Damauli

In a solitary cave at the holy confluence of the Madi and Seti rivers, the sage Parashar performed severe austerities. One day, resting from his penance, he set out to look over the region around his place of meditation.

To cross the river and reach the far bank, he began searching for a boat. Just then a beautiful boatman's daughter came rowing up to the bank of that confluence. Seeing her matchless beauty and grace, the sage Parashar was enchanted.

At the sage's request, the boatman's daughter took him aboard and began to ferry him across the river. When they reached the middle of the river, the sage Parashar expressed his desire to make love to her. But the boatman's daughter, saying that she would feel shame before the world in an open place, expressed her inability.

Then the sage Parashar, by his ascetic power, created from the force of wind and water a thick mist and fog on every side. Within that divine mist their union took place, and from that very spot the great sage Vedavyasa was later born.

The place of the confluence of the Madi and Seti, where it always seems to remain wrapped in mist, came later to be called "Damauli." Even today the descendants of the boatman live there.