Tataka and the cursed provinces of Malada and Karusha

Classical

Indra's guilt-filth became the land Tataka then terrorised.

At dawn, after his morning rites, Vishvamitra leads Rama and Lakshmana to the bank of the Ganga. The sages of the hermitage there have readied a ferryboat and urge them to cross without delay. Vishvamitra agrees, salutes the sages, and crosses with the princes.

Halfway across, Rama hears a loud, surging roar in the water and asks what it is. Vishvamitra explains that Brahma once created Lake Manasa on Mount Kailash, and from it flows the Sarayu, which passes Ayodhya and joins the Ganga. The roar is the two rivers meeting. He tells Rama to salute both, and the brothers do.

On the southern shore they walk on and come to a terrifying forest where no one goes. Rama hears crickets, the screech of vultures, the roar of lions, tigers, boars and elephants, and names the trees: dhava, ashvakarna, arjuna, bilva, tinduka, patala and badari. What is this place? he asks.

Vishvamitra tells him. Two prosperous lands, Malada and Karusha, were made by the gods. When Indra killed Vritra, whom the text calls a brahmin, Indra was stained: by filth from his body, by hunger, and by the sin of killing a brahmin. The gods and sages bathed him with sacred pots, and the impurities moved from him onto the land. Indra, now clean and pleased with the land, gave it a blessing: it would be fertile and famous as Malada and Karusha, named for the filth and the hunger it had taken from him. The gods praised the gift, and for a long time the two lands were wealthy and happy.

Then a yakshi named Tataka moved in. She could change her shape at will and had the strength of a thousand elephants. She was the wife of Sunda and the mother of Maricha, a huge and terrible demon who was Indra's equal in valor. She settled about a yojana and a half away and blocked the route, making the region her own forest and ravaging both lands.

Vishvamitra then gives Rama his task. Rely on your own strength, he says, and kill this malevolent Tataka. Make the land safe again, because no one else can enter it while she lives. And he adds that she has not stopped her destruction even now.

The sarga ends there. Rama kills her in sarga 26, according to the contents page.

Two things make this chapter worth lingering on. The first is that a land can be named for a stain: Malada and Karusha are the places where the god's guilt was set down, and then the god blessed them for taking it. A place that took on a king's sin is rewarded, and then attacked. The second is that Tataka is introduced with a family. She has a husband and a son, and the son, Maricha, is the same demon whom Rama will meet and spare as a boy, and who, much later, will turn into a golden deer. Valmiki gives the origin of the first great enemy in the story before Rama has met her.

Tataka's son comes back later. In the Aranya Kanda, Maricha tells Ravana that Rama once struck him with an arrow and spared his life, and the same Maricha is the one who turns into the golden deer.

Who: Tataka, Sunda, Mareecha, Indra, Rama, Vishvamitra

Bound to

Mareecha: Tataka's son who warns Ravana causes

Places: Buxar region (Bihar)

Where this comes from

valmiki · Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda (valmikiramayan.net translation) sarga 24
read for this telling · valmikiramayan.net Valmiki Ramayana Bala Kanda sarga 24
read for this telling · valmikiramayan.net Valmiki Ramayana Aranya Kanda sargas 38-39 (Maricha's account of being spared)

See it on the tree · All stories

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