Bhagavatam · Vamana and Bali

Parikshit folded his hands. “Bhagavan, Sri Hari owns everything that exists. He is complete in himself, the lord of every sacrifice, wanting for nothing. Why, then, did he stand before King Bali dressed as a poor young brahmin and beg for three paces of ground and nothing more? And once Bali had given him what he asked for, why did he bind a king who had done no wrong? I have turned it over and over, and the wonder of it will not leave me.”

Shukadeva smiled. “Rajan, everything a king needs to understand is folded inside this single story. Listen. An hour came to an emperor of the asuras, the same hour that comes to every man in the end, and in the palm he had emptied of all he owned he found what no full hand has ever held.”

Bali was king of the asuras, the son of Virochana and the grandson of Prahlada. He was born into the demon line, and yet that same line had already produced a Prahlada, and the grandfather’s temper ran true in the boy. No one in his house had ever turned a brahmin away from the door, or promised a gift and then held it back. Charity, sacrifice, and truth were as natural to him as breathing.

There had been a war in which Indra broke him and took even his life from him. The priests of the house of Bhrigu, his teacher Shukracharya foremost among them, raised him out of death with their secret art. Bali laid everything he owned at their feet, and those brahmins, well pleased, bathed him in the consecration fit for an emperor and set him to the sacrifice called Vishvajit, the conqueror of worlds, in which a man gives away all that he has.

From its fire rose the whole equipment of conquest: a chariot sheathed in gold, horses green as the steeds of Indra, a banner blazoned with a lion, a celestial bow plated with gold, a pair of quivers whose arrows never ran dry, and armor light as air. Prahlada draped a garland of unfading flowers over his grandson, and Shukracharya set a conch in his hand.

So armed, Bali led a vast host of asuras against Amaravati, the fortress-city of Indra himself, a city of gold that Vishvakarma had raised, moated by the heavenly Ganga and hung with the gardens of Nandana. The earth and the sky trembled at his advance. He laid his siege and blew his conch until the sound of it sent fear through the halls of the gods.

Indra went to Brihaspati, the teacher of the gods, and asked how one asura had grown past the reach of every weapon in heaven. Brihaspati told him the truth without softening it. The strength was not Bali’s own. It had been poured into him by the brahmins of Bhrigu, and against a power the brahmins had blessed no god could stand, only Sri Hari himself. Leave heaven, he counseled, go into hiding, and wait for the turn of time that undoes every fortune. So the gods slipped out of their own city by every gate, and Bali walked into Amaravati unopposed and gathered all three worlds into his hand. To set his rule past challenge, the Bhrigus had him perform a hundred horse-sacrifices, and his fame spread over the worlds like the light of the moon.

Aditi, the mother of the gods, watched her sons driven from their home and grieved as helplessly as any woman whose children have been turned out onto the road. In those days her husband, the Prajapati Kashyapa, rose from a long absorption in meditation and came back to the hermitage. He found the old gladness gone out of it, and when he saw how his wife’s face had changed he asked her what had happened. She told him how the sons of Diti had seized heaven and every possession her own sons had owned, and she begged him for a way to set it right.

Kashyapa told her the thing she did not want to hear, that no weapon of the gods would bite against enemies the brahmins had shielded, and that one refuge alone has never once failed the one who takes it, which is love given whole to the Lord. Then he taught her a vow that Brahma had disclosed to him long before, the Payovrata, the vow of milk. For twelve days across the bright fortnight of Phalguna the one who keeps it lives on milk alone and worships Vishnu with the twelve-syllable mantra, harming no living creature, sleeping on the bare ground, bathing at dawn and noon and dusk. Aditi kept it with a care that never once wandered, her mind fixed on Vasudeva, calling to him from inside her own heart, “Lord, give my children back their home.”

On the twelfth day the Lord stood before her, four arms, robed in yellow, and in three of his hands a conch, a discus, and a mace. She rose to praise him and could not; her voice failed her, her eyes filled, and she stood there shaking with the joy of the sight of him. He told her what he had decided. Her sons could not win heaven back by force, because the asuras were guarded by brahmins whom even time obeyed. So he would come by another road. He would take birth as her own son, entering through a portion of his being into the seed of Kashyapa, and he would set the worlds right from within her own house. She was to breathe this secret to no one, because the plans of the gods hold only so long as they are kept. Then he vanished where he stood. Kashyapa, deep in meditation, felt a part of Sri Hari pass into him, and in time he placed it in Aditi as the wind lays a spark in dry wood.

The child was born on the day the wise call Shravana Dwadashi, which they also name Vijaya Dwadashi, the day of victory: the twelfth of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, the moon standing in the mansion of Shravana, the sun at the peak of noon, in the hour named Abhijit. Conches and kettledrums sounded, the Apsaras danced, the Gandharvas sang, and the sky rained flowers over the hermitage. For one moment the newborn blazed in his full four-armed form, jeweled and armed, and then, while Aditi and Kashyapa stood gazing, he folded himself small, the way an actor steps into a role, and became a short brahmin boy. They named him Vamana.

