Mahabharata · Chapter 11a · Part 2 of 2 · Dvaitavana: the debate of Draupadi, Yudhishthira and Bhima

About 75 minutes

The people of Kurujangala turned back, the lake called Dvaitavana, and the smile of Markandeya that came out of grief

When the chief of the Dasharhas had gone, the forest closed around what was left. Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, the twins who looked like two images of Shiva, Draupadi, and the priest Dhaumya climbed into costly chariots drawn by excellent horses and drove into the trees together, and as they went they gave away what a king gives when he leaves: gold nishkas, cloth, and cows to the Brahmins who knew the science of pronunciation, the letters, and the mantras. Twenty attendants came behind them with bows and bowstrings, blazing weapons, shafts and arrows, and the engines of destruction that an army in exile still carries. Indrasena, the charioteer, followed fast on a chariot of his own with the princess’s clothes and ornaments, her nurses, and her maids. That was the whole court now. And then the road filled with people. The citizens of Kurujangala, the country around the two capitals, had come out after the king, and when they reached him they walked around him in reverence, the leading Brahmins greeting him with cheerful faces, and Yudhishthira and his brothers greeting them back in the same spirit. The king stopped his chariot. He looked at the crowd of his people and he felt for them what a father feels for his sons, and they, standing around him, felt what sons feel for a father who is going away. Then the composure broke. With tears in their eyes, and with the bashfulness of people who have followed a king farther than they were asked to, they cried out, alas, lord, alas, dharma. You are the chief of the Kurus and the king of us, your subjects, they said. Where are you going, righteous king, leaving all these citizens and the people of the country, like a father leaving his sons? Shame on the cruel-hearted son of Dhritarashtra. Shame on the evil-minded son of Subala. Shame on Karna. Those wretches wish you ill, you who are firm in dharma. You built with your own hands the unrivaled city of Indraprastha, splendid as Kailasa, and now you leave it, king of extraordinary deeds. You leave that peerless palace Maya built, which has the splendor of the palace of the gods, which looks like a celestial illusion, which the gods themselves guard. Son of Dharma, where are you going?

It was Arjuna who answered them, in a loud voice, and he answered as a man who understood the three ends of life, dharma, pleasure, and profit, and knew which of them was in play. By living in the forest, he said, the king intends to take away the good name of his enemies. Then he gave the crowd something to do, because a crowd that has nothing to do will follow a king into the trees. You who have the twice-born at your head, you who know dharma and profit, go to the ascetics one by one, win their favor, and represent to them what may be for our supreme good. The Brahmins and the people of the other orders heard him, greeted him, walked once more around the foremost of virtuous men, and, having said their farewells to the son of Pritha, to Vrikodara, to Dhananjaya, to Yajnaseni, and to the twins, and having been commanded by Yudhishthira to go, they returned to their homes across the kingdom with heavy hearts. When the last of them had gone, Yudhishthira, who never wavered in a promise, turned to his brothers and set them a task in the plainest words. We shall have to live in the lonely forest for these twelve years. Search this great forest for some place full of birds and deer and flowers and fruit, beautiful to look at, auspicious, inhabited by virtuous people, where we can live pleasantly for all those years. Arjuna bowed to the king as a pupil bows to a teacher before he answered. You have waited respectfully on all the great and ancient rishis, he said. There is nothing in the world of men you do not know. You have always attended on the Brahmins, on Dvaipayana and the others, and on Narada of great austerity, who goes with his senses under control to the gates of every world, from the world of the gods to that of Brahma, the worlds of the Gandharvas and the Apsaras among them. You know what the Brahmins think, and you know their power. You know what is good for us. We will live wherever you like. And then, having placed the decision entirely in his brother’s hands, he made it for him. Here is this lake called Dvaitavana, full of sacred water, covered with flowers, delightful to see, the home of many kinds of birds. If it pleases you, king, we should like to spend these twelve years here. Or do you think otherwise? What you have said recommends itself to me, Partha, Yudhishthira answered. Let us go to that sacred, celebrated, and great lake, Dvaitavana.

So the son of Pandu went to the lake, and he did not go alone. Brahmins surrounded him in numbers, some who sacrificed with fire and some without, some who lived on alms while they studied the Vedas, some of the order that has withdrawn to the forest, and with them hundreds of great souls crowned with ascetic success and bound by hard vows. With this company the bulls of the Bharata race entered the sacred and delightful woods of Dvaita. It was the end of summer, and the king saw the great forest covered with sala and palm and mango, with madhuka and nipa and kadamba, with sarja and arjuna and karnikara, many of them in flower, and on the tallest of those trees sat peacocks and datyuhas, chakoras and barhins and kokilas, pouring down their notes. He saw herds of huge elephants, big as hills, the juice of the rutting season running down their temples, moving with their females. Coming near the beautiful Bhogavati, which is the Sarasvati, he saw in the hermitages of that forest many ascetics who had reached their goal, virtuous men of sanctified souls, dressed in bark, their hair in matted locks. The king came down from his chariot with his brothers and his followers and walked into that forest like Indra of immeasurable energy entering heaven. Crowds of Charanas and Siddhas came toward him, wanting to see the monarch devoted to truth, and the people of the forest stood around that lion among kings. He greeted all the Siddhas and was greeted by them in return as a king or a god is greeted, and with his hands joined he went in among the foremost of the twice-born. The ascetics who came up to him he greeted back. Then that illustrious and virtuous king sat down in their midst at the foot of a mighty tree heavy with flowers, exactly as his father Pandu had once sat in a forest, and Bhima and Dhananjaya and the twins and Draupadi and their followers, all of them tired, left their vehicles and sat down around him. Bent low with the weight of its creepers, with those five famous bowmen resting beneath it, the great tree looked like a mountain with five huge elephants resting against its side.

Out of distress the princes had found a pleasant home, and in those woods full of sala trees and washed by the Sarasvati they began to live like so many Indras. The king set himself to please every yati and muni and every leading Brahmin of that forest with offerings of excellent fruit and roots, and Dhaumya, their priest, a father to those princes, began to perform for them the rites of ishti and the offerings to the ancestors, so that even without a kingdom the household of the Pandavas kept its fires. And into that household, one day, came a guest: the old rishi Markandeya, possessed of intense and abundant energy, honored by the gods and by the rishis among men, with the brightness of a blazing fire about him. Yudhishthira paid him the homage due to such a man. And the all-knowing muni, looking at Draupadi, at Yudhishthira, at Bhima, and at Arjuna in the midst of the ascetics, remembered Rama in his mind and smiled. The smile hurt. Every ascetic in that gathering was sorrowful at seeing the king where he was, and Yudhishthira asked, with something like grief, why the one man who had come as a guest should be the one who smiled, as if in glee, in front of all of them. Markandeya’s answer began with a denial and ended with a prophecy. Child, he said, I too am sorry, and I do not smile in glee, and no pride born of joy possesses my heart. Seeing your calamity today I remembered Rama, the son of Dasharatha, devoted to truth. That Rama, with Lakshmana beside him, lived in the woods at his father’s command. Son of Pritha, I saw him in the old days ranging with his bow on the top of the Rishyamuka hills. He was like Indra, like the lord of Yama, like the slayer of Namuchi, and yet that sinless one had to live in the forest at his father’s word and accept it as his duty. He was the equal of Shakra in prowess and unbeatable in battle, and yet he had to range the forest, giving up every pleasure. Therefore let no one act unrighteously, saying, I am mighty. Then the old man said that sentence again, and again, and each time he set a different example in front of it, like a teacher laying stones in a row. The kings Nabhaga and Bhagiratha and others conquered by truth this whole earth bounded by the seas and won in the end every region hereafter; therefore let no one act unrighteously, saying, I am mighty. The virtuous and truthful king of Kashi and Karusha was called a mad dog for giving up his lands and his riches; therefore let no one act unrighteously, saying, I am mighty. The seven righteous rishis blaze in the sky for having kept the rule the Creator laid down in the Vedas; therefore let no one act unrighteously, saying, I am mighty. Look at the elephants, huge as mountain cliffs and armed with tusks: they do not transgress the laws of the Creator; therefore let no one act unrighteously, saying, might is mine. Look at every creature acting according to its kind, as the Creator ordained; therefore let no one act unrighteously, saying, might is mine. And then he turned the sentence around and pointed it at the man in front of him. In truth and dharma and right conduct and modesty, son of Pritha, you have surpassed all creatures, and your fame and your energy are as bright as fire or the sun. Firm in your promise, having passed your painful exile in the woods, you will, king, snatch back your blazing prosperity from the Kauravas with your own energy. Having said this to Yudhishthira in the midst of the ascetics and his friends, the great rishi saluted Dhaumya and all the Pandavas and set out toward the north.

