Tulsi Vivaha

Sometimes it seems like all I do these days is go to weddings.

On Thursday afternoon, I attended the annual marriage of the Hindu god Krishna with the sacred Tulsi plant. “What,” a friend asked me, “is Krishna doing marrying a plant? What would that be called – floraphilia?”

Good question. Luckily for us, there are a whole bunch of stories that point toward the answer (to the question of Krishna’s marrying a plant, not to the question of the technical term for such unions – though, come to think of it, perhaps that’s what the American right is thinking when they disavow gay marriage: “first people marry someone of the same sex, next they’ll be marrying plants like those idol-worshippers; even a civil union with someone of the same sex is bad enough, but a civil union with a *plant*?”).

According to a Google search, Tulasi Vivahah originates with Vishnu, the god of whom Krishna is an avatar. Vishnu was being seriously bothered by a demon named Jalandhara. Because Hinduism is so wonderful, however, even demons can perform religious penance and obtain favors from the gods in return. This Jalandhara had been particularly austere, and had been granted immunity to death – as long as his wife, the goddess Vrinda, was faithful to him. Try as he might, then, Vishnu couldn’t kill Jalandhara.

Clearly there was only one option. One night, Vishnu assumed the form of Jalandhara, and led Vrinda to stray from the path, so to speak.

Killing the demon wasn’t the problem – it was his wife that proved to be trouble. Vrinda went berserk when she found out the trick that Vishnu had played on her. She cursed him into the form of the black Shaligram stone. Impressed with her fidelity, Vishnu decided to make their relationship legitimate: he transformed her into a Tulsi plant and promised to marry her every single year.



Other stories about Tulsi Vivahah likewise preach wifely fidelity. (Notice a pattern in my Sanskrit education? My teachers *just might* be eager for us all to get married, auspiciously and soon.)

In any case, on Thursday afternoon we set up a marriage ceremony for Krishna and Tulsi on the gravel outside the Sanskrit classrooms, under the huge banyan trees. We had a cooking lesson (in Sanskrit), and then the pandit came to deliver a lecture about Tulsi Vivahah (also in Sanskrit). Once everything for the marriage had been set up, my classmate R stepped up to the plate to perform the puja. The pandit told him everything that he had to do (in Sanskrit, of course), chanting Veda all the while. Lots of water-dripping, sandalwood–spreading, flower-giving, light-offering ensued. The whole thing was just beautiful, a tiny little golden Krishna murti being married off to a tulsi plant twenty times his size.



When it came time for the actual marriage, we all stood and our teachers joined in for the traditional marriage hymns. We walked around the perimeter of the blanket on the ground, circumambulating the newlyweds. Then we all ate sweets that had been blessed by Krishna and Tulsi.

The best part: smack in the middle of some Vedic stotra or other, the pandit’s cell phone rang. He picked it up and conducted a lengthy conversation with the person on the other end of the line – in classical Sanskrit.