Once upon a
time, in a village hidden away deep within a forest where men and animals lived
so close together that each could hear the other settling off to sleep at the
end of every day, lived a beautiful young woman named Bahuchara. Her parents
had perished in a devastating forest fire when she was 10, and Bahuchara lived
with her brother on the family’s small chicken
farm. For many years, Bahuchara had been praying and praying for a handsome
husband, but the village was small and isolated so for some time her prayers
went unanswered.
Night after
night, the desolate girl would weep and offer up her tears as supplications to
the gods that they might mitigate her loneliness and bring her a husband and
children to bring life and light to her day. During the day, she spent every
moment working and contemplating the gods and their power. Every morning and
evening she spent devoting herself to prayer, but the girl did not have much to
offer in the way of gifts for the deities.
She would
place small measures of food out for crudely carved wooden idols on poorly
built altars, but that was the best that she could do. Eventually, however,
Parvati took pity on the girl and decided to grant her the husband she so desired.
Taking on the form of an aged grandmother, Parvati came down to earth and
visited Bahuchara’s shrine.
“Take courage,
young one, the Devas smile even upon humble offerings. They have so smiled upon
you, and you will be wed within the month.”
Shocked,
Bahuchara asked the woman on whose authority she made such fantastic claims,
but Parvati only laughed at her surprise and told her that it was the gods’ will she professed.
Parvati
then travelled down the only road leading away from Bahuchara’s village and stopped the first man
she came across riding down the road about to branch off onto another path.
Parvati stopped him and asked if he was married. When the man, surprised though
he was by this stranger’s prying,
answered that he was not, Parvati directed him back down the path and explained
that in the village at the end their lived a young, very beautiful, unmarried
woman on whom the Goddess Parvati herself had smiled.
The man
then rode down the path with some eagerness now, searching for the village the
old woman had described. When he finally found it, the man rode from home to
home, searching for and quickly finding Bahuchara in her hut, preparing her
brother’s supper.
The man
took one look at the young woman and fell for her completely. She seemed so
beautiful, and her nature so cheerful and vivacious that he couldn’t resist her charm for a moment. He
resolved that if she showed herself to be well-mannered as well as gorgeous, he
would propose immediately.
Realizing
that it was growing late, the young man introduced himself to Bahuchara’s brother and requested some food
and a place to stay for the night. Although they had little to share, it would
have been rude to turn away this traveler so the siblings gave him a space on
their floor and a place at their table for the night.
The very
next morning, the young man proposed to Bahuchara, and her brother quickly
agreed to the match, realizing that this was an immense opportunity given how
few people came this way. The three agreed to travel into the city immediately
to take care of the ceremony. Arrangements were made for the care of the
chickens, and they left that very day.
After they
arrived, the couple was married in a small, modest ceremony, and the young man
took his bride home. To the dismay of Bahuchara, the woman discovered that her
new husband was a man in all but body. Though she loved him dearly, knowing
that he was brought to her by the gods, Bahuchara knew that she would never
have children.
As she came
to this knowledge, Bahuchara was filled with desperation and prayed more
fervently than she ever had before that she be given the power to overcome this
obstacle with her new husband. Parvati, realizing what she had done, felt
sympathy for the young woman and granted her the power to do what she needed to
do.
That prayer
granted Bahuchara divine power. That night, when she went to see her husband,
she was able to grant him a man’s body. From
that day on, Bahuchara was imbued with the divine power Parvati had granted
her, and she became the patroness of the isolated and those rejected from
society. She became the embodiment of inclusivity.
Author’s Note: Bahuchara is an actual Hindu
goddess. She embodies inclusivity and is specifically considered the goddess of
hijras, individuals who feel that they were born the wrong gender. She comforts
these individuals, and many people pray to her that they will be reincarnated
as another gender. Hindu lore suggests that she may have been deified when she
was accidentally married to a woman whom she was able to transform into a man.
I decided to write this origin story because I like the idea of a goddess of
inclusivity being born as she attempts to grant the wish of her beloved partner
to be a man.