He was a small boy, dark and cleanly made, with a face so open that no one who looked at it felt any fear. The sages performed his birth-rites, and when the time came his investiture with the sacred thread, and the whole of heaven came to dress him for a brahmin student’s life. Savita taught him the Gayatri. Brihaspati gave him the sacred thread. His father Kashyapa knotted the girdle of munja grass at his waist, the Earth gave him a deerskin, the moon-god gave him a wooden staff, the sky-god gave him an umbrella, Brahma set a water-pot in his hand, and the seven seers brought him blades of kusha grass. Kubera brought a bowl for alms, and Uma, the mother of the universe, gave him his first handful with her own hands. Full of that gathered light, the boy set out toward a sacrifice.

By then Bali was deep in one of his hundred horse-sacrifices, on the northern bank of the Narmada at Bhrigukachchha, the sacrificial field of the Bhrigus. The smoke of the offerings climbed into the sky, the smell of clarified butter hung over the ground, and over every rite the king held to one vow above the rest: no one who came to him to ask would ever go away empty-handed.

Into that field walked Vamana, an umbrella and a staff in one hand and a full water-pot in the other, with small steps and lowered eyes and a brightness that traveled with him, so that the priests and the patron and the whole gathering felt their own glow go dim, as though the sun had chosen to rise a second time in their midst. Some of them wondered aloud whether the fire-god had come, or the sun himself, or the sage Sanatkumara, drawn down to watch the rite.

The gatekeepers let him pass. A small brahmachari, and what harm could anyone imagine in that.

When Bali saw him he rose and came down from his high seat, washed the boy’s feet with his own hands, and touched that water to his head. “Bhagavan,” he said, palms folded, “your coming has fed my ancestors, cleansed my whole line, and carried my sacrifice to its end. Ask me for anything at all. Ask for a cow, for gold, for a house, for whole villages, for horses and elephants and chariots. No one reaches the door of this king and turns back with nothing.”

Vamana smiled. “Rajan, all the treasure in the three worlds cannot fill one man who has never learned to govern his own wants. A man not content with three paces of ground will not be content with a whole continent of nine realms; he will only begin to crave all seven divisions of the earth. Prithu and Gaya and the other great emperors held every land the oceans ring, and not one of them ever reached the end of his wanting. The man who takes what chance brings him and is satisfied lives at ease anywhere; the man who cannot rule his wants stays poor on the throne of all three worlds. So I ask for three paces of ground and nothing besides, measured out by these small feet of mine. Wealth is worth desiring only up to the measure of a man’s need, and not one step past it.”

Bali laughed. “Bhagavan, what a thing to ask for. I could give you a whole continent, and three little steps are all you will take? A boy does not know his own good. Take enough to live on, and take more besides.”

“No. Three paces are enough.”

Close by stood Bali’s teacher, Shukracharya, and his eyes had already stripped the disguise from the boy.

“Rajan, this is no ordinary child. This is the deathless Sri Hari himself, born to Kashyapa and Aditi to do the work of the gods. Grant him his three steps and he will swell until he fills the sky. With one stride he will take the whole earth, with the next the heavens, and there will be no ground left anywhere for the third. He will strip you of your throne, your rule, and your fortune, and lay every bit of it in the hands of his own elder brother, Indra. Then, with your promise half kept and nothing left to give, the seat that waits for you is hell. Do not pour the water of the vow.”

Bali paused. On one side stood his guru and the cold clear logic of his guru. On the other stood a tiny brahmin with his hand held out and open.

Then he spoke, quietly. “Gurudev, forgive me. I have given my word, and I am the grandson of Prahlada. The Earth herself has said that no wrong weighs heavier than a lie, that she can carry any burden except the man who breaks his word. Wealth walks away from every man on the day he dies; why should I clutch at it now and fail a brahmin who has come to ask? Dadhichi gave the very bones out of his body and Shibi the flesh off his own limbs; what is a little ground beside that? I do not fear hell, or poverty, or the ruin of my kingdom half as much as I fear making a promise to a brahmin and then failing him. And if the child in front of me is truly Sri Hari, then no fortune I have ever held is greater than this, that the Lord of everything has come to my door to ask something of me.”

Shukracharya’s patience broke into a curse: for setting his teacher’s word aside, Bali would fall from his high place and lose all he had. Bali did not move from the truth. His queen Vindhyavali came to his side with a golden pitcher, and he washed the small feet once more and let the water of the vow fall from his palm, and the gift was sealed. High above, the gods who were his own enemies let fall a rain of flowers, and the Gandharvas and Kinnaras sang across the sky that a hard and noble thing had been done, for this asura had given away all three worlds to his adversary with his eyes wide open.

“Vamana, the three paces are yours. Measure out whatever you will.”

The water had scarcely left his palm when the small body began to grow.

First it rose to the height of a man. Then his head climbed past the awning of the hall, then past the clouds. Beside that body the sun and the moon shrank to a pair of small lamps. The earth, the sky, the four directions, the heavens, the deep worlds below, the oceans, and every creature that drew breath began to gather into him, and Bali and his priests stood watching the whole universe fold itself into the boy they had been about to pity. In that towering form they saw the netherworlds in the soles of his feet, the mountains in his shanks, the gods of the air in his thighs, the seas along his sides, and the stars strewn across his chest. His weapons stood around him alive and waiting: the discus Sudarshana too bright to look at, the conch Panchajanya that roared like the end of the world, the mace Kaumodaki, the bow Sharnga, and his companions with Sunanda at their head.

