Mahabharata · Chapter 1a · Part 4 of 4 · Yayati’s fall and ascent, and from Puru to Shantanu

About 70 minutes

Yayati gives Puru the kingdom and walks into the forest: a thousand years on gleaned grain, a year between four fires, and Indra’s question in heaven about what a father said at parting

Vaishampayana went on. Yayati, the son of Nahusha, having placed his dear son on the throne, was a happy man, and he did what kings of that age did when the last duty was discharged: he walked out of his own city and into the woods to live as a hermit. For a while he lived there among Brahmanas, keeping hard vows, eating fruit and roots, bearing every kind of want with patience, and at the end of it he rose to heaven. He lived there in bliss. And then, quite soon, Indra threw him down. Yet the storyteller had heard something strange about that fall, and he told Janamejaya so: hurled from heaven, Yayati never reached the surface of the earth. He stopped in the sky. And some time later, Vaishampayana had heard, he entered the region of the gods a second time, in the company of four kings, Vasumanas, Ashtaka, Pratardana and Shibi.

Janamejaya sat up at that. A man thrown out of heaven who did not fall all the way, and who then got back in: he wanted every detail. Why was Yayati admitted, why was he cast out, and how was he readmitted? Let it be told here, he said, in front of these Brahmanas. Yayati, lord of the earth, had been the equal of the king of the gods. He was the progenitor of the wide race of the Kurus, a man with the splendor of the sun. Janamejaya wished to hear the whole of his life, in heaven and on earth, because he was famous in every direction and his deeds were wonderful. Vaishampayana agreed. He would tell the excellent story of Yayati’s adventures on earth and in heaven, and he said of it what tellers say of the stories they value most: it is sacred, and it destroys the sins of those who hear it.

So he began it properly. King Yayati, the son of Nahusha, installed his youngest son Puru on the throne. His other sons, with Yadu as their eldest, he settled among the Mlechchhas, the peoples beyond the borders of the Vedic order. Then he entered the forest. He lived for a time on fruit and roots. With his mind and his passions under complete control he satisfied the ancestors and the gods with sacrifices, and he poured offerings of clarified butter on the fire according to the rites laid down for those in the Vanaprastha stage of life, the forest dweller’s stage. Guests and strangers he fed with the fruits of the forest and with clarified butter, while he himself kept alive by gleaning, gathering the scattered grains left behind in fields after the harvest. He lived in this way for a full thousand years. Then he took the vow of silence, and with his mind wholly mastered he spent an entire year living on air alone, without sleep. He spent another year in the severest austerity of all, four fires burning around him and the sun overhead. Living on air, he stood on one leg for six months. And this king of sacred deeds rose to heaven, and the fame of what he had done covered heaven and earth alike.

In heaven, the home of the gods, that king of kings was reverenced by the gods themselves, by the Sadhyas, the Maruts and the Vasus. A man of sacred deeds and mastered mind, he would go from time to time from the abode of the gods to the region of Brahma, and Vaishampayana had heard that he lived in heaven a very long time. One day Yayati went to see Indra, and in the course of their conversation the lord of the gods asked the lord of the earth a question. It was a domestic question, almost, and it is worth noticing that Indra asked it rather than asking about the thousand years of austerity. What did you say to your son, Indra wanted to know, when Puru took your old age upon himself there on earth and you gave him your kingdom?

Yayati told him. He had told Puru that the whole country between the rivers Ganga and Yamuna was his, which is the central region of the earth, while the outlying regions were to be the dominions of his brothers. And he had told him this. Those without anger are always superior to those ruled by it, and those disposed to forgive are always superior to those who cannot. Man is superior to the lower animals, and among men the learned are superior to the unlearned. If you are wronged, do not wrong in return. Anger, if it is disregarded, burns the one who feels it, and the one who disregards it takes away all the virtues of the one who shows it. Never pain others with cruel speech. Never subdue your enemies by despicable means, and never utter the kind of scorching, sinful words that torture others. The man who pricks other men with hard and cruel words as if with thorns carries Rakshasas in his mouth, and prosperity and good luck fly from the mere sight of him. Keep the virtuous before you as your models. Look back at your own acts and measure them against the acts of the virtuous. Disregard the hard words of the wicked, and make the conduct of the wise the pattern on which you act. The man struck by the arrows of cruel speech fired from another’s lips weeps day and night, for those arrows strike the core of the body, and so the wise never fire them. In the three worlds there is nothing by which the gods are better worshiped than by kindness, friendship, charity and sweet speech to all. So speak words that soothe, never words that scorch. Honor those who deserve honor. And always give, never beg.

A key to reading this (the shape of the telling): This is the second movement of Yayati’s story. In the first, told in the previous part, Shukra’s curse made him old, Puru lent him his youth, he enjoyed a thousand years, and he gave Puru the kingdom. Here Vaishampayana gives away the ending first (heaven, the fall, the return with four kings) and then, at Janamejaya’s request, tells it from the beginning. The Mahabharata does this constantly; the reader learns to hear the summary as a promise rather than a spoiler. Notice also what Indra asks. He does not ask about the austerities or the conquests. He asks what a father said to a son at the moment of handing everything over, and the answer is a short treatise on anger and speech.

The gist: Yayati gives Puru the land between the Ganga and the Yamuna, settles his other sons in the outer regions, and enters the forest. He lives a thousand years on gleaned grain, a year on air without sleep, a year between four fires under the sun, six months on one leg, and rises to heaven, where the gods honor him and he visits Brahma’s region. One day Indra asks what he told Puru at parting, and Yayati repeats the teaching: the man without anger is superior, the forgiving man is superior, cruel words are arrows that strike the core of the body, and the best worship of the gods is kindness, friendship, charity and sweet speech. Always give; never beg.

