Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Vana · 19 of 50
19. Nala, told in the forest
Vana (वन)
Bṛhadaśva tells it, because Yudhiṣṭhira has asked whether any king as wretched as himself ever lived. Nala of Niṣadha is chosen by Damayantī at her svayaṃvara, past the gods who tried to wear Nala's face. The gods are pleased, and they give Nala boons. Kali, the worst of the ages personified as a person, arrives with Dvāpara too late, and he is the one who takes offence. He waits to enter Nala's life through a ritual impurity, a missed washing, a small crack.
The crack is enough for dice. Nala plays his brother Puṣkara and loses the kingdom, and then, possessed and ashamed, he abandons Damayantī in a forest and cannot live with having done it. She curses nothing at random. She curses the one who has caused this, and the curse is what will eventually burn Kali out of Nala. Meanwhile she is almost killed by a serpent, saved, and reaches her father's house by way of a caravan and a second recognition. Nala, deformed by a snake's bite into a charioteer called Bāhuka, takes service with a king and waits.
They find each other because she is clever. She has a second svayaṃvara announced, not because she wants another husband but because she knows Nala's pride and his skill with horses will bring him. He comes. A test of cooking, of a child's saying, of the way he flavors food, tells her the deformed charioteer is her husband. Kali leaves him. He plays again, and this time he wins the kingdom back. Yudhiṣṭhira is meant to hear that a man ruined by dice can return, and also that the return does not erase the night he left his wife in the forest. The story is a mercy and it is not an acquittal.
नेपालीमा
युधिष्ठिरले आफू जत्ति अभागी कोही राजा थिए कि भनेर सोधेपछि बृहद्श्वले यो कथा भने। नललाई दमयन्तीले स्वयंवरमा रोजेकी थिइन्। देवताहरूले नललाई आशीर्वाद र वर दिए। ढिलो आइपुगेको कलि रिसायो। कलि एउटा सानो चुकबाट नलको जीवनमा पस्यो। नलले भाइ पुष्करसँग पासा खेलेर राज्य हारे, र लज्जाले दमयन्तीलाई वनमा छाडे। दमयन्तीले यो विपत्ति ल्याउनेलाई श्राप दिइन्, जसले पछि कलिलाई जलायो। सर्पको डसाइले कुरूप भएका नल बाहुक नामका सारथि भए। दमयन्तीले दोस्रो स्वयंवरको घोषणा गराइन्, अर्को पति चाहेर होइन, नलको घोडाको सीपले उनलाई ल्याउँछ भनेर। परीक्षाबाट उनले कुरूप सारथिलाई आफ्ना पति चिनिन्। कलि निस्कियो। नलले फेरि खेले र राज्य फिर्ता पाए। कथा कृपा हो, र दोषमुक्ति होइन।