He lifted his foot for the first stride, and in a single step the whole earth lay under his sole, while his body filled the sky and his outstretched arms filled the four directions.

The second stride rose through the heavens. The world of the gods, the space above it, every realm higher still passed under that one foot, which climbed beyond Maharloka, beyond Janaloka, beyond Tapoloka, all the way to Satyaloka, the seat of Brahma. There Brahma washed the lifted foot with water drawn in reverence, and that water, made holy by the touch of it, came down through the sky as the Ganga, which has washed the three worlds clean ever since.

Two strides, and the three worlds were spent. For the third there was not a handspan of ground left anywhere. He stopped.

Bali’s soldiers watched their king’s whole world vanish under two footfalls, and they took up their spears and their war-axes to cut the brahmin down. The Lord’s own attendants met them, laughing, and scattered them without effort. Bali called his men off. “Put up your weapons,” he told them. “Time itself has turned its face from us, and no army has ever beaten time. Our hour will come around again. It is not now.” And his warriors drew back and sank away into the earth.

Then Garuda, reading the mind of his Lord, threw the noose of Varuna around Bali and bound him where he stood. A cry of grief went up on every side. Out of the vast body overhead came the voice. “Bali, you promised three paces. Two have swallowed the earth and all the heavens. Show me the ground for the third. The man who promises a beggar and then cannot deliver has bought himself a place in hell, and your own teacher has already named that place for you.” Even bound, Bali’s mind did not shake.

Nothing at all stood in front of Bali now. The kingdom was gone. Heaven was gone. Every treasure he had spent a lifetime binding to dharma was gone. For one moment everything inside him emptied out too.

Then he bowed. He folded his hands, and over his face came something that was not fear at all, a strange lightness, as though a load he had carried for years had just been lifted off him.

“Lord, I am not afraid of hell, or of these cords, or of sorrow. There is only one thing I fear, and that is disgrace. All I have left now is this head, which has never bent to anyone else. Set your third step here.”

Just then Bali’s grandfather Prahlada arrived, rising into the assembly like the moon coming up over the rim of the world. Even with his grandson standing there in bonds, he folded his hands to Sri Hari. “Lord, this splendor was yours to give, and you gave it to him. Today it was yours to take, and you have taken back only what was always your own. By loosening his grip on a kingdom before it could drink his reason dry, you have shown him a great kindness.” And he stood there with his head bowed.

Bali’s queen Vindhyavali came forward too, hands folded, frightened to see her husband tied. “Lord, this whole world is a game you play for your own delight. You shape it, you hold it up, you fold it away again. When you are the maker and the keeper and the ender of it all, what did any of us ever truly own that we could offer back to you?”

Then Brahma joined them and asked that Bali, who had been stripped of everything, be let go, for a man who had given away the whole earth and the heavens and his own body with an unflinching mind had surely paid enough. Sri Hari turned to the bound king. “You gave away all you had. You were bound, your own teacher cursed you, your kinsmen fled from you, and still you would not bend your word by a hair. Understand why I have done this. I take the wealth away from the man I mean to favor, because wealth is the one thing that makes a man forget the world and forget me. You have beaten the very illusion that has never once let go of an asura. That is why you stand here with your mind unshaken.”

Then he gave him a kingdom in place of the one he had lost. “Go and rule Sutala, the deep realm that Vishvakarma raised. No sickness, no weariness, no sorrow will reach the ones who live there while my eye rests on them, and my discus will keep the gate against every enemy. And when the age of the Manu called Savarni comes around, you yourself will sit on the throne of Indra.”

Bali had offered his head, and the Lord did not refuse it. The third foot came down on it as gently as a hand comes to rest when it blesses. The cords of Varuna fell open. Then Sri Hari called Shukracharya to him and asked the teacher to finish the sacrifice his disciple had left standing, so that nothing of Bali’s great rite would be lost. He gave the kingdom of heaven back into the hands of his elder brother Indra, and Aditi had the thing she had asked for, and the Lord took up the rule of the worlds himself as Upendra, the younger brother of Indra. And Bali, with his brothers and his people around him, went down toward Sutala with a light heart.

As he went down into the deep, Bali saw that he was not going alone.

Sri Hari said one thing more, a thing no king had ever been given before him. “As long as you are there, I will stand at your gate myself, mace in hand, and keep it. When a man has put everything he owns into my hands, I do not leave his door for anywhere in all the worlds.”

Bali had no kingdom left to his name. And at his gate stood the master of the three worlds, on watch.

Shukadeva was quiet for a while, then turned to look at Parikshit. “Rajan, the day Bali’s palm was emptied of the last thing in it was the day it finally had room for Sri Hari to come and sit there. What he had been holding slipped from him, and what can never slip from anyone came and settled at his side.”

Parikshit lowered his head slowly. “Bhagavan, so the very emptiness that everyone is afraid of is itself the door.”