Bhagavatam · Bhrigu’s Test and the Return of the Brahmin’s Sons

Parikshit looked toward Shukadeva and asked, “Bhagavan, one often hears the rishis and sages disputing which of the three, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, is the highest. Did anyone ever settle it? I have only a few days left, sage. I want to know how the one in whom there is the most peace comes to be counted the highest.”

A quiet light came into Shukadeva’s eyes. “Rajan, this same question once rose on the holy bank of the Sarasvati. Great sages had gathered there to weigh the aim of life and the road that reaches it, and in the middle of that talk a sharper question surfaced: of the three lords of creation, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which one is the greatest? They could not agree among themselves. So they chose one of their own to find out, and sent Bhrigu, a son of Brahma, to test the forbearance of each god in turn. And Bhrigu set out.”

Bhrigu went first of all to the court of his father, Brahma.

He offered neither a bow nor a word of praise, as though the seat before him stood empty. Brahma flared, his face burning with its own majestic glow, and anger rose in him. But seeing that the insult came from his own son, he pressed it back down by force of reason, the way water puts out a fire even though water is itself born of fire.

From there Bhrigu climbed to Kailasa. When Shankara, the god of gods, saw that his brother Bhrigu had come, he rose from his seat in delight and opened his arms to embrace him.

Bhrigu drew back from the touch. “I will not embrace you,” he said, “for you break the conventions of society and flout the injunctions of the Veda.”

At that Shankara lost his temper. His eyes shot fire. He caught up his trident and moved to bring it down on the sage. In that instant the goddess Parvati fell at his feet and, with soft, pleading words, drew the wrath out of him.

Two tests were done. Bhrigu went now to the third, to Vaikuntha, where Lord Vishnu dwells.

Vishnu lay with his head resting in Lakshmi’s lap. The sage walked in unannounced, and without a word planted a hard kick square on the Lord’s chest.

Those around him must have flinched. The Lord did not.

Vishnu, who holds his devotees dear, rose at once, Lakshmi with him, stepped down from his couch, and bowed his head to the sage.

“You are welcome, sage. Sit here and rest a while. We did not know you were coming, and so we failed to receive you as we should have. Forgive us that.”

Then he bent and took the sage’s feet in his own hands and began to press them. “Your feet are so tender, great one. I am afraid my chest may have bruised them.”

He went on: “The water that has touched your feet lends holiness even to the sacred fords. Sanctify with it my realm of Vaikuntha, and me, and the world-guardians who dwell within me. The touch of your feet has washed away every stain I bore. From this day I am the sole abode of Lakshmi, and this chest of mine, printed now with your foot, is her seat for all time.”

Hearing these grave words spoken in a low, deep voice, Bhrigu was filled to overflowing. Devotion closed his throat, tears stood in his eyes, and he could not say a word.

He returned to the assembly of sages who expound the Veda, and told them everything he had met with in the courts of Brahma, Shankara and Vishnu.

Their doubt lifted. From that day they held Vishnu alone to be the highest, the wellspring from which peace and fearlessness flow.

Shukadeva paused. “See how it fell out, Rajan. Bhrigu insulted all three, and the god who bore the insult without heat is the one the sages crowned. Peace outranked power here. From Vishnu come dharma itself, and knowledge, and dispassion, the eight lordly powers that ride with them, and the fame that scours the mind clean. For the sages who are peace and evenness and detachment made flesh, who have vowed to injure no living thing, he is the last refuge and the final goal.”

“Sattva is the form he loves to wear, and the brahmin is the deity he favors. Men emptied of craving, quiet, and fine in understanding turn to worship him. His maya, spun from the three strands, has thrown up three kinds of being, the rakshasa, the asura and the god, and of these only the god, made of sattva, is a road that leads to him, for he himself is the journey’s end. The sages on the Sarasvati staged the whole test for one reason, Rajan: to clear the doubt of ordinary men. And by bowing at those very feet, they reached the state they had been arguing over.”

Parikshit nodded slowly. “And the second story, Bhagavan? When that same still Vishnu rises to guard someone, how far will he go?”

Shukadeva smiled. “Listen, Rajan. There was a day.”

In Dwarka a brahmin’s wife bore a son. The moment he was born and touched the ground, he died.

The brahmin carried the small body to the gate of the royal palace, laid it down, and wept over it with a breaking heart. “There is no doubt of it,” he cried. “My child is dead because of some vile act of the king, a hater of brahmins, low-minded, greedy, a slave to his own appetites. Where the ruler is cruel and cannot master his senses, the people go poor and eat sorrow upon sorrow.”

His second son died the same way, and his third. Each time the brahmin carried the little corpse to the palace gate and left it there, crying out the same accusation for all to hear.

Eight sons went this way, one after another.

When he came to grieve the ninth, Arjuna was sitting beside Krishna. Arjuna heard him out and spoke up. “Brahmin, is there no bowman among the kshatriyas of your Dwarka? These Yadavas squat about as useless as priests seated at a sacrifice. A king in whose realm a brahmin has to mourn his lost wealth, his wife or his sons is no kshatriya at all. He is an actor dressed as one, filling his belly by the costume.”

Then Arjuna took an oath. “Bhagavan, I will guard the next child you father. If I fail to keep my word, I will walk into fire and burn the failure away.”