Indra’s second question, and a heaven lost in a single sentence: who is your equal in austerities, the answer Yayati gave, and the royal sage who called up to a king falling out of the sky

The conversation in the hall of the gods did not end with the teaching about anger and speech. Indra let the silence sit for a while after Yayati had finished repeating what he told his son at the parting, and then he asked a second question. In its form it was a courteous question, the kind put to a visiting king in a hall where everyone present has already agreed that he belongs there. You went into the woods, Indra said, with every duty behind you. You left no debt unpaid and no sacrifice half finished, and you handed your kingdom to your son before you went. Now tell us this. In the matter of ascetic austerities, who is your equal? With whom do you place yourself?

Yayati had the account ready, because it was an account he had kept himself. A full thousand years in the forest living on grain gleaned from the stubble of other men’s fields, feeding guests and strangers on forest fruit and clarified butter and keeping the leavings for himself. A year of silence, without sleep, on air alone. Another year standing in the middle of four fires with the sun burning overhead. Six months erect on one leg. No witness had been required for any of it and none had been present. So he answered the way a man answers when he has done the work and been asked about it directly. Vasava, he said, in the matter of ascetic austerities I do not see my equal among men, nor among the celestials, nor among the Gandharvas, nor among the great Rishis. The sentence went out into that hall and the particular quiet that follows an irretrievable remark came down over everything in it. What Yayati had said was true by his own reckoning. The reckoning he had never made was of anyone else’s austerities.

Indra had asked in order to arrive here. King, he said, you disregard those who are your superiors, and those who are your equals, and even those beneath you, and you do it without knowing what any of them is actually worth. Your virtues have suffered diminution on that account. You must fall from heaven. A thousand years of accumulation had just been spent in one sentence, and the speaker of the sentence understood immediately that this was what had happened. Yayati did not argue the verdict and he did not ask to have it lifted. He asked for one thing only. Shakra, he said, if my merit has truly been diminished and I must go down from here on that account, then let me at least fall among the virtuous and the honest. There was more understanding in that request than there had been in the boast that produced it. The fall was settled. Where a man lands was apparently still open to negotiation.

Indra gave him the landing. You will fall among the virtuous and the wise, he said, and you will acquire much renown there as well. And after this experience, Yayati, never again disregard your superiors or your equals. Then the lord of the gods stopped speaking, and Yayati went out of the region of the celestials and down. He came down the road the sun travels, and the brightness did not leave him on the way. Below him, on the earth, Ashtaka, the foremost of royal sages and the protector of his own religion, was watching him come. Everyone standing there watched the thing descending out of the upper air and tried to work out what it was, and in the middle of that effort their composure deserted them altogether.

Ashtaka called up to him. Who are you, he asked, with a beauty the equal of Indra’s and a splendor that burns like fire, falling from on high in this way? Are you the sun himself, foremost of the bodies that range the sky, come out from behind dark masses of cloud? Every one of us, seeing you drop from the solar course with your immeasurable energy and your blaze like fire or the sun, is asking what this falling thing can be, and every one of us has lost his senses in the asking. Seeing you on the path of the celestials with a force about you like that of Shakra, or Surya, or Vishnu, we have come to you to learn the truth. If you had been the one to ask us first who we were, we would never have been guilty of the discourtesy of asking before you. As it stands we ask. Who are you, and why are you coming here?

Then the royal sage said the thing that is owed to any unknown guest before anything else is said. Let your fear be dispelled, he said. Let your griefs and your afflictions end. You stand at this moment among the virtuous and the wise. Shakra himself, the slayer of Vala, can do you no injury in this place. You who have the prowess of the chief of the celestials, know that the wise and the virtuous are the support of their brethren in grief. There is nobody assembled here except men who are wise and virtuous as you are. Stay here, then, and be at peace. Fire alone has the power to give heat. The earth alone has the power to put life into a seed. The sun alone has the power to light up everything there is. And in the same way the guest alone has the power to give orders to the virtuous and the wise.

A key to reading this (what the fall was actually for): Indra never questions the austerities. The thousand years on gleaned grain, the year among the four fires, the six months on one leg all stand exactly as they were performed. What gets spent is spent by the one sentence in which Yayati puts himself at the top of every order of being, and does it without having weighed what anyone else has done. Indra says as much in his parting warning, which is phrased as advice for next time. Notice also that Yayati never reaches the ground. He stops in the middle air, as Vaishampayana said at the opening of this stretch that he would, and the meeting with Ashtaka happens there. Ashtaka and the men around him are royal sages and nothing more has been said of them yet. Who they are, and what they have to do with Yayati, the text opens later in its own time.

The gist: Indra asks Yayati who his equal is in ascetic austerities, and Yayati answers that he sees no equal among men, gods, Gandharvas or the great Rishis. Indra tells him that disregarding superiors, equals and inferiors without knowing their real merits has diminished his virtue, and that he must fall from heaven. Yayati asks only that he fall among the virtuous and the honest, and Indra grants it, promising him renown there and warning him never to disregard his superiors or equals again. He falls down the path of the sun, and the royal sage Ashtaka, watching him come, asks who he is and tells him he has arrived among the virtuous, where Shakra himself can do him no harm, since heat belongs to fire, life in the seed to the earth, light to the sun, and authority over the virtuous to a guest.

