Sagar

Also known as: King Sagar · Family: Ayodhyá · Role: king · First appears: Book I, Canto 5 · Ayodhyá

In Book I, Canto 39, Sagar reigned in Ayodhyá as a pious king without children. At the Himálaya, Bhrigu offered his queens, Keśini and Sumati, a choice: one would bear an heir, the other sixty thousand sons. Keśini bore Asamanj, while Sumati gave birth to a gourd that opened to reveal the sixty thousand babes. When Asamanj cruelly cast liegemen’s boys into the Sarjú, Sagar banished him. Later he prepared a horse sacrifice and sent Anśumán to watch the steed.

In Book I, Cantos 40–42, after the horse was stolen, Sagar ordered his sons to pursue the thief and recover it. They dug through the earth in search of the horse, killing innumerable creatures along the way. Sagar completed the sacrifice, and after thirty thousand years went to heaven. In Book I, Canto 44, Bhagírath poured funeral libations over the dust of Sagar’s sons; when the waters touched it, their spirits attained beatitude and rose to heaven.

Book I, Canto 70, and Book II, Canto 110, tell of Sagar’s birth to Kálindí, who named him for surviving poison mixed into her food by her rival. Book I, Canto 5, names him as an ancient forebear of Daśaratha, and in Book I, Canto 39, his sons are described as digging out the sea.