Bhagavatam · Parikshit and Kali

Parikshit looked at the sage and stayed silent for a while.

“Bhagavan,” he said, “you have been telling me everyone’s story, yet one story you have never touched. My own. The rishi across whose shoulder I laid a dead snake, that act was never my nature. I was a keeper of justice; how did that hand rise? I need to know who did that inside me.”

Shukadeva looked at him, in no hurry at all. “Rajan, the root of that hand lies in the day you first met Kali. Hear that story, and then see where the thorn went in.”

And the sage began.

⁂

Arjuna’s grandson, Abhimanyu’s son, Parikshit had taken up the rule of an earth still scarred by the great war. He governed by the counsel of the wisest Brahmanas, took Kripa for his guru, and on the bank of the Ganga performed three horse-sacrifices so pure that the gods came down and accepted their portions in the open sight of every man present. He had married Iravati, and she had given him four sons, the eldest of them Janamejaya. He was just, he was generous, and he looked on his people as his own children.

Then he set out with his army to conquer the four quarters of the world, for word had reached him that the age of Kali had begun to creep into the lands his soldiers guarded.

Everywhere he rode he heard his people sing the deeds of his forbears the Pandavas and the glory of Krishna, and even the tale of his own rescue, while he still lay in the womb, from the fire of Ashwatthama’s weapon. And it was on the bank of the Saraswati, where the river turns to the east, that one sight stopped him where he stood.

A dark man stood there in the robes and jeweled insignia of a king, yet the mind shuddered at the mere sight of him, for something base and cruel showed through the royal costume. A thick cudgel swung in his hand. And in front of him, a bull.

The bull was very old, white as the stalk of a lotus. Only one of his legs still held the ground; the other three were broken. Wounds covered his body. He trembled, and he stood.

And the dark man kept beating him with the cudgel, without mercy, as if the bull’s very breathing were a crime.

Nearby stood a cow. Thin, ribs showing, robbed of her calf, tears running down her face. Those eyes were begging something of someone, and there was no one.

Parikshit halted his chariot. His voice carried a king’s authority.

“What is going on here?”

The dark man froze. He turned. He raised his eyes. There was a gleam in those eyes, and the gleam was dirty, as if someone had stirred ink into clean water.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am the king of this earth,” said Parikshit, “and this outrage will not stand in the land I guard. Who are you? And by what right do you beat this old bull and kick this cow?”

The man came forward. Something inside him had begun to tremble.

“My name is Kali.”

Something inside Parikshit went still.

He knew. This was the age whose footfall could be heard on every side, the age that had set its foot upon the earth the very moment Krishna left it. Its hour was now arriving.

He drew his bow taut and sent out his challenge in a voice deep as thunderheads.

“You wear the robes of a king like an actor strutting on a stage, but a man is known by his deeds, and what you do here marks you as the lowest of the low. If you truly are Kali, there is no place for you in the land I protect. I will finish you where you stand.”

Kali flung off the royal insignia he had draped himself in and dropped to his knees, laying his head at the king’s feet.

“Rajan, forgive me. I am doing your subjects no harm. I have only come with my appointed time. This is the ordinance of creation. Killing me lies beyond even you, for my coming is still to unfold; in that I carry no fault.”

Parikshit heard him out, to the end.

Slowly, he let the bowstring slacken.

“Very well. I will not kill you. But go beyond the borders of Brahmavarta, this land of sacrifice and truth. And tell me, where do you wish to live?”

Kali joined his palms.

“Give me a few dwellings, Rajan. Places where I may stay.”

Parikshit thought for a while. Then he named four dwellings.

“First, the gambling house, where the dice are thrown. Falsehood lives there.”

“Second, the tavern, where liquor flows. Intoxication lives there.”

“Third, the place where a woman’s body is sold. The delusion of lust lives there.”

“Fourth, the slaughter-ground, where helpless creatures are killed. Violence lives there.”

Kali asked for more. Parikshit granted him a fifth place as well.

“And fifth, gold, wherever it is heaped by adharma. Enmity takes root there, and greed grows out of enmity.”

A thin smile crossed Kali’s lips. He bowed his head and said, “As you command, Rajan.” And into those five dwellings, like the very root of adharma, he settled.

His business with Kali finished, Parikshit turned to the bull and the cow. His voice was gentle now.

“Who are you?”

The bull slowly raised his head. Looking out of those eyes was some weary old rishi.

“Rajan, I am Dharma.”

Parikshit stood arrested.

“You? Dharma?”

“Yes. I once had four legs, Rajan: tapas, purity, compassion, and truth. In the Satya Yuga all four stood firm upon the earth. Then, age by age, the offspring of adharma broke three of them, one at a time. Pride broke one. Attachment broke one. Arrogance broke the third. Now only the leg of truth remains, and even that trembles like the old limb you see, for Kali, propped up by falsehood, means to take it too.”