A key to reading this (names and places): Kurujangala is the wooded heart of the Kuru country around Hastinapura and Indraprastha; its people have followed the exiles as far as the Kamyaka forest. Dvaitavana is the name of a lake and of the forest on its shores; Bhogavati here is a name of the Sarasvati. Indrasena is Yudhishthira’s charioteer. “The lord of Yama” and “the slayer of Namuchi” are both titles of Indra, to whom Markandeya compares Rama. Markandeya’s claim to have seen Rama on Rishyamuka with his own eyes belongs to Vyasa’s telling; later in this same Vana Parva, after Draupadi is carried off, the same sage will tell Yudhishthira the whole story of Rama, and this smile is the first hint of it.

The gist: With Krishna gone, the people of Kurujangala surround Yudhishthira and weep, and Arjuna sends them home with a task. On Arjuna’s suggestion the Pandavas settle beside the lake of Dvaitavana with hundreds of Brahmins and Siddhas, and Dhaumya keeps the household rites alive. There the sage Markandeya arrives as a guest, looks at Draupadi and the brothers, and smiles; asked why, he says the smile is the memory of Rama, who also lived in a forest at his father’s word, and that the man who thinks strength excuses wrongdoing has misread the world. Yudhishthira, he says, will take his kingdom back.

Vedic chant and the twang of bows together: the teaching of Baka Dalbhya, and Draupadi’s first question at dusk, where is your anger?

The forest changed around the exiles. As the sons of Pandu went on living in the woods of Dvaita, the great forest filled with Brahmins, and the lake in the middle of it, ringing all day with recitation, became as holy as a second region of Brahma. The sounds of the Yajus, the Riks, and the Samas and the other words the Brahmins uttered were sweet to hear, and through them, morning and evening, ran the twang of the Parthas’ bows, so that the customs of the Brahmin and the Kshatriya met in one sound, and the meeting was beautiful. It was this sound that gave one of the rishis his text. One evening Baka of the Dalbhya family spoke to Yudhishthira where he sat among the sages. Look, chief of the Kurus, son of Pritha, he said. The hour of the homa has come for these Brahmins devoted to austerity, the hour when all the sacred fires have been lit. All these men of hard vows, protected by you, are performing the rites of dharma in this holy place. The descendants of Bhrigu and Angiras, with those of Vasishtha and Kashyapa, the illustrious sons of Agastya, the children of Atri, men of excellent vows, in truth the foremost Brahmins of the whole world, are gathered with you now. Listen then, son of the Kuru race born of Kunti, you and your brothers, to what I have to say. What followed was a doctrine, and Baka stated it in the terms of the thing he had been listening to. As fire helped by the wind consumes a forest, so the energy of a Brahmin mingling with the energy of a Kshatriya, and the might of a Kshatriya mingling with the power of a Brahmin, when they gather force together, consume every enemy. Child, the man who wants to conquer this world and the next for a long time must never wish to be without Brahmins. A king slays his enemies once he has found a Brahmin who understands both religion and the affairs of the world and is free of passion and folly. Then he gave the case that proves the rule from the far side. King Bali, cherishing his subjects, practiced the duties that lead to salvation, and he knew no other means in this world than the Brahmins; that is why every wish of Virochana’s son, the Asura, was gratified and his wealth never ran out. He gained the whole earth through the help of the Brahmins, and he met destruction the moment he began to practice wrong against them. The earth with her riches does not long accept as her lord a Kshatriya who lives without a Brahmin, but the earth girt by the sea bows to the man a Brahmin rules and teaches. A Kshatriya without Brahmins dwindles in strength like an elephant in battle without its driver. The Brahmin’s sight is beyond compare, and the Kshatriya’s might is beyond compare, and when the two combine the whole earth yields to them gladly. As fire grown mighty with the wind consumes straw and wood, so kings with Brahmins consume every foe. An intelligent Kshatriya, to gain what he lacks and to increase what he has, takes counsel of Brahmins. Therefore, son of Kunti, to gain what you do not have, to increase what you have, and to spend what you have on the right objects and the right people, keep with you a Brahmin of reputation, learned in the Vedas, wise and experienced. You have always honored the Brahmins highly, Yudhishthira. That is why your fame is great and blazes through the three worlds.

The Brahmins who lived with Yudhishthira paid Baka of the Dalbhya race their reverence when he finished, and hearing him praise Yudhishthira they were greatly pleased, and the chronicler lists them, because a court in exile is measured by who chooses to sit in it: Dvaipayana and Narada and Jamadagnya and Prithushravas, Indradyumna and Bhalaki and Kritachetas and Sahasrapat, Karnashravas and Munja and Lavanashva and Kashyapa, Harita and Sthulakarna and Agniveshya and Shaunaka, Kritavak and Suvakana and Brihadashva and Vibhavasu, Urdhvaretas and Vrishamitra and Suhotra and Hotravahana, these and many other Brahmins of rigid vows adored Yudhishthira the way the rishis in heaven adore Purandara. That is the daylight picture of Dvaitavana: a king without a kingdom, adored by sages, a lake full of scripture. The evening picture is different. One evening the sons of Pritha sat with Draupadi, exiled and afflicted, talking to one another in sorrow, and Krishna of the Panchalas, handsome and well informed, dear to her lords and devoted to them, spoke to Yudhishthira. She began with the man who had put them there. That sinful, cruel, wicked-minded son of Dhritarashtra surely feels no sorrow for us, she said, when he has sent you and me into the woods dressed in deerskin and feels no regret. The heart of that wretch of evil deeds must be made of steel, that he could speak to you, his virtuous eldest brother, in words so harsh. He has brought you, who deserve every happiness and never such misery, into this distress, and that evil-minded sinner rejoices with his friends. When you set out for the woods in deerskin, Bharata, only four people did not weep: Duryodhana, Karna, the evil-minded Shakuni, and Duhshasana, that bad and fierce brother of Duryodhana. Every other Kuru, best of the Kurus, was full of sorrow and shed tears.

Then she turned from the enemy to the man in front of her, and she did it the way grief does it, by putting two objects side by side. Seeing this bed of yours, and remembering what you had before, I grieve for you, king, who do not deserve misery and were raised in every luxury. I remember that seat of ivory in your court, set with jewels, and I look at this seat of kusha grass, and grief consumes me. I saw you surrounded in your court by kings. What peace can my heart know, seeing you now? I saw your body, bright as the sun, anointed with sandal paste, and grief takes my senses from me when I see it smeared with mud and dirt. I saw you dressed in silk of pure white, and now I see you in rags. Once, from your house, pure food of every kind was carried on plates of gold to Brahmins by the thousand; you gave the best of food to ascetics with homes and ascetics without them; living in your great house you kept plates by the thousand filled with every kind of food and worshiped the Brahmins by granting every wish they had. What peace can my heart know, not seeing any of this now? And these brothers of yours, young, wearing earrings, whom cooks once fed with food of sweet flavor and skillful dressing: I see them, who deserve no misery, living in the woods on what the woods yield, and my heart knows no peace. Having laid the two pictures side by side, she asked the question that the rest of her speech would ask again and again, each time with a different brother’s face held up to it. Thinking of this Bhimasena living in sorrow in the forest, does your anger not blaze up, even though the time has come? Why does your anger not blaze up when you look at the illustrious Bhimasena, who does everything unaided, fallen into such distress though he deserves every happiness, who was once surrounded by countless vehicles and dressed in costly clothes? This exalted man is ready to slay all the Kurus in battle, and he bears all this sorrow for one reason only: he is waiting for your promise to be fulfilled. And this Arjuna, who with two hands is the equal, for the lightness of his hand in loosing arrows, of the Arjuna of a thousand arms, who is like Yama at the end of an age to his enemies, by whose weapons all the kings of the earth were made to wait on the Brahmins at your sacrifice: seeing that tiger among men, worshiped by gods and Danavas, so anxious, why do you feel no indignation? I grieve, Bharata, that your wrath does not blaze at the sight of that son of Pritha in exile, raised in every luxury, who on a single chariot has beaten gods and men and serpents, who was honored with gifts of chariots and carriages of every shape and horses and elephants, who took their treasures from the kings of the earth by force, who chastises every foe and can loose five hundred arrows at a single stroke. Why does your wrath not blaze at the sight of Nakula in exile, so fair and strong and young, the first of all swordsmen? Why do you pardon the enemy when you look at Madri’s son, the handsome and brave Sahadeva, in exile? Why does your anger not blaze at the sight of both Nakula and Sahadeva, overwhelmed with grief, who deserve none of it? And why do you pardon the enemy at the sight of me in exile, born in the house of Drupada, the sister of Dhrishtadyumna, the daughter-in-law of the illustrious Pandu, the devoted wife of heroes?

The conclusion she drew was the hardest thing a wife of five Kshatriyas could say to the eldest of them. Truly, best of the Bharatas, you have no anger, or your mind would be moved at the sight of your brothers and of me in this state. It is said that there is no Kshatriya in the world without anger. I see in you the refutation of the proverb. The Kshatriya who does not show his energy when the opportunity comes is despised by every creature, son of Pritha. So you should not extend your forgiveness to the enemy. With your energy, beyond any doubt, you could slay them all. And then, in her last sentence, with the argument apparently complete, she conceded the other half of it, and gave her husband the opening he would take: the Kshatriya who is not appeased when the time for forgiveness comes becomes hateful to every creature and meets destruction in this world and the next. The question underneath her whole speech was whether this was a time for anger or a time for forgiveness, and she had answered it one way; the king, when he answered, would answer it the other.

