousands in flames.”

  Dhara and Sakhi exchanged a look. This was not at all what Sakhi’s father had told them. The Arya clans burnt to ashes? Bhrigu’s stories were all about how the gods walked among mortals to help the rightful king and his four brothers win back their inheritance during the great wars of succession that followed the invasion.

  “The ashes of the Aryas threatened to suffocate all mankind,” Mala continued. “The gods trembled. The end of humanity would mean the end of sacrifice, and how could they live without the offerings made on the fire altar?” She smiled slyly at Sakhi’s father, who was clearly made uncomfortable by her story.

  Brahma the Creator sat in council with the other celestials. As they considered what they should do, Shiva, the Lord of Yoga, passed by on his way to his cave on Mount Kailash.

  “‘Auspicious One,’ the Creator Brahma greeted him, ‘the ashes of the Aryas will soon extinguish all life. If humanity perishes, no one will perform the rituals that feed us.’

  “‘Death is inevitable, even for gods. What difference if it’s now or in ten thousand years?’ Shiva replied. ‘Besides, those who are enlightened have no need of rituals.’

  “The other gods did not reply.” The yogi searched the faces that were turned to her in rapt attention. “Not for the first time, each one wondered silently if the three-eyed yogi was really one of them. Who could remember him from the days when the Aryas roamed the sea of grass north of the mountains?” Mala shook her finger. “None of the celestials could say when they had first seen him motionless in the lotus pose, his matted hair and naked body covered with ashes. Underneath the filth, the supreme yogi was divine and powerful, but he was also rude and unpredictable. He would be no help in this matter.