Week 5 Story: Mandodari, The Frog-Queen

Ravana had gone to Mount Kailash to honor the god Shiva. For a thousand years, he had stood on one foot, unwavering, through winter snows and summer heat, hoping the god would grant him a boon.

"Ravana," said Shiva, "you have honored me. I will give you anything you want."

Ravana stiffly lowered his other foot to the ground and then looked at the god, smiling as he said, "Give me Parvati to be my wife."

Shiva was shocked, of course, but a promise was a promise. "Wait here," he said to Ravana. "I'll be right back."

And so Ravana waited.

~ ~ ~

"No!" Parvati shouted at her husband. "Absolutely not. I will not go with Ravana. Tell me again exactly what you said to him." 

After Shiva repeated the story, Parvati stood and thought for a moment. She then cast her eyes around the garden, the trees, the pond, and beside the pond she saw a frog basking in the sun on a stone. Parvati grabbed the frog and placed it on the ground next to Shiva. "Manduka, you are me!" she shouted ("manduka" means frog). 

And then the frog became a woman. A woman who looked just like Parvati. Except that she was naked.

"I'll have to go get her some clothes," Parvati said. "You wait here, and make sure she doesn't run off."

Shiva shouted with joy, "Oh yes, my darling: what a good idea! I will take this woman to Ravana instead. He'll never know the difference. She looks just like you! She's . . . . beautiful!"

The woman stared shyly down at the ground and said nothing.

~ ~ ~

When Parvati returned from the house with some clothes, she found the two of them rolling in the grass; Shiva's arms were wrapped around the woman in a passionate embrace. Parvati stared in shock, seeing herself, but not herself, making love with her husband. 

"STOP!" she screamed.

Shiva and the woman both sprang up from the grassy turf and stood before her. Shiva looked guiltily at Parvati, while the woman would not meet her eyes; instead, she stared down at the ground and mumbled, "My lady, he... he..."

Parvati reached out towards the woman and slapped her, hard, on the back of her head. "A frog you were, and a frog you will be once again." 

And so she was: instead of a woman, there was now a frog squatting on the grass next to Shiva.

Shiva protested. "It wasn't her fault, Parvati. It was my fault, really. She was just, well, she was just as beautiful as you. I couldn't help myself."

His words did nothing to calm Parvati's anger. She picked the frog up off the grass and hurled it with all her strength through the air.

"Little frog," shouted Shiva as the frog hurtled away into the distance, "I give you this boon: when you save one of my hermits, you will become a woman once again, the wife of a powerful warrior."

Disgusted, Parvati went back into the house, locking her bedroom door.

Ravana, meanwhile, was still waiting.

~ ~ ~

The frog traveled far through the air and then plummeted downwards, landing in a small ashram inhabited by one of Shiva's hermits. Deep in meditation, the hermit did not notice that a frog had fallen from the sky.

The hermit in question, Mandarudar, was very devoted to Shiva, but he was also a miser. When he got milk from his cow, he would not give so much as a drop to Mother Earth. The Earth had become angry about this and sent one of her snakes to squirt poison into the hermit's pot of milk.

The frog saw what the snake had done and hopped straight into the pot of milk, drinking up the poison. As the poison spread through her body, the frog flailed and flopped, overturning the pot.

This roused the hermit from his meditation, and when he saw the overturned pot and the frog flailing in the spilled milk, he shouted, "You greedy frog! The gods have punished you justly for trying to steal my milk."

Much to his surprise, the frog spoke to him, faintly. "Good hermit," said the frog, "it's not like that at all."

And then, to the hermit's even greater surprise, the frog turned into a beautiful woman. She rose up off the ground, naked, with milk still dripping from her long black hair.

The hermit shrieked, "Get out! GET OUT!"

His shouts attracted Ravana's attention.

~ ~ ~

Ravana had been waiting patiently at the foot of Mount Kailash, expecting Shiva to return with Parvati. 

But when he heard someone screaming, he was curious and went to investigate.

Then, when he saw the beautiful woman, milk dripping from her hair, he realized that Shiva had answered his prayer: this must be his Parvati, and she was just as beautiful as he had hoped.

He strode boldly into the hermit's ashram and reached out his hand to the woman. "Come with me," he said, "and be my wife."

Remembering Shiva's promise of a powerful warrior who would be her husband, the woman took his hand, and they walked out of the ashram together. 

"I am Ravana," he told her, "the King of Lanka."