A key to reading this (who and why): Baka of the Dalbhya family is a Vedic rishi; he has nothing to do with the Rakshasa Baka whom Bhima killed at Ekachakra. His whole teaching rests on one pairing, the power of the Brahmin joined to the might of the Kshatriya, and his counterexample is the Asura Bali, who rose by the Brahmins’ help and fell the moment he wronged them. Draupadi’s long speech circles one question, where is your anger, and its final sentence admits that forgiveness too has its season; Yudhishthira’s reply, in the next scene, will start from exactly that admission. “The Arjuna of a thousand arms” is Kartavirya Arjuna, the Haihaya king, against whom the Pandava Arjuna is measured. When Draupadi calls herself the sister of Dhrishtadyumna, she is reminding the king that she was born into the royal house of Panchala.

The gist: At Dvaitavana the Vedic chant and the twang of bows sound together, and Baka Dalbhya tells Yudhishthira that a Kshatriya without a Brahmin is an elephant without a driver; Vyasa, Narada, and dozens of named rishis join in praising the king. Then, at dusk, Draupadi sets the ivory throne beside the kusha mat, names the four men who did not weep at the exiles’ departure, holds up each brother’s condition in turn, and asks the king over and over the same thing: where is your anger?

Prahlada and Bali on when to forgive and when to strike; and Yudhishthira’s answer that anger destroys the world and forgiveness holds it together

Draupadi had asked her question, why the king’s anger did not wake at the sight of his brothers and his wife in rags, and she did not wait for an answer before she brought her witness. She reached for a story the way a pleader reaches for precedent. On this very point, king, she said, the old conversation between Prahlada and Bali, the son of Virochana, is quoted as the example. One day Bali went to his grandfather Prahlada, the chief of the Asuras and the Danavas, a man of great wisdom who knew the mysteries of the science of duty, and asked him: sire, which is meritorious, forgiveness or might and energy? I am confused about this; enlighten me. You who know every duty, tell me truly which of the two is the path of merit, and whatever you command, I will obey to the letter. And the grandfather, who knew every conclusion there was to know, answered the grandson who had come to him with a doubt, and he answered the whole of it.

Know two things for certain, child, Prahlada said. Might is not always meritorious, and forgiveness is not always meritorious either. The man who always forgives suffers many evils. Servants, strangers and enemies all disregard him. No creature bows to him. That is why the learned do not praise a settled habit of forgiveness. The servants of a man who always forgives hold him cheap and pick up faults by the dozen; those mean-minded men try to strip him of his wealth; vile servants help themselves to his vehicles and clothes, his ornaments and apparel, his beds and seats, his food and drink and everything else he uses. What he tells them to give to others, they do not give, and they do not honor their master with the respect that is his due. And in this world, disregard is worse than death. Sons, servants, attendants and even strangers speak harshly to the man who always forgives. People who hold such a man cheap come to desire his wife, and his wife grows ready to do as she pleases. Servants who love their pleasures, if they never receive even a light punishment from their master, contract every vice, and the wicked injure such a master without end. These and many more are the faults that cling to the ever-forgiving.

Now hear, son of Virochana, the faults of those who never forgive. The man of wrath, wrapped in darkness, uses his own strength to lay every kind of punishment on people whether they deserve it or not, and that very strength cuts him off from his friends. Relatives hate him, and so do strangers. Because he insults others he loses wealth, and he reaps disregard, sorrow, hatred, confusion and enemies. In his anger he punishes men and gets harsh words in return. He is soon stripped of his prosperity, and of his life, to say nothing of friends and kin. The man who turns his might on his benefactor and his enemy alike is a terror to the world, like a snake that has taken up residence in a house is a terror to the people who live there. What prosperity can a man have whom the world is afraid of? People do him an injury the moment they find an opening. So a man should never show excessive might, nor forgiveness on every occasion. He should put forth his might when the occasion calls for it and show forgiveness when the occasion calls for that. The one who is forgiving at the right time and harsh and strong at the right time wins happiness in this world and in the other.

Then Prahlada gave the rule itself, the schedule of forgiveness that the learned have laid down and that everyone should keep. If a man has done you a service, forgive him even a grave wrong, remembering the earlier service. Forgive those who have offended out of ignorance and folly, because learning and wisdom do not come easily to men. But those who offended knowingly and then plead ignorance should be punished even for a trivial offense; such crooked men should never be pardoned. Every creature’s first offense should be forgiven. The second should be punished, even if it is small. If a man committed an offense unwillingly, examine his plea with a careful inquiry and pardon him. Humility can conquer might and humility can conquer weakness; there is nothing humility cannot accomplish, and so humility is fiercer than it looks. Act with reference to place and time, weighing your own strength and weakness; nothing undertaken without regard to place and time succeeds, so always wait for the place and the time. Sometimes offenders should be forgiven out of fear of the people. These, said Prahlada, are the occasions of forgiveness, and on occasions other than these, might should be used against transgressors. Draupadi closed her case. Therefore, king, I hold that the time has come for you to put forth your might. Toward those Kurus, the covetous sons of Dhritarashtra who injure us always, this is no time for forgiveness. The humble and forgiving man is disregarded, and the fierce persecute others. He is a king who has recourse to both, each in its season.

Yudhishthira answered, and his answer set off in exactly the opposite direction from hers. Anger is the slayer of men, he said, and their prosperer too. Know, wise one, that anger is the root of all prosperity and all adversity. The man who suppresses his anger earns prosperity; the man who always gives way to it reaps adversity from his own fierceness. In this world anger is seen to be the cause of every creature’s destruction. How, then, can a man like me indulge an anger that is so destructive of the world? The angry man commits sin. The angry man kills even his teachers. The angry man insults his elders with harsh words. He cannot tell what should be said from what should not. There is no act an angry man may not do and no word he may not utter. In anger a man may kill someone who did not deserve to die and honor someone who did. The angry man may send his own soul to the regions of Yama. Seeing all these faults, the wise control their anger, wanting high prosperity in this world and the other; that is why the tranquil have banished wrath. How can a man like us indulge it? Daughter of Drupada, thinking on all this, my anger does not rise. The man who does nothing against another whose wrath is up rescues himself and the other from great fear; he can be called the physician of both. If a weak man, persecuted, foolishly grows angry at those stronger than himself, he becomes the cause of his own destruction, and for one who throws his life away like that there are no regions to win hereafter. So it has been said, daughter of Drupada, that a weak man should always suppress his wrath. And the wise man who is persecuted and does not let his wrath rise rejoices in the other world, having passed his persecutor over in indifference. That is why it has been said that the wise, strong or weak, should always forgive the persecutor, even when the persecutor is in straits. That is why, Krishna, the virtuous applaud those who have conquered their wrath, and hold that the honest and forgiving man is always victorious. Truth is more beneficial than untruth, and gentleness than cruelty. How then can a man like me, even to kill Duryodhana, show an anger with so many faults, which the virtuous banish from their souls?

He went on, and the argument widened from the one man to the whole fabric of the world. Those whom the learned and far-seeing regard as possessing true force of character are precisely the ones whose wrath is only outward show; the learned call him strong who can suppress his risen wrath by his wisdom. The angry man does not see things as they are; he does not see his road, and he respects no one. He kills those who should not be killed; he slays his own teachers. So the man of character should keep anger at a distance. Overwhelmed by wrath, a man does not easily acquire generosity, dignity, courage, skill and the other attributes of real strength. By giving up anger a man can show proper energy, while for the angry man it is very hard to show his energy at the proper time. The ignorant take anger for energy. But wrath was given to man for the destruction of the world, and whoever wants to behave rightly must give it up for good. If fools whose minds have no light transgress in every way, how can a man like me transgress like them? If there were no men on earth as forgiving as the earth itself, there would be no peace among men, only endless strife born of anger. If the injured returned their injuries, if the man chastised by his elder chastised his elder in return, the result would be the destruction of every creature and the reign of sin. If the man who hears harsh words gave them back, if the injured struck back, if the punished punished in return, if fathers killed sons and sons fathers, husbands wives and wives husbands, then how, Krishna, could birth happen at all in a world where anger ruled like that? Know, fair-faced one, that the birth of creatures is due to peace. If the king gives way to wrath, his subjects are soon destroyed; wrath has for its fruit the destruction and distress of the people. It is because there are men in the world forgiving as the earth that creatures have their life and their prosperity. One should forgive under every injury; the continuation of the species is due to man’s forgiveness. He is wise and excellent who has conquered his wrath and shows forgiveness even when a strong man insults him, oppresses him and provokes him. The powerful man who controls his wrath has many everlasting regions to enjoy, and the angry man is called a fool and is destroyed in both worlds.

