Shravan, the Devoted Son

Long ago there lived a young man named Shravan, who loved his mother and father more dearly than anything in the world. His parents were old now, and both of them were blind, and they could not walk the roads alone.

More than anything, the old couple wished to visit the holy places, the great rivers and temples they had heard of all their lives but had never once seen. They were sad about it, because they were sure they were far too old and frail to make such a journey.

But Shravan would not hear of them missing it. He took a long, strong pole and hung a wide basket from each end. He sat his mother gently into one basket and his father into the other. Then he lifted the pole up across his own shoulders, and he carried his parents, step by patient step, all the long miles of their pilgrimage. Over hills, through forests, along hot dusty roads he walked, never once complaining of the weight, glad only that he could give them the journey they had dreamed of all their lives.

One evening they stopped to rest near a forest river, and his parents grew thirsty. “I will fetch you some water,” said Shravan, and he took up a pot and went down through the dark trees to the water’s edge.

Now, that same night a king named Dasharatha was hunting in the forest. He could not see in the dark, but he had learned to shoot toward any sound he heard. And when he caught the gurgle of Shravan’s pot filling under the water, he took it for a deer come down to drink, and he let an arrow fly.

It struck the gentle young man.

The king came running, and when he saw what he had done, his heart broke in two. But even then, Shravan was not thinking of himself. “My mother and father are waiting,” he whispered. “They are blind, and they are thirsty, and they do not know. Please. Take them this water. Do not let them go without.”

And so the sorrowing king carried the water through the dark to the two old people, and told them, as gently as ever such a thing can be told, of the son who had loved them right up to his very last breath.

Shravan was gone. But the memory of him never faded. For all the long centuries since, whenever people wish to speak of a child’s love for their parents, pure and patient and complete, it is the name of Shravan, who carried his mother and father on his own two shoulders, that they still say.