A falling king stopped in the air above a sacrifice: Yayati names himself to four royal sages, and counts off the heavens he has just been thrown out of

He named himself before anyone had finished asking. I am Yayati, the son of Nahusha and the father of Puru. I have been cast off from the region of the celestials and of the Siddhas and the Rishis for having disregarded every creature, my righteousness has suffered diminution, and I am falling. Then he accounted for the courtesy he had failed to pay. He had not saluted them first because he was older in years than any of them, and the Brahmanas reverence the man who is older in years, or superior in learning, or superior in ascetic merit. Ashtaka took that up at once. You say the man older in years deserves regard, he said, and yet it is said that the one truly worthy of worship is the man superior in learning and in ascetic merit. Four kings stood at a sacrifice with the smoke going up past a man suspended over their altar, and the first thing said to him was a point of doctrine.

The ground under the conversation was a sacrificial enclosure with a rite in progress, fire going and clarified butter being poured onto it without a pause, and the smoke off that fire was the only road Yayati had used to find them. For four kings in the middle of a sacrifice there is a settled order to everything, who speaks and who is greeted and who is seated where, and no part of that order covers a man held in the air over the altar with his merit spent. He had nothing under him in the plainest sense. The regions above were shut, the ground below was not yet reached, and the only thing left for him to stand on was the argument he was about to make against his own vanity.

Yayati did not argue his own case. Sin destroys the merits of four virtuous acts, he said, and vanity contains inside itself the very element that leads to hell. The virtuous never set their feet in the footprints of the vicious; they act so that their religious merit keeps increasing. I had great religious merit and all of it is gone, and my best exertions will scarcely regain it. Any man who wants his own good can look at what is happening to me and put his vanity down. Three kinds of men reach heaven: the one who acquires great wealth and performs meritorious sacrifices with it, the one who acquires every kind of learning and stays humble, and the one who studies the entire Vedas and gives himself to asceticism with his heart withdrawn from all worldly enjoyment. Nobody should exult at having acquired wealth or be vain of having studied the Vedas. Men are of different dispositions, and above every disposition stands Destiny. Power is fruitless. Exertion is fruitless. Knowing Destiny to be all powerful, the wise neither exult nor grieve over whatever portion falls to them, and they live contented. Then came the list that puts a king level with the roadside: insects and worms, every creature born from an egg, vegetable existences, all crawling animals, vermin, the fish in the water, stones, grass, wood, every created thing, once freed from the effects of its acts, is united with the Supreme Soul. Happiness and misery are both transient, so why should I grieve? We can never know how to act in order to avoid misery, and misery is therefore not a thing to grieve over.

The man speaking in the air was Ashtaka’s maternal grandfather, and the story mentions it in passing, the way it mentions the smoke. Ashtaka asked his second question. Tell me in detail, king of kings, every region you visited and enjoyed and how long you stayed in each; you speak of the precepts of religion like the masters who know the acts and sayings of great beings. Yayati answered like a man reading out an inventory he had kept himself. I was a great king on Earth and the whole world was my dominion. I left it, and by religious merit I reached many high regions and lived there a full thousand years. Then the abode of Indra, of extraordinary beauty, with a thousand gates, extending a hundred yojanas on every side, and there too a full thousand years. Then a region higher still, of perfect beatitude, where decay does not exist, the region of the Creator and Lord of Earth, reached only with great difficulty, and there also a full thousand years. Then the region of the god of gods, where I lived in happiness, adored by all the celestials, with prowess and splendor equal to their own. Able to assume any form I wished, I lived a million years in the gardens of Nandana, sporting with the Apsaras among numberless beautiful trees dressed in flowers and sending their perfume all round.

What ended it was a voice. After many years, while he was still living there in perfect happiness, the celestial messenger of grim visage came and shouted three times in a loud and deep voice: ruined, ruined, ruined. That much I remember, Yayati said. After it he was outside Nandana with his merits spent, and he could hear the celestials exclaiming in grief that Yayati, virtuous and of sacred deeds, was falling with his religious merit destroyed. He had the presence of mind on the way down to call up and ask where the wise ones were among whom he was to fall, and they pointed out this sacrificial ground of yours. He had steered by the curls of smoke blackening the air and by the smell of clarified butter poured without pause onto fire, and he was coming down glad at heart to be arriving among them. Ashtaka asked the obvious thing next. You could take any form at will and you had a million years in Nandana; what made you leave it and come here? The answer was the coldest sentence in the exchange. In this world, kinsmen and friends and relatives forsake the man whose wealth disappears; in the other world, the celestials with Indra at their head forsake the man who has lost his righteousness.

A key to reading this (an aside the story drops in passing): While the argument is running, the narrative mentions without any ceremony that the man suspended over the altar is Ashtaka’s maternal grandfather. Nothing is made of it here and nobody in the scene reacts to it. Which daughter that relationship runs through, and who these four sacrificing kings are, the chapter keeps back until its last scene.

The gist: A king falling out of heaven halts in the air above four royal sages at their sacrifice and introduces himself: Yayati, son of Nahusha, expelled from the region of the celestials for holding every creature beneath him. The talk opens on a quarrel over whether age or learning deserves the first salute, and Yayati answers it by arguing against himself, that vanity carries the element which leads to hell and that Destiny stands above all power and exertion, with every created thing from insects to stones ending in the Supreme Soul. Then he reads out the heavens he has lost, a thousand years in each, from Indra’s thousand-gated abode to a million years in Nandana, and the moment a grim-faced messenger shouted ruin three times and ended all of it. Why he had to leave takes one sentence: the gods drop a man who has lost his righteousness the way relatives drop a man who has lost his money.