Then Yudhishthira sang her the verses, the ones the forgiving Kashyapa composed in honor of the ever-forgiving. Forgiveness is virtue; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is the Vedas; forgiveness is the Shruti; he who knows this can forgive everything. Forgiveness is Brahma; forgiveness is truth; forgiveness is stored ascetic merit and it protects the ascetic merit still to come; forgiveness is asceticism; forgiveness is holiness; and by forgiveness the universe is held together. The forgiving reach the regions won by those who have performed meritorious sacrifices, by those versed in the Vedas, by those of high ascetic merit; sacrificers and performers of religious rites reach other regions, but the men of forgiveness reach the much-adored regions in the world of Brahma. Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is quiet of mind. How, Krishna, can a man like us abandon a forgiveness in which Brahma and truth and wisdom and the worlds are established? The wise should always forgive, for when a man can forgive everything he attains Brahma. This world belongs to the forgiving and so does the other; they win honor here and blessedness hereafter, and those who always conquer wrath by forgiveness obtain the higher regions. That is why forgiveness has been called the highest virtue. Having heard these verses, Draupadi, be content; do not give way to your anger. Our grandsire, the son of Shantanu, will worship peace; Krishna, the son of Devaki, will worship peace; the preceptor and Vidura called Kshatta will both speak for peace; Kripa and Sanjaya will preach peace; Somadatta and Yuyutsu and Drona’s son and our grandsire Vyasa, every one of them speaks always of peace. Urged toward peace by all of these, the king, I think, will give us back our kingdom. But if he yields to temptation he will be destroyed. Lady, a crisis has come in the history of the Bharatas that will plunge them into calamity; this has been my settled conclusion for some time. Suyodhana does not deserve the kingdom, and that is why he has not been able to acquire forgiveness. I deserve the sovereignty, and that is why forgiveness has taken possession of me. Forgiveness and gentleness are the qualities of the self-possessed; they are eternal virtue; and I will truly adopt them.

A key to reading this (who is being called as a witness): The whole exchange belongs to one evening in Dvaitavana, after Draupadi has asked the king why the sight of Bhima, Arjuna, the twins and herself in exile does not make his anger blaze. Prahlada is the son of Hiranyakashipu and the father of Virochana, so Bali’s grandfather; Draupadi cites the most righteous of Asura kings because his teaching sets limits to forgiveness rather than forbidding it. In Yudhishthira’s reply the verses of Kashyapa carry the case for forgiveness, and his roll of peacemakers, Bhishma, Krishna, Drona, Vidura, Kripa, Sanjaya, Somadatta, Yuyutsu, Ashvatthama and Vyasa, is the very list that will be tested thirteen years later in the Kuru assembly of the Udyoga Parva, where most of them do speak for peace, and the king yields to temptation anyway.

The gist: Draupadi lays out Prahlada’s teaching to Bali: neither constant forgiveness nor constant might is virtue; forgive the first offense and punish the second; forgive the benefactor and the ignorant, punish the man who feigns ignorance; and this, she says, is the hour for might. Yudhishthira answers that anger is the root of the world’s destruction and that forgiveness, in Kashyapa’s verses, is dharma, sacrifice, Brahma and the thing that holds the universe together; the elders from Bhishma to Vyasa will turn Dhritarashtra toward peace, and the kingdom will come back.

The puppet and the string: Draupadi’s indictment of the Ordainer, and Yudhishthira’s answer that a trader in virtue is no virtuous man

When Yudhishthira had finished praising forgiveness, Draupadi changed the defendant. She had been prosecuting the king’s temper; now she turned on the one who had made such a king and put him in such a place. I bow to Dhatri and Vidhatri, she said, who have clouded your mind like this. About the burden you carry, you think differently from your fathers and grandfathers. Men are set in the different stations of life by their acts; acts produce consequences that cannot be avoided; and to want release from them is mere folly. It seems that in this world no man can win prosperity by virtue, gentleness, forgiveness, straightforwardness and the fear of censure. If it were otherwise, Bharata, this unbearable calamity would never have fallen on you, who deserve it so little, nor on these brothers of yours with all their energy. In the days of prosperity and in these days of adversity you have never held anything as dear as virtue, which you hold dearer than life. That your kingdom exists for virtue alone, that your life exists for virtue alone, is known to the Brahmins, to your elders, even to the gods. I think you could abandon Bhimasena and Arjuna and these twin sons of Madri, and me with them, and still not abandon virtue. I have heard that the king protects virtue and that virtue, protected, protects him in return. What I see is that virtue does not protect you.

Then she read him his own ledger, item by item, the way one reads out a debt that has never been paid. Like a shadow following a man, your heart seeks virtue with a single purpose. You have never slighted your equals, your inferiors or your superiors. You gained the whole earth and your pride did not grow. You worship the Brahmins and the gods and the fathers with swadha and every other rite; you have satisfied the Brahmins by granting their every wish. Yatis and sannyasins and mendicant householders have always been fed in your house from plates of gold, and I have served that food. To the forest-dwellers you always give gold and grain. There is nothing in your house you would not give to the Brahmins. In the Vishvadeva sacrifice performed in your house for your peace, what is consecrated goes first to guests and to all creatures, and you live on what is left. Ishtis and pashubandhas, sacrifices for the fulfillment of desires, the rites of the household, the paka sacrifices and every other kind have always been performed under your roof. Even in this great forest, so lonely and so full of robbers, exiled and stripped of your kingdom, your virtue has not diminished by a grain. The Ashvamedha, the Rajasuya, the Pundarika and the Gosava, those great sacrifices with their great gifts, you have performed them all. And yet, king, in that dreadful hour of the losing game, driven by a perverse sense, you staked and lost your kingdom, your wealth, your weapons, your brothers and me. Simple, gentle, generous, modest, truthful, how could your mind be drawn to the vice of dice? Seeing your distress and this calamity, I am almost out of my senses and my heart is overwhelmed with grief.

From there her grief became a philosophy and the philosophy became an accusation, and she built it out of images that get harder as they go. An old story is cited, she said, to show that men are subject to the will of God and never to their own wishes. The Supreme Lord and Ordainer settles everything, the weal and woe, the happiness and misery of every creature, before it is born, guided by the acts of each, which are like a seed that must sprout into the tree of a life. As a wooden doll is made to move its limbs by the man who pulls the strings, so creatures are made to work by the Lord of all. Like space covering every object, God pervades every creature and ordains its weal or woe. Like a bird tied to a string, every creature depends on God; everyone is subject to him and to no one else; no one can be his own ordainer. Like a pearl on its thread, like a bull held by the cord through its nose, like a tree that has fallen from the bank into the middle of the stream, every creature follows the command of the Creator, because it is filled with his spirit and established in him. And man, dependent on the universal soul, cannot pass a single moment on his own. Wrapped in darkness, creatures are not masters of their own weal or woe; they go to heaven or to hell driven by God himself. Like light straws in a strong wind, all creatures depend on God. And God, pervading all creatures and engaged in acts right and wrong, moves through the universe, and yet no one can say, this is God. This body with its physical attributes is only the instrument by which the Lord makes every creature reap fruits good and bad. Look at the power of the illusion God has spread, by which he confounds creatures and makes them kill their fellows. Munis who know the truth see these things differently, the way the rays of the sun are a pencil of light to ordinary eyes and, to sharper ones, are full of the seeds of food and drink. Ordinary people see the things of the earth otherwise. It is God who makes them all, by different processes in their making and their unmaking. And the Self-born Grandsire, the Almighty, spreading his illusion, kills his creatures by means of his creatures, as a man breaks inert wood with wood, stone with stone, iron with iron. The Supreme Lord plays with his creatures at his pleasure, making and destroying them, like a child with a toy of soft earth. It seems to me, king, that God does not behave toward his creatures as a father or a mother. He seems to bear himself toward them in anger, like a vicious man. Seeing good and modest and well-behaved people persecuted while the sinful are happy, I am sorely troubled. Seeing your distress and Suyodhana’s prosperity, I cannot speak well of the Great Ordainer who allows such inequality. What fruit does the Ordainer reap, sir, by granting prosperity to Dhritarashtra’s son, who breaks the ordinances, who is crooked and greedy, who injures virtue and religion? If the act done pursues the doer and no one else, then it is God himself who is stained with the sin of every act. And if the sin of an act does not attach to the doer, then might, and not God, is the true cause of acts, and I grieve for those who have no might.