The brahmin smiled without belief. “Arjuna, when Balarama, and Krishna himself, and Pradyumna the first of archers, and Aniruddha whom no warrior matches could not save my sons, how will you? Even those lords of the world found it beyond them. This is a child’s bluster. I do not believe one word of it.”

“Brahmin,” Arjuna said, “I am not Balarama, nor Krishna, nor Pradyumna. I am Arjuna, and the bow in my hand is the Gandiva, known the world over. Do not make light of the prowess by which I once satisfied the three-eyed Lord himself. I will beat death on its own ground and carry your child back to you.”

Half reassured, the brahmin went home to wait, eager now to see what Arjuna could do.

When his wife’s time came near, he hurried to Arjuna, sick with worry. “This time, keep my child from death.”

Arjuna rinsed his mouth with clean water, bowed to Lord Shankara, and called his celestial weapons to mind. He strung the Gandiva, took it up, and charged his arrows with the mantras of every kind of weapon, then fenced the birthing room on all sides, above and below and around, until it stood inside a cage of arrows.

The brahmin’s wife gave birth to the tenth. The infant cried, once and again, and then, while they watched, it rose bodily into the air and was gone.

Now, in front of Krishna himself, the brahmin turned on Arjuna. “Look at my folly, that I trusted the boast of this eunuch. Who can save a child that Pradyumna and Aniruddha, and Balarama and Krishna themselves, could not hold? Curse the empty-mouthed Arjuna, curse the bow he brags of. The fool means to fetch back what Providence has torn from me.”

As the abuse came down on him, Arjuna vanished by his yogic power to Samyamani, the city where Yama rules the dead. The child was not there. Weapons in hand he searched on, through the cities of Indra, Agni, Nirriti, Soma, Varuna and Vayu, down into the nether world of Rasatala, up through the realms that stand above Indra’s heaven, Maharloka among them, and place after place besides.

Nowhere was the brahmin’s child. His oath lay broken. He turned toward the fire, ready to keep his word the only way left to him.

Krishna caught him back. “Brother Arjuna, do not throw yourself away. I will show you the brahmin’s sons, all of them, this very hour. The men who mock you now will be the ones to raise our clean name again.”

So the all-powerful Krishna took Arjuna up onto his divine chariot and drove west. They crossed the seven island-continents, each ridged with its seven mountain ranges, and the seven seas between them, and the Lokaloka wall that rings them all, and passed into a darkness thick and total.

The dark ran so deep that the four horses, Shaibya, Sugriva, Meghapushpa and Balahaka, lost the road and stumbled. Krishna, lord even of the great masters of yoga, saw them falter and sent his discus ahead, the Sudarshana, burning like a thousand suns gathered into one.

Quick as a thought the Sudarshana tore through that vast and dreadful dark, splitting it open with its own enormous light, the way an arrow loosed from Rama’s bow once cut into the ranks of the rakshasas.

The chariot followed the lane it cut and came to the far edge of the darkness. Beyond lay a light without shore or bound, supreme and everywhere at once. It struck Arjuna blind for the moment, and he had to close his eyes.

Past the light the chariot entered a vast water, beautiful and wild, its great waves driven up by a hard wind. A palace stood there, wonderful, ablaze with thousands of pillars of cut jewels.

In it lay Shesha, terrible and marvelous to behold, a thousand hoods over him, each one crowned with jewels, two eyes burning in every head, his body white as the Kailasa snows, his throats and tongues a deep blue.

And on the serpent’s coils, at ease as on a bed, lay the supreme Person himself, boundless, present in all things. His color was the dark of a rain-heavy cloud. He wore bright yellow silk; joy sat on his face; the jewels of his crown and earrings threw light across his dark curls. He had eight long, beautiful arms; the Kaustubha gem shone at his throat; on his breast was the curl of hair called Srivatsa, the same seat of Lakshmi that Bhrigu’s foot had hallowed in Vaikuntha; and a forest garland hung to his knees.

Around him Arjuna saw the attendants Nanda and Sunanda and the rest, the weapons standing in bodily form, the Sudarshana discus among them, and the four powers Pushti, Shri, Kirti and Maya, with every fortune besides, all in the service of the Lord who is lord over Brahma and the other keepers of the worlds.

Krishna bowed to the endless Lord, who was his own self worn in another form. Arjuna, shaken by the sight, bowed after him, and the two of them stood with folded hands.

Then the Bhuma-Purusha, master of all the world-keepers, smiled and spoke in a voice low and deep. “Krishna, Arjuna. I brought the brahmin’s sons here for one reason, to draw the two of you to me so that I might look on you. You have gone down to earth as portions of myself to set dharma right. When you have cleared away the demons who weigh the earth down, come back to me soon.”

“You are the two sages Nara and Narayana. Nothing is left for you to want, and you stand above all, and still you will keep to dharma, to hold the world together and to show men the way by your example.”

They took his command, bowed to him, and turned back for Dwarka with the brahmin’s sons, glad past telling, by the same road and the same means that they had come.

The boys had grown to the ages they should have reached, yet their faces and forms were the same as on the days they were born. Krishna and Arjuna gave them back to their father.

Arjuna had seen the highest abode of Vishnu, and his wonder found no floor. He understood now that whatever force and valor moves in any living creature is a gift, held on loan from the grace of Krishna.