Chandra Abducts Tara and the War of Gods and Asuras
Source: Bhagavata Purana, Canto 9, Chapter 14; Vishnu Purana, Book 4, Chapter 6
Tara was the wife of Brihaspati, the preceptor of the gods. She was renowned for her beauty, and Chandra — riding high in the heavens with his gathered pride — desired her and took her. He carried Tara away and refused every demand to return her.
Brihaspati did not have to wait long for the world to take notice. The abduction of the teacher of the gods' own wife was not merely a private wrong; it threatened the order that sustained heaven and earth. Brihaspati appealed to Brahma. Brahma commanded Chandra to return Tara. Chandra refused. The refusal of the moon god to obey Brahma's direct order split the heavens into factions.
The *asuras* (demons), who had always sought some advantage against the gods, chose this moment to side with Chandra. Shukracharya, preceptor of the demons, threw his weight behind the moon. The *devas* rallied behind Brihaspati and Indra. What had begun as a private act of passion became the *Tarakamaya* war — the war on account of Tara — and the conflict scorched both heaven and earth before it was over.
The Bhagavata Purana states plainly that Brahma finally intervened with sufficient authority to end the fighting. He commanded Chandra with a severity that could not be defied, and Chandra at last returned Tara to her husband.
But Tara had been in Chandra's company for a long time. When she was returned, it was evident she was pregnant. Brihaspati questioned her: whose child was she carrying? She stayed silent. The gods pressed her, and Brahma himself commanded her to speak the truth. She finally said the child was Chandra's.
The child born was *Budha* — the planet Mercury, lord of intelligence and commerce. Despite the violence and impropriety of his origin, Budha was radiant and supremely gifted. Chandra acknowledged him, and Budha became one of the *navagrahas* (nine planetary deities) who govern time and fate. From Budha's lineage descended the *Chandravamsha* — the lunar dynasty — whose princes would include some of the greatest figures in the Mahabharata, among them the Pandavas themselves.
The Tarakamaya war stands in the Puranic record as evidence that even divine beings are not free from the pull of desire, and that the consequences of that pull extend far beyond the individual who acts on it. Brihaspati lost his wife to the sky for a season. The gods and demons went to war. The earth shook. And from that chaos came a new planetary deity, and from that deity a royal line whose wars would one day need Krishna to resolve them.
Chandra's beauty had set all of this in motion — not his power, not his malice, but simply the luminous beauty that the churning ocean had sent up into the sky.