Yudhishthira praised the speech first and then put his hand on its root. Your speech is delightful, Yajnaseni, he said, smooth and full of excellent phrases; we have listened to it carefully. But you are speaking the language of atheism. Princess, I never act in the hope of the fruits of my actions. I give because it is my duty to give; I sacrifice because it is my duty to sacrifice. I do to the best of my power whatever a householder should do, without regard to whether those acts bear fruit or not. I act virtuously, Krishna, out of no desire to reap the fruits of virtue, but so as not to transgress the ordinances of the Veda, and because I have seen how the good and wise conduct themselves. My heart is drawn to virtue by its own nature. The man who wants to reap the fruits of virtue is a trader in virtue; his nature is mean, and he should never be counted among the virtuous, nor does he ever obtain the fruits of his virtues. Nor does the man of sinful heart who does a virtuous act and then doubts it in his mind obtain its fruit; his skepticism costs him that. I tell you on the authority of the Vedas, which are the highest proof in such matters, that you must never doubt virtue. The man who doubts virtue is destined for birth among the brutes. The man of weak understanding who doubts religion, or virtue, or the words of the Rishis, is shut out from the regions of immortality and bliss, as Shudras are shut out from the Vedas. If a child born of a good line studies the Vedas and bears himself virtuously, royal sages of virtuous conduct count him an aged sage whatever his years. And the sinful wretch who doubts religion and transgresses the scriptures is held lower than Shudras and robbers.

Then he offered his proof, and his proof was standing in front of her, or had been, a few days before. You have seen with your own eyes the great ascetic Markandeya of immeasurable soul come to us. It is by virtue alone that he has won immortality in the flesh. Vyasa, Vasishtha, Maitreya, Narada, Lomasha, Shuka and the other Rishis have all become pure of soul by virtue alone. You see them with your own eyes, furnished with the power of celestial asceticism, able to curse and to bless with effect, greater than the very gods. Sinless one, all of these, the equals of the celestials, see with their eyes what is written in the Vedas and describe virtue as the foremost duty. It does not become you, gentle queen, to doubt or censure God or action out of a foolish heart. The fool who doubts religion and disregards virtue, proud of the proof his own reasoning gives him, takes no other proof and holds the Rishis, who know the future as if it were the present, to be madmen. Such a fool sees only the outer world that gratifies his senses and is blind to everything else. He who doubts religion has no expiation for his offense; that wretch lives full of anxiety and wins no region of bliss hereafter. A rejecter of proofs, a slanderer of the interpretation of the Vedic scriptures, a transgressor driven by lust and greed, that fool goes to hell. And he who cherishes religion with faith wins eternal bliss in the other world. The fool who transgresses the proofs offered by the Rishis never obtains prosperity in any life. It is certain that for the man who does not accept the words of the Rishis or the conduct of the virtuous as proof, neither this world nor the other exists. Do not doubt, Krishna, the ancient religion practiced by the good and framed by Rishis of universal knowledge who see all things. Daughter of Drupada, religion is the only raft for those who want heaven, as a ship is for merchants who want to cross the sea. If the virtues practiced by the virtuous bore no fruit, the universe would be wrapped in infamous darkness; no one would seek salvation, no one would seek knowledge, or even wealth; men would live like beasts. If asceticism, the austerities of the celibate, sacrifice, the study of the Vedas, charity and honesty were all fruitless, men would not have practiced virtue generation after generation. If acts were fruitless, dire confusion would follow. Why else do Rishis and gods and Gandharvas and Rakshasas, who are free of the human condition, cherish virtue with such affection? Knowing for certain that God gives the fruit of virtue, they practice it in this world. That, Krishna, is the eternal source of prosperity. When the fruits of knowledge and of asceticism are plainly seen, virtue and vice cannot be fruitless. Call to mind the circumstances of your own birth, as you have heard them, and recall how Dhrishtadyumna of great prowess was born. Those, sweet-smiling one, are the best proofs of the fruits of virtue.

He ended by conceding the one thing she had a right to: that the fruit is not always visible, and that its invisibility is itself part of the design. Those whose minds are under control reap the fruit of their acts and are content with little. Ignorant fools are not content even with what they get here, because they have no happiness born of virtue waiting for them in the other world. The fruitlessness of the virtuous acts ordained in the Vedas, and of all transgressions, the origin and the destruction of acts, these are mysteries even to the gods. They are not known to anybody and everybody; ordinary men are ignorant of them. The gods keep the mystery, because the illusion that covers the conduct of the gods cannot be understood. The twice-born who have destroyed every aspiration, who have built all their hopes on vows and asceticism, who have burned away their sins and acquired minds where peace and holiness live, they understand all this. So even though you may not see the fruits of virtue, you must not doubt religion or the gods. Perform sacrifices with a will and practice charity without insolence. Acts in this world have their fruits, and virtue is eternal; Brahma himself told this to his spiritual sons, as Kashyapa testifies. Let your doubt, Krishna, be dispelled like mist. Reflecting on all this, let your skepticism give way to faith. Do not slander God, who is the lord of all creatures. Learn how to know him. Bow down to him. Do not let your mind be like this. And never disregard that Supreme Being by whose grace a mortal, through piety, wins immortality.

A key to reading this (the knot in the argument): Draupadi’s charge rests on a dilemma: if the fruit of an act returns to the doer and everything is done by God’s pulling of the string, then every sin is God’s; and if the doer is held blameless, then only might governs the world and there is no ordinance at all. Yudhishthira does not untie the dilemma; he moves the question to the ground of proof. Virtue is not practiced for fruit (the man who wants the fruit is a “trader in virtue”), and the fruits of virtue that can be seen are standing in the forest with them: Markandeya’s deathless body, and Draupadi and Dhrishtadyumna themselves, born from Drupada’s sacrificial fire in the Adi Parva. Of the sages he names, Maitreya has already cursed Duryodhana earlier in this chapter, and Lomasha will lead the Pandavas on their pilgrimage in chapter 13a. Dhatri and Vidhatri are the Creator and the Ordainer, invoked here with an irony that the king hears at once.

The gist: Draupadi recites every sacrifice, gift and rite of Yudhishthira’s unbroken virtue and asks where its fruit is, then arraigns the Ordainer as a puppeteer and a child breaking his own clay toys, who lets Suyodhana prosper. Yudhishthira calls this the language of atheism: virtue is done for the ordinances and the example of the good, never for its fruit; whoever doubts dharma is born among beasts; the deathless Markandeya and Draupadi’s own birth from the fire are the proof; and where the fruit cannot be seen, the gods are keeping a mystery that only the purified understand.

Plow, seed and cloud: Draupadi’s case for exertion, and the Brahmin who taught it to her on her father’s lap

Draupadi took one step back and then two steps forward from the same spot. I never disregard or slander religion, son of Pritha, she said. Why would I disregard God, the lord of all creatures? Afflicted with grief, take me to be only raving. But I will lament once more, and I ask you, chastiser of enemies, to listen with attention. Every conscious creature in this world must act. Only the immobile can live without acting; no other creature can. The calf, the moment it is born, sucks at its mother’s teat. People feel pain from incantations performed over their images. It seems, then, Yudhishthira, that creatures take the character of their lives from the acts of former lives. Among moving creatures man differs in this: he aspires, bull of the Bharatas, to shape his course in this world and the next by his own acts. Driven by the impulse of a former life, all creatures visibly reap the fruits of their acts here. Indeed all creatures live by that impulse of a former life, even the Creator and Ordainer of the universe, like a crane that lives on the water without anyone teaching it. If a creature does not act, its life is impossible. So for a creature there must be action and never inaction. You too should act, and not earn censure by abandoning action. Cover yourself with action as with armor. There may not be one man in a thousand who truly knows what work is for. A man must act to protect his wealth and to increase it, because if he only spends without seeking to earn, a hoard as huge as Himavat would soon be exhausted. If there were no action, every creature in the world would have been wiped out. And if acts bore no fruit, creatures would never have multiplied. Creatures are even seen to perform acts that bear no fruit, because without acts the course of life itself is impossible.

Then she named the two kinds of men she despised. Those in the world who believe in destiny and those who believe in chance are both the worst of men. Only those who believe in the efficacy of acts deserve praise. The man who lies at ease, doing nothing, trusting destiny alone, is soon destroyed like an unbaked pot in water. And the man who believes in chance, who sits idle though capable of action, does not live long, because his is a life of weakness and helplessness. If a person happens to acquire some wealth by accident, it is said to come from chance, because no one’s effort produced it. Whatever good fortune a person gains in consequence of religious rites is called providential. But the fruit a person obtains by his own acting, the direct result of those acts, is taken as proof of personal ability. And know, best of men, that wealth which comes of itself and without cause is called a spontaneous acquisition. Yet whatever is obtained by chance, or by providence, or spontaneously, or as the result of one’s own acts, is the consequence of the acts of a former life. And God, the Ordainer of the universe, judging by the acts of former lives, distributes among men their portions in this world. Whatever acts a person performs, good or bad, know them to be the result of God’s arrangement according to the acts of a former life. This body is only the instrument in God’s hands for doing the acts that are done; inert in itself, it does what God urges it to do. Son of Kunti, it is the Supreme Lord of all who makes creatures do what they do; the creatures themselves are inert.