The hell nobody on earth has heard of, which turns out to be birth itself: Ashtaka’s questions follow a soul into the womb, and the seven gates of heaven come down to a single root

The shape of what followed says as much as its content does. A cross-examination on the soul and its passages was being carried on between one man who was falling and four men who were seated, with the falling man supplying every answer. Ashtaka put his questions the way a student puts them to a teacher who will shortly be gone, one after another, each one taking apart the answer before it and asking what that answer rested on. The four of them had reason to press. Every mechanism they were asking after, the spending of merit, the fall, the return into a womb, was a mechanism each of them would go through himself in time, and the man describing it was describing it from inside the process, partway down.

Ashtaka wanted the mechanism. How does a man lose virtue up there, and which regions are reached by which courses of action? They who speak of their own merits, Yayati said, are doomed to suffer the hell called Bhauma. Emaciated and lean in themselves, they appear to go on growing on Earth in the shape of their sons and grandsons, and they end as food for vultures and dogs and jackals. This censurable and wicked vice should be repressed. I have told you everything; tell me what more I should say. Ashtaka pushed back like a man who keeps accounts. When life is destroyed with age, vultures and peacocks and insects and worms eat the body up. Where does a man reside then, and how does he come back to life? I have never heard of any hell called Bhauma on Earth. The answer redefined the word. After the body dissolves, a man re-enters his mother’s womb according to his acts, stays there in an indistinct form, soon takes a distinct and visible shape, comes back into the world and walks about on its surface. That is the earth-hell into which he falls, and it is a hell because he never sees the termination of his own existence and does nothing toward his emancipation. Some stay sixty thousand years in heaven and some eighty thousand, and then they fall, and on the way down certain Rakshasas attack them in the shape of sons and grandsons and other relatives, and draw their hearts away from any work done for their own release.

For what sin, Ashtaka asked, are falling beings attacked by these fierce and sharp-toothed Rakshasas? Why are they not reduced to annihilation? How do they enter the womb again with their senses intact? After falling from heaven, Yayati said, the being becomes a subtle substance living in water. That water becomes semen, in which the seed of vitality lies. Entering the mother’s womb in the womanly season it develops into the embryo and then into visible life, the way fruit comes out of flower. Entering trees and plants and other vegetable substances, water, air, earth and space, that same watery seed of life takes on the four-footed or the two-footed form, and every creature you see has come that way. Ashtaka, still doubting, asked whether a being that once held a human form enters the womb in its own shape or in some other, and how it comes by its visible shape, its eyes and ears and consciousness, and he called him father when he asked it. According to the merits of its acts, Yayati said, the being co-inheres in subtle form in the seed dropped into the womb, and the atmospheric force draws it there for the purpose of rebirth. In course of time it develops, first into the embryo and then into the visible physical organism. Coming out of the womb at the proper time it becomes conscious of its existence as a man, and with the ears it becomes sensible of sound, with the eyes of color and form, with the nose of scent, with the tongue of taste, with the whole body of touch, and with the mind of ideas. That is how the gross and visible body develops out of the subtle essence.

Then the hardest question. After death the body is burnt or destroyed some other way and nothing at all is left of it; by what principle is anyone revived? The person who dies, Yayati said, assumes a subtle form, and carrying the consciousness of all his acts with him as a sleeper carries a dream, he enters some other form at a speed quicker than air itself. The virtuous reach a superior form of existence and the vicious an inferior one, and the vicious become worms and insects. I have nothing more to say. I have told you how beings are born after the development of embryonic forms, four-footed and six-footed and with more feet still. What else will you ask me? Ashtaka asked the last thing worth asking. How do men reach those superior regions from which there is no return to earthly life, by asceticism or by knowledge, and how does a man climb by stages to the felicitous regions? The wise say there are seven gates through which admission to heaven may be gained, Yayati answered: asceticism, benevolence, tranquility of mind, self-command, modesty, simplicity, and kindness to all creatures. And a man loses all seven of them through vanity. He who acquires knowledge and then regards himself as learned, and uses that learning to destroy the reputation of others, never reaches the regions of indestructible felicity, and his knowledge never makes him competent to attain Brahma. Study, silence, worship before fire and sacrifice remove all fear, and with vanity mixed into them they manufacture the fear they were meant to remove. The wise should never exult at honors or grieve at insults, since the wise alone honor the wise, and the wicked never act as the virtuous act. I have given away so much. I have performed so many sacrifices. I have studied so much. I have observed these vows. That kind of talk is the root of fear, and you must not indulge in such feelings. Those learned men who take as their support the unchangeable and inconceivable Brahma, who showers blessings always on persons as virtuous as you are, enjoy perfect peace here and hereafter. The man saying it was still in the air, held between the heaven he had lost and the ground he had not yet reached.

A key to reading this (the hell called Bhauma): Bhauma means of the earth, earthly. Ashtaka’s objection is fair, since no such hell has been heard of on the earth, and Yayati’s answer locates it nowhere except in ordinary birth: the return into a womb and the walk across the world’s surface by a soul that never looks at the end of its own existence and never works for its release. The questions that follow it are put in the order a man asks when he refuses to be satisfied, each one taking the answer apart and asking what it rests on.

