A curse that can only end one way

His own story finally told, Gunadhya turned to the task Parvati herself had set as the price of his freedom: he had to make the great tale current in the world of men, not merely tell it once to a single listener. His two loyal disciples, Gunadeva and Nandideva, suggested the obvious recipient — King Satavahana himself, a man of taste who could carry the story far and wide, the way wind carries the scent of a flower.

Seven hundred thousand verses, written in blood

Gunadhya agreed, and set to work: he wrote out the entire tale — all seven hundred thousand verses of it — in the Pisacha language, using his own blood in place of ink, since he had no other way of recording anything in that tongue. He sent the finished manuscript to the king by the hands of his two disciples, and withdrew to wait outside the city in the very garden Durga herself had once planted.

A king's contempt, and a poet's grief

King Satavahana, presented with the manuscript, took one look at its strange demon-script and its bloodied pages and dismissed it outright as barbarous, for all its impressive length. His disciples carried the rejected work back to Gunadhya, who received the news with a grief sharper than anything his long exile had cost him — there is no wound quite like being scorned by the one person whose judgment you actually respected.

A fire lit for the world's greatest story

Rather than let the tale simply sit unwanted, Gunadhya carried it to a remote, unfrequented hillside, built a small consecrated fire, and began reading each page aloud — once, to whatever was listening — before feeding it to the flames. Deer, boar, and every other creature of the forest gathered around him as he worked, drawn from their grazing by the sound of his voice, and stayed there weeping, in whatever way animals weep, unable to leave.

One story spared, for two disciples who loved it best

Of the seven great sections that made up the whole work, Gunadhya burned six without hesitation — six hundred thousand verses reduced to ash and smoke. He kept back only the seventh, a hundred-thousand-verse tale concerning a prince named Naravahanadatta, purely because his two disciples had grown so fond of that one story in particular that he could not bring himself to destroy it in front of them.

A king falls mysteriously ill

Not long after, King Satavahana fell strangely sick, and his physicians traced the cause to poorly nourished meat: the hunters supplying the royal kitchens reported that every animal in a certain stretch of forest had stopped grazing entirely, transfixed instead by a strange Brahmin who read aloud from burning pages day after day.

A king finally recognizes what he threw away

Curious and increasingly uneasy, the king went to see this for himself, and found Gunadhya exactly as described — gaunt, his hair matted from years in the wilderness, surrounded by a silent, grieving audience of wild animals. Recognizing him at last for who he truly was, the king fell at his feet and begged forgiveness, along with whatever remained of the tale he had once turned away.

The last surviving fragment of a burned masterpiece

Gunadhya told him plainly what had already been lost — six of the seven great sections gone forever, reduced to smoke over the preceding days — but handed over the surviving hundred-thousand-verse story of Naravahanadatta, along with his two disciples to help interpret and explain it properly. Then, his long task finally complete and his ancient curse fully paid, he laid aside his mortal body there in the forest and returned at last to his true, divine home.

A king builds a frame around what remains

Satavahana carried the surviving tale back to his city, richly rewarded the two disciples who had helped preserve it, and — working with their guidance to fully understand what he now possessed — composed an introductory book of his own, explaining exactly how this strange and wonderful story had first come down into the world of men in the Pisacha tongue. That introductory book is the one you have just finished reading. And the tale it introduces went on, exactly as promised, to eclipse even the stories people told about their own gods — which is as good a definition of a great story as any, and is why, so many centuries later, it is still being told at all.