And yet she did not stop where her last speech had stopped. Inside that inertness she carved out room for a human being. Hero, a man first settles a purpose in his mind and then accomplishes it, himself working with the aid of his intelligence. That is why we say that man is himself the cause of what he does. The acts of men cannot be numbered, bull among men, for mansions and towns are the result of men’s acts. Intelligent men know, by their intellect, that oil can be had from sesame and curds from milk, and that food can be cooked by kindling fuel. They know the means for all of these, and knowing them, they set to work with the proper appliances; and creatures support their lives by what their own acts achieve in these directions. Work done by a skilled workman is done well; from the difference in its character another work is known for an unskilled hand. If a person were not himself the cause of his acts, then sacrifices would bear no fruit for him, nor would anyone be a disciple or a master. It is because a person is himself the cause of his work that he is applauded when he succeeds and censured when he fails. If a man were not the cause of his own acts, how could any of that be justified? Some say that everything comes from providence; others that this is wrong, and that what is called destiny or chance is the result of the good and bad acts of former lives. Possessions are seen to come from chance and from destiny both; something comes from destiny, something from chance, and something from exertion. In the gaining of his objects there is no fourth cause in the case of man; so say those who know the truth and are skilled in knowledge. If, however, God himself were not the giver of good and bad fruits, then there would be no creature that was miserable. And if the effect of former acts were a myth, then every purpose a man worked for would succeed. So those who take those three alone, without the acts of a former life, for the doors of all success and failure in the world are dull and inert as the body itself.

For all that, a person must act, she said; that is the conclusion of Manu himself. The man who does not act certainly goes under, Yudhishthira. The man of action in this world generally meets with success; the idle never do. If success looks impossible, one should try to remove the obstacles that bar the way to it. And, king, if a man works hard, his debt to the gods is discharged whether he succeeds or not. The man who lies idle at full length is overcome by adversity, while the active and skillful man is sure to reap success and enjoy prosperity. Intelligent men engaged in acts with confidence in themselves regard the diffident as doubting and unsuccessful, and the confident and faithful as successful. And at this moment misery has overtaken us. If you take to action, that misery will certainly be removed. And if you meet failure, that will be proof to you, and to Vrikodara and Bibhatsu and the twins, that you are unable to wrest the kingdom from the enemy. The acts of others are seen to be crowned with success; it is probable that ours will be too. How can anyone know beforehand what the outcome will be? Having exerted yourself, you will know what the fruit of your exertion is. The tiller tills the soil with his plow and sows his seed in it. Then he sits quiet, because after that it is the clouds that must help the seed grow into the plant. And if the clouds do not favor him, the tiller is free of all blame. He says to himself, what others do, I have done; if I still fail, no blame can attach to me. Thinking so, he composes himself and never falls into self-reproach. No one should despair, Bharata, saying, I am acting and yet success is not mine, for there are two other causes of success besides exertion. Whether there is success or failure, there should be no despair, because success in acts depends on the union of many circumstances; if one important element is missing, success is incomplete, or does not come at all. But if no exertion is made there can be no success, and where there is no exertion there is nothing to applaud. The intelligent, aided by their intelligence and according to their full might, bring together place, time, means and auspicious rites for the gaining of prosperity. With care and vigilance a man should set himself to work, with his prowess for his chief guide; among the qualities required for success, prowess seems to be the chief. When an intelligent man sees his enemy superior to him in many qualities, he should seek his purpose by the arts of conciliation and by proper appliances. He should also wish his enemy evil, and his banishment. Never mind mortal men; even if his enemy were the ocean or the hills, he should be guided by such motives. By his activity in searching out the weak points of his enemies a person discharges his debt to himself and to his friends. No man should ever disparage himself, for the man who disparages himself never earns high prosperity. Success in this world, Bharata, is attainable on such conditions. In fact success in the world is said to depend on acting according to time and circumstance.

And then, at the very end, she told him where the whole speech had come from, and it was the one tender thing she had said all evening. My father formerly kept a learned Brahmin with him, she said. It was he who said all this to my father. Indeed these instructions on duty, uttered by Brihaspati himself, were first taught to my brothers, and I heard them from my brothers afterward, in my father’s house. And, Yudhishthira, when I came out of the inner apartments between one task and the next and sat on my father’s lap, that learned Brahmin used to recite these truths to me, and console me sweetly with them.

A key to reading this (three causes, and a fourth): Draupadi’s speech names three doors of success: providence (good fortune that comes of religious rites), chance (what arrives with no one’s effort behind it) and personal exertion (the direct fruit of one’s own acts); behind all three lies a fourth floor, the acts of a former life, according to which God distributes each man’s portion. In the previous scene she called God a puppeteer; here she does not retract that, she works inside it, finding the place where a human being still decides: the body is inert, but the purpose is settled in the mind, and that is why praise and blame fall on the man. The “debt to the gods” is the old idea that a man is born owing debts to the gods, the seers and the fathers, and pays them by his acts. Brihaspati is the preceptor of the gods and the acknowledged master of statecraft; the Brahmin Draupadi never names taught Brihaspati’s science of policy in Drupada’s house, and the princess of Panchala learned it as a girl sitting on her father’s knee.

The gist: Draupadi refuses the charge of atheism, calls her last speech the raving of grief, and then argues for action: the newborn calf sucks without being taught; the men who trust destiny or chance are the worst of men; wear action like armor. Chance, providence and exertion are the three causes, all of them shaped by former lives, and still a man must act, as Manu concludes. The farmer plows and sows and leaves the rain to the clouds, and if the rain fails he is blameless. She learned all of it, she says, from the Brahmin who taught Brihaspati’s policy in Drupada’s house, while she sat on her father’s lap.

Bhima’s first assault: “Crying dharma, dharma, you have lost your manhood”; the triangle of virtue, wealth and pleasure, and a demand to march on Hastinapura today

Draupadi had finished, and the silence she left behind was the kind that invites the next speaker in. Bhima took it. Vaishampayana says he came to the king sighing with anger, and everything he said over the next hour he said standing, the way a man speaks who has been holding his tongue for thirteen months. Walk the road that good men before you have walked where kingdoms are concerned, monarch, he began. What do we gain by living in this hermitage of ascetics, stripped of virtue, of pleasure, and of profit? Our kingdom was taken from us by Duryodhana, and it was taken by no virtue, no honesty, no strength; it was taken with loaded dice, the way a weak offal-eating jackal snatches the kill from mighty lions. And out of obedience to the worn-out merit of keeping a promise, you sit in this distress and give up the wealth that is the root of both virtue and enjoyment. Your carelessness, king, let a kingdom guarded by the wielder of Gandiva, a kingdom Indra himself could not have wrested from us, be taken before our eyes. We were alive when our prosperity was taken, the way fruit is taken from a man who cannot use his arms, or cattle from a man who cannot use his legs. You are faithful in the acquisition of virtue. It was to please you, Bharata, that we let this calamity roll over us. It was because we were under your control that we are tearing the hearts of our friends and gratifying our enemies. That we did not kill Dhritarashtra’s sons even then, in obedience to you, was folly on our part, and it grieves me sorely. This dwelling of yours in the woods, like the dwelling of a wild animal, is what only a weak man would submit to; no man of might would ever live like this. Krishna does not approve this course of life, nor Vibhatsu, nor Abhimanyu, nor the Srinjayas, nor I, nor the sons of Madri. Afflicted with vows, your cry is religion, religion. Has despair robbed you of your manliness? Cowards nurse despair, men unable to win back their prosperity; despair is fruitless and it destroys one’s purposes. You have ability and you have eyes. You see that manliness lives in us. It is because you have adopted a life of peace that you do not feel this distress. The Dhartarashtras look at us, forgiving as we are, and see men who are simply incompetent. That, king, hurts me more than death in battle. If we all died in a fair fight without turning our backs, even that would be better than this exile, for we would gain the regions of bliss in the other world. Or if, bull of the Bharatas, we killed them all and took the whole earth, that would be prosperity worth the trial. We who keep the customs of our order, who want great achievements, who want to avenge our wrongs, have this for our bounden duty. Our kingdom has been taken; if we fight for it, our deeds, when the world knows them, will bring us fame and never slander.