"And I am Mandodari," she replied. She understood very little of the day's events, but she knew, somehow, that this was her name.

"Queen Mandodari," he said, "I will take you to Lanka, and I will make you the happiest woman on earth. I promise."

He got her some clothes, and they made their way from Kailash to Lanka; Ravana held her hand every step of the way. She had a bit of a strange hop to her step, but he did not mind. He knew he would love her, and that she would give him a son. 

Mandodari felt that she would love him too, and she also knew that she would give him a son. In fact, she sensed the seed of the god Shiva already stirring inside her. 

Ravana, however, knew nothing about that.

~ ~ ~

Author's Notes. I really had fun researching this story! Valmiki, in his Ramayana, says that the apsara Hema conceived Mandodari with Maya the asura; Hema then abandoned her family after giving birth, and Mayasura arranged Mandodari's marriage to Ravana.

But in the Ramakien, there is a story about how Mandodari was originally a frog who was then turned into a woman. That got my attention, so I decided to do some research, and it turns out there are similar legends in India about Mandodari having spent some time as a frog before she became a woman. I mixed-and-matched elements from different stories in order to come up with my story about the Frog-Queen.

As near as I can tell, there are basically three different Mandodari-as-frog stories that you can find, and in all of them Mandodari has a kind of "double" relationship to Shiva's consort Parvati. Here are the three types of stories that I found if you are curious:

Mandodari is Madhura the apsara. In one set of stories, there is an apsara named Madhura who has sex with Shiva. Parvati finds telltale ashes on Madhura's body. Furious, she curses Madhura to become a frog for twelve years, living at the bottom of a well. Shiva then grants Madhura a boon: after spending her time as a frog, she will then become a beautiful woman. So, the frog (manduka) becomes a woman (Mandodari), and starts shouting for help from down in the well. Maya the asura and his consort Hema the apsara hear her  and pull her out. She is the answer to their prayers; they had asked Shiva to give them a daughter. They marry her off to Ravana. In some versions, Shiva had impregnated Madhura but while she was a frog, the sperm was dormant; when she becomes a woman, the sperm takes shape and becomes Indrajit.
Sources:
Wikipedia, which cites for a source Vettam Mani's Puranic Encyclopaedia
Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred Myths: A Quest for Meaning by Pradip Bhattacharya

Mandodari is created as a Parvati substitute. Ravana is going to abduct Parvati, so Vishnu makes a substitute living doll out of sandalwood paste to fool Ravana. Parvati is jealous of the doll's beauty, so she curses the doll to become a frog. Later, when Maya the asura and Hema the apsara beg Shiva for a daughter, Shiva turns the frog into a girl to give to them, and she becomes Ravana's wife.
Variation: Brahma turns a frog into a woman as a substitute for Parvati to give to Ravana.
Variation: Parvati turns a frog into a woman as a substitute for herself to give to Ravana.
Sources:
Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred Myths: A Quest for Meaning by Pradip Bhattacharya
Dance Dialects of India by Ragini Devi
My Wife is a Frog by Devdutt Pattanaik. Here is some his wonderful drawing in that essay:

Mandodari is a good-hearted frog. Here are two versions of the story, one from the Thai Ramakien, and one from Indian sources:
Thai: There is a Nak (Naga) princess named Anong who takes human form to look for a human lover, but she changes back into her snake form to sleep with a common snake. Hermits who see this are disgusted by her sleeping with a common snake and mock her. Angry, she spits her poison into their milk, and a toad sees her do this; wanting to save the hermits, the toad drinks the venom and dies. At first, the hermits think the toad was just greedy, but they bring the toad back to life and she explains what happened. The grateful monks turn her into a beautiful woman whom they gave to Isuan (Shiva) who then gives her to his consort, Uma. Eventually she also becomes a Parvati substitute: Uma gives her to Totsakan (Ravana).
India: Two hermits, Mandar and Udar, will not share any of their cow's milk with the earth. The earth is angry and sends one of her sons, a naga, to poison the milk. A frog living in the ashram sees this and jumps into the milk, saving the sages. As it turns out, this frog was originally a woman who was cursed to become a frog. The monks think the frog was being greedy when she drank the milk, so they curse her; this curse reverses the earlier curse and she turns into a woman again.
Sources:
Ramakien (those are my notes)
Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred Myths: A Quest for Meaning by Pradip Bhattacharya


Image credit. Public Domain Pictures: Frog.