The king who traded his old age for his son's youth, and what he learned after a thousand years of pleasure

The seven-hundredth feast

The king sat at the head of the long table at his seven-hundredth state banquet and tasted a wine older than three of his grandsons. It was perfect. He had drunk it before, perhaps a hundred times. The dancers moved well. The cooks had outdone themselves with a dish from the southern forests. Around him courtiers laughed, lovers leaned toward him, a son he had fathered last decade played at his feet.

He stared at the wine in his cup and felt nothing.

He was, technically, still thirty years old.

How a young king became old in a single hour

Yayati of the Lunar Dynasty had two queens. Devayani was the daughter of the brahmin sage Shukracharya. Sharmishtha was a princess of the Asuras who had become Devayani's servant through political accident. Yayati had been told by his father-in-law, on pain of curse, never to take Sharmishtha as a lover.

He promised. Over the years of court life, he broke the promise. Sharmishtha had three sons by him before Devayani found out.

Shukracharya, when he was told, did not raise his voice. He simply spoke. You broke your word to me. Your youth abandons you. From this hour, you are old.

The king's hair went white in front of his queens. His back bent. His skin loosened. Within a single hour he was a frail seventy-year-old.

He fell at the sage's feet. Lord, I cannot rule like this.

Shukracharya was a little softer then. There is one path. You may trade your old age with anyone who will willingly take it. Live young in their body as long as they let you.

The four sons who said no

Yayati called his five sons one by one.

The eldest had just married. Father, let me first enjoy my wife in my own youth.

The second was a soldier with battles waiting. I cannot fight as an old man.

The third had ambitions. The body must be young for what I want.

The fourth had small children. They need a father with strength.

To each of them Yayati's anger grew. He cursed them. Your lineages will not rule. You will not be kings.

Then he came to his fifth, Puru, sixteen years old, born to Sharmishtha. Puru had no wife, no battles, no ambitions, no children. He bowed.

Father. Take my youth. Hold yours. Return it when you wish.

The exchange happened in a heartbeat. The king's hair darkened. His back straightened. The boy's body sagged, white-haired, hands shaking. Puru did not complain. He went quietly to a corner of the palace, sat down, and began to meditate.

What a thousand years of pleasure feels like

Yayati went out into the world.

The texts say he lived a thousand years in his son's young body. The number is poetic. The point is the length.

He took new wives. He had new children. He waged conquests. He built monuments. He drank rare wines. He held women in bed-chambers in seven cities. He ate delicacies prepared by cooks brought from every region of the subcontinent. He attended festival after festival. He hunted in forests he could not name afterward. He performed great yajnas. He gave gold to brahmins. He led armies into successful wars.

Centuries passed.

At the seven-hundredth feast, or the nine-hundredth, the exact one no one bothered to count, he tasted a perfect wine and felt nothing. Each new feast had become identical to the last. Each new conquest gave the same brief satisfaction that drained out the same evening. Each new lover felt like a memory of someone he had loved before. The cycle of wanting and getting had been running for so long that he could see its shape from the inside, and the shape was a loop.

Desire is not extinguished by fulfilment, he understood, sitting at his own banquet alone in a crowd. Desire grows as you feed it. A man who has not eaten can be filled by one meal. A man who has eaten ten thousand cannot be filled by another.

He set down the cup.

The return

He came back to the palace where Puru had been meditating for centuries.

The boy was now an ancient man. Hair white, back curved, eyes still calm. He had been sitting in the same courtyard for what was almost the entire life of the kingdom.

Yayati knelt in front of his son. Puru. I have learned what I went to learn. Take back your youth. I am ready to die.

Puru opened his eyes. He smiled. The exchange happened in reverse. The old man became a sixteen-year-old again, his actual life finally beginning. Yayati became old.

Yayati gathered his ministers and the sons of his various marriages. I have one thing to say. I have had every pleasure a man can have. The fire is fed by what you feed it. To put it out you must stop feeding it.

He gave the throne to Puru, not to the four older sons. Puru's lineage became the Kuru line. Centuries later it would produce the Pandavas.

Yayati walked into the forest and spent his final years in tapas. He died quietly, finally free of the fire he had spent so long stoking.

The verse he is said to have spoken at the end is still quoted across India.

Na jatu kamah kamanam upabhogena shamyati Havisha krishnavartmeva bhuya evabhivardhate

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Desire is never extinguished by enjoyment. Like fire fed by ghee, it only burns higher.