Twenty-Seven Wives and One Favourite
Chandra, the moon deity, married all twenty-seven daughters of the sage-king Daksha, each of the daughters corresponding to one of the twenty-seven nakshatras, the lunar mansions the moon passes through in its monthly circuit across the sky. Daksha's condition in giving his daughters to Chandra was that all twenty-seven be treated with equal love and attention, a fair marriage rather than a household organized around favourites.
Chandra, however, quickly and openly favoured Rohini above her twenty-six sisters, spending the overwhelming majority of his time with her and largely neglecting the others, a public and repeated slight that the other wives eventually reported to their father. Daksha confronted Chandra directly and demanded he correct the imbalance and treat all his wives fairly, as originally promised.
A Curse, and Shiva's Partial Mercy
Chandra ignored the warning and continued favouring Rohini exactly as before. Daksha, out of patience, cursed him with a wasting disease, in effect a curse that his light and vitality would steadily diminish, a fate that in some tellings is described directly as consumption or tuberculosis, and in astronomical terms manifested as the moon's light waning night by night.
As Chandra's light faded toward total extinction, the other devas grew alarmed at the prospect of losing the moon from the sky entirely and appealed to Shiva to intervene. Shiva could not undo Daksha's curse outright, a curse once spoken by a figure of Daksha's stature could not simply be cancelled, but he modified its effect: rather than fading permanently to nothing, Chandra would wane to near-invisibility and then wax back to fullness in a continuous cycle, diminishing for a fixed period and then recovering, over and over, which is understood as the origin of the moon's waxing and waning, the Krishna Paksha and Shukla Paksha of the lunar month.
A Cycle Still Named for This Story
The connection between Chandra's favouritism toward Rohini and the moon's actual observed cycle of waxing and waning is one of the more direct examples in Hindu mythology of a natural, observable astronomical phenomenon being given a specific narrative origin grounded in family conflict rather than abstract cosmology. Rohini's own name remains attached to one of the more auspicious nakshatras in the Hindu calendar, and the pairing of Chandra with Rohini continues to be referenced in some ritual and astrological contexts as the mythological explanation for that particular nakshatra's association with the moon.
The story is also sometimes cited, more loosely, as an early cautionary tale about favouritism within a household of many members, a reminder that even a deity's affection, when shown unevenly among those owed equal treatment, produces consequences that ripple outward, in this case reshaping the visible sky itself.
Quick Answers
Why couldn't Shiva simply remove Daksha's curse entirely?+
A curse spoken by a figure of Daksha's stature could not be revoked outright once pronounced, only modified, which is why Shiva's intervention produced a repeating cycle of waning and waxing rather than restoring Chandra's light permanently.
Is this the same Daksha connected to Sati's story?+
Yes, this is the same Daksha, father of Sati and host of the yajna that led to her self-immolation, appearing here in an earlier role as father-in-law to Chandra through his twenty-seven daughters.
Does Rohini still have significance in the Hindu calendar today?+
Yes, Rohini remains one of the twenty-seven nakshatras used in Hindu calendrical and ritual calculations and is generally regarded as an auspicious one, still carrying her mythological association with Chandra.
About the author
Anjali Mehta · Editor, M.A. Religious Studies
Anjali is the managing editor for Vandnaa and oversees the festival and vrat coverage. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and reviews every published article for accuracy, accessibility, and tradition-fidelity.
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