The gist: Held in the air above the altar, Yayati is interrogated by his own grandson. The hell called Bhauma, where men who boast of their merits are sent, turns out to be no separate place at all: it is being born again and walking about the earth without ever working for release, after sixty or eighty thousand years above, with Rakshasas in the shape of sons and grandsons pulling the heart away from that work. Then the descent is traced step by step, the fallen being as a subtle thing living in water, the water becoming seed, the seed becoming embryo and visible life, the senses waking one at a time, and the dead man carrying the consciousness of his acts like a dream into his next form quicker than air. The last question asks how a man reaches the regions from which nobody returns, and the answer is seven gates, asceticism, benevolence, tranquility, self-command, modesty, simplicity and kindness, all seven of which a man loses through vanity.

The question of the four orders, a definition of the hermit that has nothing to do with where he lives, and a falling king who twice refuses to be saved

Ashtaka had been asking about the soul and its passages. Now he asked the practical question. Those who know the Vedas disagree, he said, about how the followers of each of the four modes of life should conduct themselves in order to earn religious merit: the householder, the mendicant, the student under vows, and the forest recluse. Yayati answered in order, beginning with the student. While he lives in his preceptor’s house he receives his lessons only when his preceptor calls him to them, and he attends on his preceptor without waiting to be told. He rises from his bed before his preceptor rises and goes to it after his preceptor has gone to his. He is humble, his passions are entirely under his command, he is patient and watchful, and he is devoted to his studies. On those terms he succeeds. For the householder, Yayati cited the oldest of the Upanishads. Let him acquire wealth by honest means and perform sacrifices with it. Let him give something away every day. Let him perform the rites of hospitality for whoever arrives at his door, and let him never use anything at all without first giving a portion of it to others.

A Muni, Yayati continued, has no need to go searching for a forest. He depends on his own vigor, he abstains from every vicious act, he gives something in charity, and he inflicts pain on no creature, and on those terms he succeeds. The true Bhikshu is the man who does not support himself by any manual craft, who possesses many accomplishments, whose passions are wholly under control, who has no entanglement in worldly concerns, who never sleeps under the shelter of a householder’s roof, who has no wife, and who travels a short distance every day and so covers a great extent of country in his life. As for the last of the four, a learned man adopts the forest mode after performing the rites that are required of him, once he has mastered his appetite for enjoyment and his desire to accumulate valuable things. And Yayati added the promise attached to that choice. The man who dies in the woods while living as a forest recluse carries ten generations with him, his ancestors and his descendants and himself among them, into the divine essence. Ashtaka then asked how many kinds of Muni there are, meaning those who take the vow of silence, and Yayati answered with a riddle. A Muni is a man who lives in the woods with an inhabited place close beside him, or who lives in an inhabited place with the woods close beside him. Ashtaka asked what that was supposed to mean.

Yayati opened it out. A Muni withdraws from every worldly object and goes to live in the forest. He never seeks to gather around him the things that a town supplies, and yet by the power of his austerities he could have every one of them if he wished. That man lives in the woods with an inhabited place beside him. Now take the other case. A wise man withdrawn from everything earthly may live in a hamlet, keeping the life of a hermit inside an ordinary street. He never displays pride of family, of birth, or of learning. Dressed in the scantiest cloth, he considers himself richly attired. He rests content with exactly as much food as keeps life in the body. That man lives in a town with the woods beside him. And the man who brings his passions fully under command, takes the vow of silence, refrains from action and entertains no desire at all, reaches the goal. Why, Yayati asked, would anyone withhold reverence from a man who lives on clean food, who never injures another, whose heart stays pure, who stands in the plain splendor of his austerities, who carries none of the leaden weight of desire, and who abstains even from the injury that religion itself permits him? Worn thin by austerities, reduced in flesh and marrow and blood, such a man conquers this world and the highest world above it. When the Muni sits in the meditation of yoga and becomes indifferent to pleasure and pain, to honor and to insult, he leaves the world behind and enters communion with Brahma. And when he takes his food the way animals take theirs, with nothing arranged in advance and no relish in the eating, the way an infant asleep on its mother’s lap feeds without knowing that it feeds, then he becomes identified with the whole universe, like the spirit that pervades it, and he is free.

Ashtaka pressed further and put the two roads side by side. Both labor without pause, like the sun and the moon. Which of the two arrives first at communion with Brahma, the ascetic or the man of knowledge? Yayati’s answer went to the man of knowledge. With the Vedas and with knowledge he establishes that the visible universe is an illusion, and in that same instant the Supreme Spirit stands before him as the one existence that depends on nothing else. Those who give themselves to the meditation of yoga need time to reach the same knowledge, because it is only by practice that they strip away the consciousness of quality. So the man of knowledge reaches liberation first. Even so, Yayati said, the man of yoga loses nothing permanently. If one life does not give him time enough, and the attractions of the world lead him off the path, then in his next life the progress he already made works for him, and he takes up the pursuit again with regret behind him. The man of knowledge, meanwhile, is always looking at the indestructible unity, so that even while he is steeped in the enjoyments of the world his heart is untouched by them, and nothing stands in the way of his freedom. And for the man who fails to reach knowledge at all, there remains piety that depends on action, which is to say sacrifice and rite. There was a warning attached. A man who takes up that kind of piety because he wants liberation out of it will never succeed. His sacrifices bear no fruit, and cruelty clings to them. Piety that rests on action performed without any desire for its fruit is, for such men, yoga itself.

