This is the same beloved figure as Shri Aila Ji in entry 66. Pururava, son of Budha and Ila, founder of the Chandravamsha, the heartbroken king who wandered the earth calling for Urvashi and from whose lineage both Lord Krishna and the Pandavas descended.
The Bhaktamal lists him under both his given name, Pururava, and his matronymic, Aila. This reflects the tradition of the original mool text of Nabhadas, where the same figure may appear in different chhappays. Rather than merging these, the tika tradition preserves each mention, honoring the poet's structure. For the full account of his life and love, see the entry for Shri Aila Ji.
The Deepest Attachment Can Become the Gateway to God
Pururava loved Urvashi with everything he had. He gave up his kingdom, his duties, and his sense of time for her. For years he lived in a kind of forgetfulness that felt like heaven. When she vanished, his grief was total. He wandered, naked and weeping, calling her name to forests that gave no answer. But this is the thing I have come to understand through his story: the love was not wasted. Not a drop of it was wasted. The passion that had oriented his whole life toward one beautiful apsara did not disappear when she left. It turned. It lifted. The same longing that had been horizontal, reaching outward for a person, became vertical, reaching upward toward the divine. The Bhaktamal says plainly that when the memories of his former life arose, a great vairagya overtook him, and the fruit of that vairagya was love for the feet of Shri Hari. His heartbreak was not an obstacle. It was the doorway.
Bhaktamal, Entry 66 (Shri Aila Ji); Bhagavata Purana, Canto 11, Chapter 26 (Aila Gita)
Indulgence Feeds the Flame It Promises to Quench
Pururava had everything. He was emperor of the earth and beloved of the most radiant woman in all three worlds. Years of pleasure stretched into more years. Yet the Bhagavata Purana records that the sweetness, when it turned bitter, turned very bitter. He saw with clarity what no philosopher had been able to teach him in the comfort of abundance: lust is never satisfied by indulgence. It behaves exactly like fire fed with ghee. You pour in more fuel hoping to put it out, and it blazes higher. The Aila Gita, which Krishna himself taught to Uddhava using Pururava's own words, carries this realization as its core. He had possessed limitless wealth, imperial power, and the love of an apsara. None of it moved him one inch closer to lasting peace. The hunger only deepened. When I sit with this teaching, I feel it is not a counsel of despair but of liberation. Once you see that the vessel has no bottom, you stop trying to fill it and start looking for a different kind of fullness.
Bhagavata Purana, Canto 11, Chapter 26 (Aila Gita); cited in Uddhava Gita
Longing Itself Is Not the Enemy
What strikes me about Pururava is that he was never coldly detached. He was the opposite: an emperor undone by desire, wandering in grief, composing one of the oldest love poems in the world just to give his aching some shape. The Rigveda preserves his final exchange with Urvashi in Sukta 10.95, and it is raw and devastating. He does not pretend not to feel. He feels everything. And yet it is that same intensity of feeling that eventually becomes the engine of his liberation. The Bhaktamal does not ask me to flatten my heart. It asks me to redirect it. The capacity for longing is not a defect in my nature. It is the instrument. The only question is where the longing is aimed. Pururava aimed his toward one apsara and it nearly destroyed him. When he finally aimed it toward Shri Hari, he attained Vaikuntha. The instrument did not change. The direction did.
Rigveda 10.95; Bhaktamal, Entry 66 (Shri Aila Ji)
The Fire That Is Kindled From Loss
After Urvashi left him, Pururava received an unexpected gift. She taught him the secret of producing sacred fire by churning the arani sticks. He took two pieces of ashvattha wood and kindled flame from friction. In a deeply symbolic act he regarded the lower stick as Urvashi and the upper stick as himself, and the fire born between them as their child together. Something new came into the world from that churning: the three sacred fires of the Vedic sacrifice. What had been lost became the mother of something generative. I keep returning to this image when I feel that grief has only taken things from me. Pururava's greatest loss became the occasion for his greatest offering. The fire he lit from sorrow was the fire that the entire lineage of Vedic sacrifice would draw from. Loss, when it is not merely resisted but worked with, can produce a heat that purifies everything it touches.
Shatapatha Brahmana; Bhagavata Purana, Canto 11; Bhaktamal Entry 66 commentary
The Root of a Sacred Tree
Pururava stands at the beginning of the Lunar dynasty. From him came sons, from those sons came Nahusha, from Nahusha came Yayati, from Yayati's sons came the Yadavas and the Kurus, and from those lines came Lord Krishna himself and the Pandavas. Every great bhakta of that vast family traces back to this one heartbroken king who wandered weeping through the forests. The Bhaktamal honors him not only for his own liberation but for what he planted. His grief was composted into wisdom, his wisdom flowered into devotion, and that devotion quietly became the root from which a sacred tree grew whose branches would shelter the entire world for thousands of years. When I read his story I feel that nothing in a devoted life is truly wasted. Even the suffering goes into the soil. Even the wandering makes roots.
Bhaktamal, Entry 66 (Shri Aila Ji); Bhagavata Purana, Canto 9
Hindi text from OCR scan (Khemraj Shrikrishnadas Prakashan, CC0). May contain errors.