Padmini and the Palanquin: a story about chastity
Shri Ganesha gives us wisdom That wisdom gives us the sense of how to behave. It gives us the balance and it gives us the sense of how to behave towards ourselves – how to preserve yourself, how to respect
yourself.
In India, especially the women, they are extremely particular about their chastity.
WE HAD A QUEEN CALLED Padmini and she was a very beautiful woman. One Muslim aggressor, who became a sultan, heard about her beauty, so he wanted to see her.
She refused. “I don’t want to see him.” Seeing a woman like that, those bad eyes are bad.
He said, “If you do not allow me to see her, I’ll invade your country.”
So she agreed. “All right, he can see me in a mirror so at least his bad eyes don’t fall on me directly.” She agreed to that and he saw her in a mirror and he saw that she was even more beautiful than he had thought her to be.
Now he wanted to have her. He was so physical, so superficial. He said, “If you now do not come to me, I will again attack.”
They made a plan. “Let us now decide whether we are going to surrender our queen or not.”Everybody said, “Nothing doing.
We are not going to surrender her because the chastity of a woman is very important and a queen, who is a representative of all womanhood should not be sacrificed like this.”
They could not bear the idea.So they said, “All right, we’ll organize something and cheat these people.” They sent word,
“All right, we are all coming and the queen is coming too.” They sent a hundred palanquins.
They use covered palanquins for ladies in India. Inside every palanquin there was one warrior sitting with all the weapons and there were four carrying the palanquin and all these four were also warriors.
So thus, they had about five hundred warriors. It was a small kingdom. When Padmini’s people went down, the sultan’s people were very happy.
“The queen is coming.” They were all getting drunk and celebrating. “The queen is coming, the queen is coming.
Now the king and his warriors had told the women, “In case we win, then we’ll light a fire and you will know that we have won. But if you don’t see anything, then be sure that we have lost the war.”
The king sat in the front palanquin with the rest of the warriors and attacked them in the sense that they first entered inside.
Then instead of the queen, the king came out and they all
fought those people.
But they were only five hundred, so they could not be saved. The others had better weapons, so the small army was killed. They did not light the fire.
Then the women knew that all of the invaders would be coming. They thought now their chastity is in danger
There was a big platform they made with a big pyre on that. They all entered into it and killed themselves before the men could enter in and touch their bodies.
SO FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, it is very important to have a great sense of chastity. If they do not have a great sense of chastity, then they develop all kinds of funny ideas and mentally they become very imbalanced.
We have to understand how we have to build ourselves as Sahaja Yogis. Men and women, all of them, have to go hand-in-hand because the first quality I told you is wisdom.
The essence of the Mooladhara is innocence. They are made of innocence. The power of Ganesha is innocence.
SHRI GANESHA PUJA, 14 April 1991, Canberra, Australia