Only now did Ashtaka look at the man answering him. You seem young, he said. You are handsome, you are wearing a celestial garland, and your splendor is great. Where do you come from and where are you going, and whose messenger are you? Are you on your way down into the earth? Yayati told him plainly. His religious merit was spent, he had fallen out of heaven, and the hell of earth was waiting for him. He would go as soon as this conversation was finished, and the regents of the points of the universe were already ordering him to hurry. One thing he had secured from Indra before he fell, that if fall he must, he should come down among the wise and the virtuous, and the men assembled here were wise and virtuous. Ashtaka moved at once to save him. You know everything, he said. Tell me whether there are any regions waiting in heaven or in the firmament for me to enjoy. If there are, then you shall not fall, though you are falling. Yayati told him the measure of them: as many regions as there are cattle and horses on earth, with the beasts of the wilderness and the hills added in. Then they are all yours, Ashtaka said. Take them now, wherever they lie, and let your sorrow end. Yayati refused. The right to receive a gift belongs to a Brahmana who knows Brahma, and to no one like ourselves. He had given to Brahmanas in his time, in the manner in which giving should be done. Let no man who is not a Brahmana, and let no wife of a learned Brahmana, live in disgrace by accepting gifts. All his life on earth he had wanted to act virtuously, and having never taken before, he would not take now. Pratardana, sitting among them, tried next. He gave his name and asked the same question, and Yayati told him that regions past counting were waiting for him, filled with happiness, bright as the disc of the sun, places where sorrow cannot live, and that seven days in each of them would not exhaust the supply. Then take them all, Pratardana said, and stop your fall. Yayati refused a second time, and gave a different reason for it. No king of equal strength should want to receive as a gift the religious merit another king earned by yoga and austerity. A king whom fate has thrown into calamity should not, if he has any wisdom, act in a way that invites reproach. A king who keeps his eye fixed on virtue walks the road of virtue, as Yayati had walked it, and knowing his duties he does not stoop to the small thing that Pratardana was urging on him. When other men who want merit refuse to accept gifts, how could he do the thing that they themselves will not do? As that speech ended, Vasumat rose to speak to him.

A key to reading this (what a Muni is, and why a gift is refused): The definition of the hermit in this passage turns on the inside of a man rather than his address. A man seated in the forest can still be living in a town, and a man in a village street can already be living in the forest. The refusal of the gift runs against a modern instinct and needs its own frame: in this law, giving is the king’s office and receiving is the privilege of a Brahmana who knows Brahma, so Yayati sees the rescue laid in front of him and will not pick it up. That refusal is the knot of the scene that follows, because the four kings have decided to give him their merit and he has decided that a king does not take.

The gist: Ashtaka asks how the four orders of life should be conducted, and Yayati sets out the rule for the student, the householder, the Muni, the mendicant and the forest recluse, with the promise that a man who dies in the woods carries ten generations into the divine essence. Then comes the definition of the hermit by inward state rather than location, and the account of silence, clean food, harmlessness and yoga ending in communion with Brahma. Asked who arrives first, the ascetic or the man of knowledge, Yayati gives it to knowledge, since the man of yoga needs time to shed the consciousness of quality. Finally Ashtaka notices the young face and the celestial garland and asks who he is, and Yayati admits that his merit is spent, that he is falling, and that he asked Indra only for the favor of falling among the wise. Ashtaka and Pratardana each offer him all their heavenly regions, and he refuses both, because a king gives and does not take. Vasumat rises to try next.

Four kings at a sacrifice try to give away their own heaven: an offer to sell it for a straw, five golden cars burning in the sky, and the disclosure that all four are the sons of Yayati’s daughter

The old king was still in the air above them, a hand’s breadth clear of the ground he had ruled, and the four men standing at the sacrifice had run out of ordinary things to try. Ashtaka had offered him the worlds his own rites had earned. Pratardana had offered his. Both had been refused with the same courtesy and the same steadiness, and now Vasumanas, the son of Oshadashva, stepped forward to try a third time. He began the way the others had begun, with a question rather than a gift. He was Vasumanas, he said, and he wanted to know whether there were any worlds waiting for him to enjoy, in heaven or in the space between, as the fruit of whatever merit he had gathered. The man he was asking knew every holy region there was, and everyone at that sacrifice knew he knew. Yayati answered him with a measurement. There were as many worlds waiting for Vasumanas in heaven, he said, as there were places in the firmament and on the earth and in the ten directions that the sun lights. Then the trap closed, gently, the way the other two had closed it. Take them, Vasumanas said. Let the worlds that are mine be yours, and then, falling, you will not fall. And if accepting a gift is improper for a man like you, then buy them from me. Buy the whole of my heaven for a straw.

It was a good offer, made by a man who had thought about the refusal that was coming, and it failed on the same rock as the others. Yayati said that he could not remember ever buying or selling anything unfairly in his life, and that no king before him had done such a thing either, so he could hardly begin now. Vasumanas took his last step. If purchase seems improper, he said, then take them as a gift, because I will tell you plainly what I intend to do with them. I will never go to the worlds that are mine. Let them be yours. Shibi, the son of Ushinara, came forward next, and he used the word father when he spoke, which was closer to the truth than anyone at that sacrifice had yet said aloud. He asked the same question. Were there worlds in the firmament or in heaven for him to enjoy? Yayati’s answer to him was made of Shibi’s own conduct rather than of numbers. By speech and in his mind both, Shibi had never once slighted an honest or a virtuous man who came to him with a request, and for that there were worlds without end waiting for him, every one of them blazing like lightning. Shibi did with that answer exactly what Vasumanas had done. If buying them offends you, take them as a gift. I will never go to the places where the wise feel no disquiet at all. Yayati refused him too. You have won infinite worlds for yourself, he told Shibi, with the prowess of Indra in you. I have no appetite for worlds that other men hand me.