Then Bhima turned on the word itself, the one his brother had been living inside. A virtue that tortures oneself and one’s friends is no virtue, he said; it is vice, and it breeds calamity. Virtue is sometimes the weakness of men. Such a man may practice virtue all his life, and virtue and profit both desert him, the way pleasure and pain desert a corpse. He who practices virtue for virtue’s sake always suffers; he can hardly be called wise, because he does not know the purposes of virtue, like a blind man who cannot perceive the light of the sun. He who thinks his wealth exists for himself alone hardly understands the purposes of wealth; he is like a servant tending cattle in a forest. He who pursues wealth alone, without virtue and enjoyment, deserves to be censured and killed by all. He who pursues enjoyment alone, without virtue and wealth, loses his friends and his virtue and his wealth; stripped of both, indulging his pleasure at will, he meets certain death when his season of indulgence is over, like a fish whose water has dried up. That is why the wise attend to both virtue and wealth, because the union of virtue and wealth is what pleasure requires, as fire requires fuel. Pleasure has virtue for its root, and virtue is bound up with pleasure. Know, monarch, that the two depend on each other like the ocean and the clouds: the ocean makes the clouds and the clouds fill the ocean. The joy one feels from contact with objects of touch, or from the possession of wealth, is what is called pleasure; it exists in the mind, and it has no body one can see. He who wants wealth seeks a large share of virtue so that his wish may succeed; he who wants pleasure seeks wealth. But pleasure yields nothing in its turn. One pleasure cannot lead to another, since it is itself the fruit, as ashes can be had from wood but nothing from the ashes. And as a fowler kills the birds we see, so sin kills the creatures of the world. He who, misled by pleasure or greed, does not see the nature of virtue deserves to be killed by everyone, and he is wretched here and hereafter. You know, king, that pleasure comes from the possession of the various objects of enjoyment; you know their ordinary states and the great changes they go through. When they are lost through decay or death, what arises is called distress, and that distress has now overtaken us. The joy that arises when the five senses, the intellect and the heart are turned to their proper objects is called pleasure, and that pleasure, as I think, is one of the best fruits of our actions.

So one should regard virtue, wealth and pleasure one after another, he went on, and now he was quoting the books at a brother who knew them better than he did. One should not devote oneself to virtue alone, nor regard wealth as the highest object of one’s wishes, nor pleasure; one should pursue all three. The scriptures ordain virtue in the morning, wealth at noon, and pleasure in the evening; they also ordain pleasure in the first part of life, wealth in the second, and virtue in the last. Those who are wise and understand the proper division of time pursue all three, dividing their time properly. Whether independence from these three or possession of them is better for those who want happiness is something you should settle after careful thought, son of the Kuru race, and then act without hesitation, either to acquire them or to give them all up, because he who lives wavering between the two lives a wretched life. Everyone knows that your behavior is governed by virtue; knowing that, your friends counsel you to act. Gifts, sacrifice, respect for the wise, study of the Vedas, and honesty: these are the highest virtue, king, and they bear fruit here and hereafter. But these virtues cannot be attained by a man without wealth, tiger among men, whatever other accomplishments he may have without limit. The whole universe depends on virtue; there is nothing higher than virtue; and virtue is attainable by the man who has plenty of wealth. Wealth is not earned by a beggar’s life, nor by a life of feebleness; wealth is earned by intelligence directed by virtue. In your case, king, begging, which succeeds for Brahmins, is forbidden. Therefore strive for wealth by exerting your might and your energy, bull among men. Neither the beggar’s life nor the Shudra’s life is proper for you. Might and energy are the special virtue of the Kshatriya. Adopt the virtue of your order and kill your enemies. Destroy the might of Dhritarashtra’s sons, son of Pritha, with my help and Arjuna’s. The learned and the wise say that sovereignty is virtue. Acquire sovereignty, then; it does not become you to live in a state of inferiority. Wake, king, and understand the eternal virtues of the order. By birth you belong to an order whose deeds are cruel and are a source of pain to men. Cherish your subjects and reap the fruit of it; that can never be a reproach. This is the virtue ordained by God himself for the order you belong to. If you fall away from it you will make yourself ridiculous; deviation from the virtues of one’s own order is never applauded. So make your heart what it ought to be, according to your order, cast away this course of feebleness, summon your energy and bear your weight like a man who bears it manfully.

And then policy, in Bhima’s mouth, which was a strange place for it. No king ever acquired the sovereignty of the earth, or prosperity, or affluence, by virtue alone, he said. As a fowler earns his food by tempting swarms of easily tempted game with attractive bait, so an intelligent man acquires a kingdom by offering bribes to low and greedy enemies. Look, bull among kings: the Asuras were the elder brothers, in possession of power and wealth, and the gods defeated them all by stratagem. Everything belongs to the mighty. Slay your foes, mighty-armed one, by stratagem. There is no one equal to Arjuna with the bow in battle, and no one equal to me with the mace. Strong men fight relying on their might, and never on numbers, nor on the enemy’s plans brought in by spies. Exert your might, son of Pandu. Might is the root of wealth; whatever else is said to be its root is no such thing. As the shade of a tree in winter counts for nothing, without might everything else is fruitless. Wealth should be spent by one who wants to increase it, the way seed is scattered on the ground, son of Kunti; have no doubt about that. But where wealth greater than or equal to the outlay is not to be had, there should be no spending, for such investments are like the ass scratching itself, pleasant at first and painful afterward. In the same way, the man who throws away a little of his virtue like seed to gain a larger measure of virtue is called wise; there is no doubt about it, it is as I say. The wise detach the friends of the enemy who has them, and having weakened him that way they bring him to subjection. Even the strong fight relying on courage; without it, neither continued effort nor the arts of conciliation can always win a kingdom. Sometimes weak men, uniting in large numbers, kill even a powerful foe, as bees kill the robber of the honey by numbers alone. And you, king, like the sun that sustains and also slays creatures with his rays, adopt the ways of the sun. We have heard that to protect one’s kingdom and cherish the people, as our ancestors did, is a kind of asceticism spoken of even in the Vedas. By asceticism a Kshatriya cannot win the blessed regions he wins by fair fight, whether it ends in victory or defeat. Seeing this distress of yours, the world has concluded that light may desert the sun and grace the moon. Good men, singly and in gatherings, talk together, praising you and blaming the other. The Kurus and the Brahmins together gladly speak of your firmness in truth, that you have never, from ignorance or meanness or greed or fear, told a lie. Whatever sin a king commits in acquiring dominion, he burns it all away afterward by sacrifices with great gifts; like the moon emerging from the clouds, the king is purified of every sin by giving villages to Brahmins and cattle by the thousand. Almost all the citizens and the country people, young and old, praise you, Yudhishthira. And the people are saying this among themselves, Bharata: that as milk in a bag of dog’s hide, as the Vedas in a Shudra, as truth in a robber, as strength in a woman, so is sovereignty in Duryodhana. Even women and children repeat it, as if it were a lesson they are learning by heart. Represser of foes, you have fallen into this state with us, and we are lost with you in this calamity of yours. So mount your chariot furnished with every implement, have the best Brahmins pronounce blessings on you, and march this very day, with speed, on Hastinapura, so that you can give the spoils of victory to the Brahmins. Surrounded by your brothers, firm wielders of the bow, and by heroes skilled in weapons and like snakes of virulent poison, set out like the slayer of Vritra surrounded by the Maruts. You are powerful, son of Kunti; grind your weak enemies as Indra grinds the Asuras, and take from Dhritarashtra’s son the prosperity he is enjoying. No mortal can bear the touch of the vulture-feathered, snake-like shafts that leave Gandiva. And there is no warrior, no elephant and no horse that can stand the impetus of my mace when I am angry in battle. Why should we not take our kingdom back from the enemy, fighting with the Srinjayas and the Kaikeyas and the bull of the Vrishnis at our side? Why should we not succeed in taking back the earth that is now in the enemy’s hands, if with a great force we only strive?

A key to reading this (the three aims and the Kshatriya’s law): Bhima’s speech turns on the trivarga, the three aims of life: dharma (virtue), artha (wealth) and kama (pleasure), which he insists must be pursued together, with wealth as the hinge, because without it neither gifts nor sacrifice are possible. The two timetables he quotes, virtue at morning, wealth at noon, pleasure at evening, and pleasure in youth, wealth in middle life, virtue at the end, are both attributed to the scriptures by Bhima himself. Vibhatsu is Arjuna; the bull of the Vrishnis is Krishna; the slayer of Vritra is Indra. The gods defeating their elder brothers the Asuras by stratagem is offered as precedent, so that Yudhishthira will not flinch from taking the kingdom by craft. Draupadi has just finished her argument about exertion and fate; Bhima picks it up and turns it into a demand for war.

The gist: Bhima follows Draupadi and climbs three steps: the kingdom was taken by fraud, and the Kauravas read the brothers’ forgiveness as weakness; a virtue that tortures one’s own people is vice, and virtue, wealth and pleasure cannot be kept without wealth; and might is the root of wealth, the gods beat the Asuras by stratagem, so mount the chariot and march on Hastinapura today. The world, he says, praises Yudhishthira and laughs at Duryodhana, and this is the hour.