Parikshit asked him who had done this, who had maimed him. The bull would not name a single hand. “The learned argue endlessly over the cause of every sorrow, Rajan. Some blame the self, some fate, some a man’s own deeds, some nature, some God, and some say the cause lies past all speaking. Who am I to point at one and call him guilty, when the one who points shares the reckoning of the one he accuses? The turnings by which the Lord orders and unmakes the world lie beyond your speech and mine.” Parikshit heard it and pressed no further. Only Dharma could stand so broken and still refuse to name the hand that broke him.

“And this cow?”

“She is the Earth. Once the Lord walked upon her and her whole body wore the print of his feet like an ornament, and she outshone the three worlds. He has withdrawn from her now, and she grieves like a woman left desolate, dreading the day base men in the robes of kings will sit upon her. She is my oldest friend. We are growing old together, and together we weep.”

Parikshit joined his palms. The corners of his eyes grew wet.

“O Dharma, I ask your forgiveness. That you should stand so weakened under my rule, no shame of mine runs deeper. I give you my word: while breath remains in me, I will guard truth.”

And Parikshit did exactly that. In his kingdom he gave fresh strength to tapas, purity, and compassion, as if with his own hands he had set those three broken legs of Dharma. The earth began to turn green again.

The Dharma-bull nodded. “Rajan, your vow has touched me. But time walks its own road. You alone cannot stop it. After you, Kali will spread further. Even so, for as long as your years run, keep doing what lies in your hands. Even the light of one lamp knows the dark well enough to stand unafraid of it.”

Parikshit rode on, content. He had protected Dharma, and for that very reason Kali could gain no hold in his kingdom.

But Kali was never one to sit quiet. He had his five dwellings, and like a wolf that trails the careless traveler he lay in wait for the moment some door of the mind would swing open.

Some time later Parikshit rode out to hunt. He chased the game deep into the forest until he was worn out, parched, and faint with hunger, and nowhere could he find water. So he came to the hermitage of the sage Shamika. The old rishi sat without moving, his senses drawn inward, his mind gone so far past waking and sleep that he had become one with Brahman; his matted hair hung loose and a black deerskin lay across him. Parikshit asked him, through a throat cracked with thirst, for a little water.

The sage did not stir. No seat was offered, no water, not one kind word. To the tired king it felt like contempt, and hunger and thirst turned in him to a sudden anger and spite he had never known in all his life. In that single moment Kali found his door, and he spoke in the king’s veins.

With the tip of his bow he lifted a dead snake lying nearby, laid it silently across the sage’s shoulder, and turned back for his capital.

Shamika had a young son, Shringi, a boy already fierce with the heat of his penance, at play that day with other Brahmana children. When he heard how a king had draped a dead snake on his meditating father, fury took him. With Krishna gone from the world, he cried, who would rein in the arrogance of kings if not he? He scooped water from the Kausiki, his eyes went red, and he flung it down like a thunderbolt with a curse: “At my command, on the seventh day from now, Takshaka the serpent king will bite the man who so insulted my father.”

When Shamika opened his eyes and saw the snake, he did not praise his son. A king holds the whole realm steady, he said, and the moment there is no ruler, ruin floods in; Parikshit had come to them faint with thirst and hunger and had meant no true harm, and a man of God returns no blow for a blow. He grieved for the rashness of the boy. But the curse could not be called back.

By the time Parikshit understood what he had done, it was far too late. Yet he took the curse for a blessing. He handed the throne to his son Janamejaya, gave up food and water, and came to sit on the bank of the Ganga, to meet death properly. There Shukadeva arrived, and for seven days the river of the Bhagavata flowed.

That was as far as the story went. The sage fell still. The Ganga’s water flowed close by.

⁂

Parikshit stayed silent for a while. Then he spoke. “So, Bhagavan, that hand was mine, and it was also not mine. I kept driving Kali beyond the borders of the kingdom, and through the door of one moment’s anger he climbed down into me.”

“That is exactly his way, Rajan,” said Shukadeva. “He never asks for open battle. He lies in wait for that one moment when the mind wavers, when some small door of anger or greed swings open. From there he descends, little by little. You kept searching for him outside, and all along he was watching for a window in the mind.”

Parikshit bowed his head.

“But understand one thing,” and now there was compassion in the sage’s voice. “That same Kali brought you here, to this bank. From that anger came the curse, and that curse loosened the kingdom from your hands and seated you before the katha of the Lord. What is poison for others turns to amrita for the one who has taken refuge in Bhagavan.”

Parikshit’s eyes closed for a while. For the first time in these seven days, the thought of Takshaka did not even cross his mind.

“Those legs of the Dharma-bull,” he said softly. “In my kingdom I mended as many of them as I could. But I know that after me Kali will spread again. And yet that fear is gone now. For the one who holds the name of Bhagavan, even a single trembling leg is enough to hold up the whole earth.”

Shukadeva smiled, and said nothing. The Ganga flowed on, one day fewer.