your bridge home
Saints and Poets
She put a theological proposition to one of the great authorities of the age: that his practice was incomplete, and that the ancients he revered had not done it his way.
Agastya wanted a wife and there was not a suitable one in existence, so he made one.
That is the tradition's account and it does not soften it. The rishi needed a wife of a particular quality. More urgently, he needed a son, because his ancestors had appeared to him hanging head-downward in a pit, and told him the line would end, and their release with it.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.