Ashtaka finally said the thing all four of them were thinking. Every one of us has offered you what our rites earned us, he said, and you take none of it. Very well. We will leave our worlds lying there for you, and the four of us will go down into the earth-hell instead. Yayati heard the threat in it and answered it without moving. You are all truthful and wise men, he said. Give me what I deserve. I will not be able to do at the end of my life a thing I never did in the whole of it. And there the matter stuck, four kings unable to give and one king unable to take, until Ashtaka happened to look up. Something was burning in the sky above the sacrificial ground. Whose are those five golden cars, he asked, that we can all see? Do the men who go to those regions of endless joy ride in them? Yayati looked where he was looking. Those five golden cars, glorious and blazing like fire, he said, would indeed carry you to the regions of bliss. Ashtaka heard only four men standing there and did the arithmetic out loud, without doing it out loud. Then get into one yourself, he said, and go to heaven. We can wait. We will follow you in time. And the knot the four of them had been trying to cut with gifts came apart on its own. We can all go together now, Yayati said. All of us have conquered heaven. Look, the shining road is showing itself.

They rode. Vaishampayana, telling it, said that those excellent monarchs set out in those cars for admission into heaven, and that the light of their virtues filled the whole firmament as they went. Somewhere on that road Ashtaka broke the silence with a question that had a little wounded pride in it, the kind of thing a man says only when he is already safe. He had always believed, he said, that Indra was his particular friend, and that of all men he would be the first one let into heaven. How was it, then, that Ushinara’s son had already left the rest of them behind? Yayati, who could see what Ashtaka could see, gave him the reason. This son of Ushinara gave away everything he had in order to reach the region of Brahman, and that is why he is ahead of us all. Besides that, he said, Shibi’s liberality, his austerity, his truth, his virtue, his modesty, his readiness to forgive, his sweetness of temper and his appetite for doing good are so great that nobody can take their measure.

Then curiosity got the better of Ashtaka one last time, and he turned to the old man riding beside him, who looked like Indra himself, and asked him outright who he was. Tell me truly, he said. Where are you from, who are you, whose son are you? Is there any other Brahmana or Kshatriya anywhere who has done on earth what you did? The answer came without any ornament on it. I will tell you truly, Yayati said. I am Yayati, the son of Nahusha and the father of Puru. I was lord of all the earth. You are my relatives, all of you, and I will tell you exactly how: I am the maternal grandfather of every one of you. Having conquered the whole earth, I gave clothing to Brahmanas and a hundred fine horses fit for the altar, and for such acts the gods are gracious to the men who perform them. I gave Brahmanas this entire earth with her horses and her elephants and her cattle and her gold and wealth of every kind, and with it a hundred arbudas of excellent milch cows. The earth and the firmament both stand because of my truth and my virtue. Fire still burns in the world of men because of my truth and my virtue. Not one word I ever spoke has been false, and that is the reason the wise worship Truth. Everything I have said to you, Ashtaka, and to Pratardana and to Vasumanas, is Truth itself. I know for certain that the gods and the sages and every mansion of the blessed are worth adoring only for the Truth that runs through all of them. And whoever reads this account of our ascension aloud to good Brahmanas, with no malice in him, will reach these same worlds himself. So, Vaishampayana said, the illustrious Yayati, a king of high achievements, was rescued by his own collateral descendants and went up out of the earth, and the fame of his deeds covered the three worlds behind him.

A key to reading this (grandsons, and a name this story never says): Ashtaka, Pratardana, Vasumanas and Shibi are the sons of Yayati’s daughter, which is why Yayati calls himself their maternal grandfather and why their merit is able to lift him. Worth noticing: this story never names that daughter. At this point the text gives the relationship and moves on. Her name and her own story arrive later, in the Udyoga Parva, where Narada tells Duryodhana the history of Galava: chapter 19, part 3. Two terms in passing. The earth-hell is the lower region a man drops into when his merit is used up, which is what Yayati has been falling toward through this whole conversation. An arbuda is a number, a hundred million, so a hundred arbudas of cows is a figure meant to convey the size of a gift rather than to be counted.

The gist: One after another the four kings at the sacrifice try to hand Yayati the heaven their own merit has bought, and Vasumanas goes as far as offering to sell it to him for a straw, and every time Yayati refuses: a man who spent his life giving and never receiving will not start receiving on the way down. Then five golden cars appear in the sky, and it turns out they have come for all five of them. On the way up Yayati explains why Shibi is out in front, and then says plainly who he is, the son of Nahusha, the father of Puru, and the maternal grandfather of the four kings riding with him. Lifted by the merit of his own daughter’s sons, he returns to heaven, and the story turns from him to the line of Puru.

From Puru to Shantanu: the roll of kings in which Janamejaya hears his own name, a thousand years hiding in the forest on the Sindhu after the Panchalas won, and a sage who answers with a single syllable

Janamejaya wanted the line itself now, king by king. He had heard, he said, that in Puru’s descent there was never one man wanting in conduct or in prowess, and never one who died without a son, and he wanted to know whether that was true of each of them in turn, with the deeds attached to the names. Vaishampayana began where the line begins. Puru had three sons by his wife Paushti, and all three were great chariot warriors: Pravira, Ishvara and Raudrashva. The line ran on through Pravira, who had a son named Manasyu by his wife Surasenii, a man with eyes like lotus petals whose writ ran over the whole earth as far as the four seas hold it. Manasyu married Sauviri and got three sons from her, Shakta, Sahana and Vagmi, all of them fighters and all of them great chariot warriors. The third brother, Raudrashva, who was intelligent and did everything by the rule, had ten sons by the Apsara Mishrakeshi, and every one of the ten grew into a great bowman who performed sacrifice after sacrifice for the gods, learned in every branch of knowledge and never once turning away from what was right. Their names are Richeyu, Kaksheyu, and Vrikeyu of great prowess, Sthandileyu, Vaneyu, and Jaleyu whose fame was wide, Tejeyu who had both strength and intelligence, and Satyeyu whose prowess was Indra’s own, Dharmeyu, and tenth of them Sannateyu, who had the prowess of the celestials.

