A city's students ask why their city is so blessed

Once their studies were well underway, Vararuchi and his fellow pupils asked their teacher Varsha a simple question: how had this particular city, Pataliputra, become such a celebrated home of learning and wealth in the first place? Varsha, pleased to be asked, told them the story of its founding.

Three brothers, three sisters, and a famine

Long before, three orphaned Brahmin brothers had traveled to a coastal city, married three sisters there, and lived comfortably on their father-in-law's wealth — until a terrible famine struck, and all three husbands fled the city rather than face it, abandoning their wives entirely. It was a cowardly and common enough story, except for one detail: the middle sister was pregnant, and none of the men had known it when they left.

A promise from the gods, and gold under a pillow

The three abandoned sisters took shelter with a family friend named Yajnadatta, and it was there that the pregnant sister gave birth to a son. Shiva and Parvati, passing overhead and moved by the depth of the sisters' devotion to this one child, decided to help him support them even in infancy: from the morning after his birth, a hundred thousand gold pieces would appear beneath his pillow every single day. The boy was named Putraka, and grew, quite literally, into wealth beyond counting — enough, in time, to make him a king in his own right.

A tale of golden swans, told to inspire a young king

When Yajnadatta later urged the young king to use his fortune to lure his cowardly father and uncles back with a display of extraordinary generosity, he illustrated the idea with a story: of a king named Brahmadatta who once became obsessed with a pair of golden swans, only to learn, once he had tamed them, that they had once been ordinary crows in a former life — struck down while squabbling over sacred temple offerings, and reborn golden and radiant as a strange reward for dying, however pettily, in a holy place. It was a story about how the smallest actions carry consequences no one can predict, and it did its job: Putraka took the advice and began giving away wealth on a scale that soon reached his fugitive relatives, wherever they were hiding.

A generous king, and an ungrateful return

His father and uncles came home, were recognized, showered with riches, and reunited with their wives — and almost immediately began plotting to seize the throne for themselves, unable to shake off the greed that had made them abandon their families in the first place. They lured Putraka to Durga's temple under the pretense of a pilgrimage, with hired assassins waiting inside.

A bribe, a fake death, and a real execution

Putraka saw the trap the moment he was alone with the killers, and bought his life with a priceless jewel, on the condition that they let him vanish and report him dead. The assassins agreed, took the jewel, and lied to his father and uncles just as promised. Those three men then moved to seize the throne outright — and were caught and executed by the kingdom's own ministers as traitors, having outlived every trace of their earlier good fortune through sheer ingratitude.

Two demons fighting over an inheritance

Putraka, faithful to the bargain that had saved his life, fled deep into the Vindhya forest, disgusted with his own family. There he came upon two demon brothers locked in a wrestling match over their dead father's estate: a pair of magic shoes that let the wearer fly, a staff that made anything written with it come true, and a vessel that produced any food the owner wished for. Whoever won the fight, they explained, would take all three.

A footrace nobody was ever going to win fairly

Putraka, amused, suggested a simpler contest: whoever won a footrace should take the treasure instead. The two demons agreed at once — and Putraka calmly put on the magic shoes, took the staff and vessel in hand, and flew straight up into the sky, leaving both of them running after a man who was never going to need to stop.

A secret marriage, and a mark that gives it away

Landing in a distant city, Putraka fell in love with a secluded princess named Patali purely on the strength of an old woman's description, and used his stolen shoes to visit her window by night. The two fell genuinely in love and married in secret — until a servant, growing suspicious, marked his clothing with a telltale smear of red lac while he slept, allowing the king's spies to finally identify him. Cornered, Putraka simply swept Patali up in his arms and flew both of them away through the air.

A city conjured whole from nothing

Landing safely by the banks of the Ganges, Putraka used the magic staff to write an entire city into existence — complete with walls, streets, and a full standing army of infantry, cavalry, elephants, and archers — and made himself its king. In time he grew powerful enough to conquer even his own father-in-law's kingdom and rule the whole earth from this magically-built capital. That city, built from nothing but a demon's stolen staff and a young man's stubborn love, still stands today: it is Pataliputra itself, and this is the true story of how it came to be a city where wealth and learning both make their home.