Yudhishthira’s answer: “Kingdom, sons, fame and wealth together do not reach a sixteenth part of truth”; and Bhima’s second assault: thirteen months count as thirteen years

The king did not answer at once. Vaishampayana says that Ajatashatru, firm in truth, gathered his patience first, and only after some moments spoke, and what he said began with a surrender. All of this is true, Bharata, there is no doubt of it. You have pierced me with these arrows of words and tortured me, and I cannot reproach you for it. This calamity came on all of you through my folly alone. I sat down to the dice wanting to take Dhritarashtra’s son’s kingdom and his sovereignty from him. That is why that cunning gambler, Subala’s son, played against me on Suyodhana’s behalf. Shakuni, a man of the hill country, is exceedingly artful; casting the dice before the assembly, against me who know no artifice of any kind, he beat me by craft. That is why we are drowned in this calamity, Bhimasena. Seeing the dice fall at odds and evens exactly as Shakuni wished, I could have controlled my mind. But anger drives off a man’s patience. Child, the mind cannot be kept under control when hauteur, vanity or pride has hold of it. I do not reproach you for the words you use; I only hold that what has befallen us was ordained beforehand. When king Duryodhana, coveting our kingdom, plunged us into misery and even into slavery, it was Draupadi who rescued us. And when we were summoned to the assembly to play once more, you know as well as Arjuna what Dhritarashtra’s son said to me before all the Bharatas about the stake we were to play for. Then the king did what no one else in that forest could have borne to do: he recited the terms of the bet, word for word, as if to make sure that the men who wanted him to break it had heard it properly. Prince Ajatashatru, Duryodhana had said, if you lose you shall live with all your brothers, to the knowledge of all men, for twelve years in a forest of your choosing, and pass the thirteenth year in secrecy. If in that year the spies of the Bharatas hear of you and find you, you shall live in the forest for the same period again, and pass the last year once more in secret. Reflect on this and pledge yourself to it. As for me, I promise truly in this assembly of the Kurus that if you can pass that time confounding my spies, undiscovered by them, then this kingdom of the five rivers is yours again. And if you defeat us, all of us, abandoning all our wealth, shall pass the same period under the same rules. So addressed by the prince, I answered him in the midst of all the Kurus: so be it. Then the wretched game began. We were beaten and we were exiled. That is why we wander miserably through one wild region after another, full of discomfort. And Suyodhana was still not satisfied; he gave himself to anger and urged the Kurus and everyone under his sway to show their joy at our calamity.

Having made such an agreement before all good men, who would dare break it for the sake of any kingdom on earth? For a respectable man, I think, death itself is lighter than sovereignty acquired by transgression. And here Yudhishthira did something Bhima had not expected, which was to remember. At the time of the play, he said, you wanted to burn my hands. Arjuna stopped you, and so you only wrung your own. If you could have done what you wanted, could this calamity have come upon us? Conscious of your prowess as you are, Bhima, why did you not say so before we entered into that agreement? Now that we are bound by the consequences of our pledge and the time itself has passed, what use is it to address these harsh words to me? This is my great grief, Bhima: that even seeing Draupadi persecuted that way, we could do nothing. My heart burns as if I had drunk poison. But having given that pledge among the Kuru heroes, I cannot violate it now. Wait, Bhima, for the return of our better days, as the sower of seed waits for the harvest. When a man who was injured first succeeds in avenging himself on his enemy at the moment when that enmity has borne flower and fruit, he is held to have accomplished a great thing by his prowess. Such a brave man earns undying fame and great prosperity; his enemies bow to him and his friends gather round him like the celestials clustering round Indra for protection. But know this, Bhima: my promise can never be untrue. I hold virtue above life itself and above the blessed state of the gods. Kingdom, sons, fame, wealth, all of them together do not come up to a sixteenth part of truth.

Bhima heard the sixteenth part and came back, and this time his argument was about time rather than about dharma, which was the more dangerous ground for a king who had just promised to wait. You are unsubstantial as froth, king, he said, unstable as a fruit that falls when it is ripe, dependent on time and mortal, and you have made an agreement concerning time, which is infinite and immeasurable, quick as an arrow, flowing like a stream, and carrying everything before it like death itself. How can you regard it as something at your disposal? How can a man wait, son of Kunti, whose life is shortened every moment, like a heap of collyrium lessened each time the needle takes up a grain? Only a man whose life is unlimited, or who knows with certainty how long it will be, and who sees the future as if it were before his eyes, can wait for an appointed time to arrive. If we wait thirteen years, king, that period will shorten our lives and bring us nearer to death. Death is certain to overtake every creature with a body. Therefore we should strive for our kingdom before we die. He who fails to win fame by failing to chastise his enemies is like an unclean thing; he is a useless burden on the earth, like a crippled bull, and he perishes without glory. The man without strength and courage who does not chastise his enemies lives in vain; I hold such a man to be low-born. Your hand can rain gold; your fame is spread over the whole earth; so kill your enemies in battle and enjoy the wealth won by the might of your arms. If a man who kills the one who injured him goes to hell that very day, represser of foes, that hell becomes heaven to him. The pain of suppressing one’s wrath burns hotter than fire, king. Even now I burn with it and cannot sleep by day or by night. This son of Pritha called Vibhatsu is foremost in drawing the bowstring; he surely burns with grief, though he lives here like a lion in his den. He who wants to kill every wielder of the bow on earth without help keeps down the wrath that rises in his breast, like a mighty elephant. Nakula, Sahadeva and old Kunti, that mother of heroes, are all dumb, wanting to please you. All our friends, with the Srinjayas, want to please you as well. Only I and Prativindhya’s mother speak to you, burning with grief. But whatever I say to you is agreeable to all of them, because all of them, plunged in distress, eagerly wish for battle. What more wretched calamity can overtake us, monarch, than that our kingdom be taken from us by weak and contemptible enemies and enjoyed by them?

From the weakness of your disposition, king, you feel shame at violating your pledge, Bhima went on. But no one applauds you, slayer of foes, for suffering such pain out of the kindliness of your nature. Your intellect does not see the truth, like that of a foolish and ignorant man of high birth who has committed the words of the Vedas to memory without understanding their sense. You are kind like a Brahmin; how were you born into the Kshatriya order? Those born Kshatriyas are generally crooked of heart. You have heard the duties of kings as Manu laid them down, full of crookedness and unfairness, precepts opposed to tranquility and to virtue. Why then do you forgive the wicked sons of Dhritarashtra? You have intelligence, prowess, learning and high birth. Why then, tiger among men, do you behave in your duties like a huge snake that cannot move? Then he set out the plainest objection of all, the one the thirteenth year would answer in Virata’s city, and he set it out as an impossibility. Whoever wants to hide us, son of Kunti, wants to hide the mountains of Himavat with a handful of grass. Known over the whole earth as you are, Partha, you will not be able to live unknown, any more than the sun can cross the sky unknown to men. Like a great tree in a well-watered country with spreading branches and flowers and leaves, or like Indra’s elephant, how will Jishnu live unknown? How will these children, the brothers Nakula and Sahadeva, like a pair of young lions, live in secret? How will Krishna, the daughter of Drupada, a princess and a mother of heroes, virtuous in her deeds and known over all the world, live unknown? As for me, everyone has known me since my boyhood. I do not see how I can live unknown; one might as well try to hide the mighty mountains of Meru. Then again, we drove many kings from their kingdoms. Those kings and princes will all follow Dhritarashtra’s bad son, because robbed and exiled by us they have not yet become friendly. Wishing to do Dhritarashtra a service, they will certainly try to injure us, and they will set numerous spies on us in disguise. If those spies find us and report it, a great danger will overtake us. We have already lived in the woods a full thirteen months. Count them, king, for their length, as thirteen years. The wise have said that a month is a substitute for a year, as the putika herb is regarded as a substitute for Soma. Or, if you break your pledge, king, you may free yourself of that sin by offering good savory food to a quiet bull that carries sacred burdens. Therefore resolve to slay your enemies. There is no virtue higher than fighting for any Kshatriya. And there the record of the evening ends: Bhima’s last sentence hangs in the air of Dvaitavana, and Yudhishthira does not answer it, because the next thing that happens in the forest is the arrival of Vyasa.

A key to reading this (the terms of the bet and Bhima’s arithmetic): Yudhishthira here repeats the whole condition of the second dicing game in his own words: twelve years in the forest, a thirteenth in hiding, the same term over again if discovered, and the identical penalty for the Kauravas if they had lost; “the kingdom of the five rivers” is Duryodhana’s own phrase for the Kuru realm reaching toward the Punjab. Ajatashatru is Yudhishthira’s title, the man to whom no enemy has been born; Prativindhya’s mother is Draupadi, Prativindhya being her son by Yudhishthira; Jishnu and Vibhatsu are both Arjuna. Bhima’s closing argument is a ritual substitution: as the putika plant stands in for Soma when Soma cannot be had at a sacrifice, so a month may stand in for a year, and the thirteen months already spent should therefore count as thirteen years. He even names the penance for a broken word, food for a bull that carries sacred loads. Yudhishthira gives this second speech no reply; the next chapter opens with the coming of Vyasa.

The gist: Yudhishthira concedes everything Bhima has said, takes the blame for the dice on himself, recites the terms of the wager word for word, and still refuses to break it: an agreement made before good men is worth more than any kingdom, and kingdom, sons, fame and wealth together do not reach a sixteenth part of truth. Bhima’s second assault is about time: a man whose life shrinks every moment cannot afford to wait thirteen years; people as famous as Arjuna, Draupadi and Bhima himself can never live in hiding; and by the reckoning of the wise, thirteen months already equal thirteen years. The king says nothing.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vana Parva. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections I-XXXV (1-35); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.