Retold by DKM Kartha
Riddles: Who is the Supreme God speaking ? Who is the VipRa being spoken to ? Why was the VipRa dancing ? Why did Vibhooti flow out of the thumb of the God? Why did the Great God ask the VipRa to stop dancing ?
ततः प्रोवाच तं विप्रं स देवो द्विजसत्तमाः ॥
यस्यांगुष्ठाग्रतो मह्यं निष्क्रांतं भस्म पांडुरम् ॥ ४५ ॥
तथाप्यहं मुनिश्रेष्ठ न नृत्यं कर्तुमुत्सहे ॥
त्वं पुनर्नृत्यसे कस्मादपि शाकरसेक्षणात्॥ ॥ ४६ ॥
विरामं कुरु तस्मात्त्वं नृत्यादस्माद्विगर्हितात् ॥
तपः क्षरति विप्रेन्द्र नृत्यगीताद्द्विजन्मनः ॥ ४७ ॥
(From skanda-PurANam 6|40|27-47)
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN A HOLY FOREST, there lived a hermit called मंकणक Man*kaNaka, who ate nothing but grass and the leaves of plants. For many years, he lived on this pure and austere diet, and his spiritual and magical potency became very intense.
One day, as Man*kaNaka sat in front of his hermitage weaving a grass mat, he happened to cut himself on a sharp blade of grass. He saw that green sap, not blood, oozed from the cut! His amazement knew no bounds. "Finally, I have gone beyond the human state, and I have become as sacred and blameless as a plant," he thought.
A frenzy of joy — siddhi-gaRva — overtook Man*kaNaka, and he began to laugh and dance. His laughter shook all corners of the world like cosmic thunder, and the power of his dance drove first the beings of the forest and then of the whole cosmos to laugh and dance with him. As if enchanted, animals and trees, stones and rivers, lakes and mountains fell into the rhythms of the hermit's wild dance.
The protector gods of the Cosmos looked down and saw the danger that the Cosmos was in. Oceans were overflowing, and dust was rising from the earth as smoke rises from a raging forest fire, darkening the skies. The gods ran to Lord Shiva and asked him to rescue the Cosmos from annihilation.
Shiva took the form of a hermit and went to Man*kaNaka, and stood still beside him. The hermit calmed down enough to look at the silent, motionless hermit. He recognized who the hermit really was from the secret signs visible to seers, and he wondered why the Great God, the Lord of Dancers, wasn't joining in his private frenzied dance.
"Why are you so happy?" Shiva asked. Man*kaNaka pointed to his wound, which was still oozing vegetable sap, and said, "O Lord of Gods, don't you see that I have become so sacred that I have no blood at all? I am superhuman! I am celebrating my miracle!”
Shiva simply smiled, and then pressed his index fingernail into his own thumb. While Man*kaNaka looked on, ashes, as white as snow and as fine and luminescent as moonlight, flowed out from the thumb of the Great God, Shiva MahAdEva. Their radiance bathed the forest and beyond in a healing, sacred mist.
The sight of Shiva's vibhooti, his sacred ashes, purer than green sap and purer and more holy than everything else in the Cosmos, brought a sobering calmness to Man*kaNaka. He prostrated himself at Shiva's feet, and the whole Cosmos came to its balanced state. Thus was it that Lord Shiva restored Cosmic equilibrium which had earlier fallen a victim to the siddhi-gaRvam — spiritual arrogance — of an immature hermit.