THE TALE OF KING GOPI CHAND

Part I
Gopi Chand's Birth Story

Introduction

Just as we learn nothing of Bharthari himself in his birth story, we learn very little of Gopi Chand in the first part of his tale. However, Gopi Chand's destiny is shaped more explicitly than is Bharthari's by the circumstances of his birth. A number of critical motifs are introduced in this briefest of the tale's four parts: Gopi Chand's personal beauty, the guru's love for him, and most of all the fact that he is "borrowed" by his mother. Gopi Chand literally "owes" his life to the guru Jalindar. He was a yogi before his birth and is destined to return to that state. Gorakh Nath plays a backstage part in Bharthari's procreation, for it is his magic power that allows the donkey progenitor to win Pan De. But Jalindar is the direct agent of Gopi Chand's conception—reducing his handsome disciple to ashes (not for the last time) and giving them to Manavati Mother to "lick up."

Whereas Bharthari's birth story begins with a father's curse and continues with a tale of bride-winning from a male viewpoint, Gopi Chand's has a completely maternal perspective throughout. King Bharthari's sister, Manavati (called Manavati Mother or Manavati Mata), is the central character in Gopi Chand's birth story. Like his eventual initiation as a yogi, Gopi Chand's birth as a king is engineered by Manavati. Although his birth involves a divinity's personal intervention and a yogi's loan, the story is far less fanciful to villagers than that of the talking donkey and his gold and silver palaces. Indeed, to village audiences the barren woman's desperate search for divine assistance is deeply familiar.

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Manavati's tale of running from deity to deity, and of making appropriately pleasing offerings to each, resembles personal experiences I often heard narrated and several times witnessed, while I was living in Ghatiyali (Gold 1988, 149–54). Even the queen mother's temporary disgust with the fruitlessness of such activities and the subsequent revelation—inspiring redoubled faith—that there is one god who has not been tried but who just may do the trick, are patterns well known to modern villagers.

Once Manavati presents herself in the yogis' camp in the Chapala Garden, we are in more exotic territory; few if any villagers have walked among crowds of yogis. Gorakh Nath strides through Bharthari's story as a lone apparition of striking and singular power, but Jalindar Nath is always surrounded by disciples (visible and invisible). Despite the extraordinary nature of their numbers and way of life, Jalindar's cohorts are portrayed in a manner that coincides with villagers' notions about run-of-the-mill yogis. They are not a terribly attractive lot. Rather, except for Gopi Chand, the two chief disciples, Charpat and Hada, and Jalindar himself, the massed yogis are deficient characters: crippled, ugly, aged. In the opinion of many Rajasthani peasants yogis are a scruffy group among whom one in a thousand might be the real thing.

Charpat Nath's encounter with Hira Dasi is almost a replica of Gopi Chand's future confrontations with two sets of slave girls, as well as of Bharthari's with Pingala's maidservants. Yet a few note-worthy and revealing differences stand out within the stock exchanges, insults, and misunderstandings. Gopi Chand and Bharthari want bread, but Charpat wants milk. Sharing daily bread represents the intimacy and substantial identity that is the hallmark of family unity in rural India. Milk does not transfer pollution in the way bread does; rather it is food that can be given to higher castes or even to deities.

Gopi Chand and Bharthari vent their anger by striking an impudent slave girl on her back, but Charpat contents himself with a blow to a rock. The effect is the same: the slave girl stops arguing and takes a message to the queen. But Charpat dazzles, rather than beating her into doing his errand. Gopi Chand and Bharthari, despite their yogis' costumes, react personally and viscerally to jibes from their "purchased" women. Charpat's relative self-restraint reflects his genuine noninvolvement in the householder's world; he has come on a mission for the guru that means nothing to him. In short, Gopi

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