Of those ten it was Richeyu who ended up sole monarch of the whole earth, and he is the one the world knew as Anadhrishti, and in prowess he stood among men where Vasava stands among the gods. Anadhrishti’s son was Matinara, a famous king who kept to virtue and who performed both the Rajasuya and the horse sacrifice. Matinara had four sons whose strength nobody had measured: Tansu, Mahan, Atiratha, and Druhyu of immeasurable glory. Tansu was the one who carried Puru’s line forward, and he subjugated the whole earth and took great fame and great splendor from it. Tansu’s son was Ilina, who outdid every conqueror before him and brought the entire world under him. Ilina had five sons by his wife Rathantara, each of them as mighty as one of the five elements, and Dushyanta stood at their head: Dushyanta, Shura, Bhima, Pravasu and Vasu. The eldest of them, Dushyanta, became king, and it was he who had, by his wife Shakuntala, the intelligent son Bharata who became king in his turn and gave his own name to the race he founded. That is where the fame of the dynasty comes from, and that is how far it has spread. Bharata himself had nine sons in all by three wives, and not one of them resembled their father, and he was not pleased with any of them. Their mothers understood what that displeasure meant, and in their anger they killed all nine. So Bharata’s whole effort at having children came to nothing. Then the king performed a great sacrifice, and by the grace of Bharadwaja he obtained a son named Bhumanyu, and considering himself at last a man with a son, he installed that son as his heir apparent.

Bhumanyu had six sons by his wife Pushkarini: Suhotra, Suhotri, Suhavih, Sujeya, Diviratha and Kichika. The eldest, Suhotra, took the throne and performed many Rajasuyas and many horse sacrifices, and he brought under his hand the whole earth inside her belt of seas, with her elephants and her cattle and her horses and all her wealth of gems and gold. There is an image the tellers keep here: the earth, loaded with numberless human beings and elephants and horses and animals, was at the point of sinking under the weight of them. And through the whole of Suhotra’s virtuous reign the surface of that earth was dotted with sacrificial stakes, hundreds of them, thousands of them. Suhotra had three sons by his wife Aikshaki, Ajamidha, Sumidha and Purumidha, and the eldest, Ajamidha, carried the royal line. Ajamidha had six sons by three mothers. Riksha was born of Dhumini. Dushyanta and Parameshthin were born of Nili. Jahnu, Jala and Rupina were born of Keshini. Every one of the Panchala tribes descends from Dushyanta and Parameshthin, and the Kushikas are the sons of that Jahnu whose prowess nobody measured. Riksha, being older than Jala and Rupina, became king, and Riksha’s son was Samvarana, who kept the line going, and it is at Samvarana that the story stops being a list.

While Samvarana son of Riksha was ruling, the people died in great numbers, of famine, of pestilence, of drought and of disease. The Bharata princes were beaten by enemy troops in the field. Then the Panchalas set out to take the whole earth with their four kinds of troops, and they took it, and with ten akshauhinis the king of the Panchalas broke the Bharata prince entirely. Samvarana fled in fear with his wife, his ministers, his sons and his relatives, and went to ground in the forest on the banks of the Sindhu, in the stretch that runs to the foot of the mountains. The Bharatas lived there inside their fort for a full thousand years. When the thousand years had passed, the illustrious Rishi Vasishtha came one day to those exiles. They went out to him, saluted him, worshipped him with the offering of Arghya, entertained him with every mark of respect, and laid the whole of their situation before him. When he had taken his seat, the king came to him himself and asked him to be their priest, saying that with him they would make the attempt to get the kingdom back. Vasishtha’s entire answer was the syllable Om, which is how consent is given. It has been heard that Vasishtha then installed the Bharata prince in sovereignty over all the Kshatriyas on earth, and that by the power of his mantras he made this descendant of Puru into the horns of the wild bull, the tusks of the wild elephant. The king took back the capital that had been taken from him, made every monarch pay him tribute again, and, established a second time in real sovereignty over the whole earth, performed many sacrifices at which the gifts to the Brahmanas were enormous.

Samvarana had a son by his wife Tapati, the daughter of Surya, and that son was Kuru. Kuru was so thoroughly virtuous that the people themselves put him on the throne, and the field called Kuru-jangala is famous in the world because it carries his name. He gave himself to asceticism and practiced it on that ground, and it is his practice that made the field, Kurukshetra, holy. Kuru’s very intelligent wife Vahini bore five sons: Avikshit, Bhavishyanta, Chaitraratha, Muni and the celebrated Janamejaya. Avikshit begot Parikshit the powerful, Shavalashva, Adhiraja, Viraja, Shalmali of great physical strength, Uchchaihshravas, Bhangakara, and eighth of them Jitari. In their race, as the fruit of their pious acts, seven mighty chariot warriors were born with Janamejaya at their head. Parikshit’s sons all knew the secrets of religion and of profit, and they were Kakshasena and Ugrasena, Chitrasena who had great energy, Indrasena, Sushena and Bhimasena. The sons of Janamejaya were all strong and all celebrated everywhere: Dhritarashtra the eldest, Pandu, Bahlika, Nishadha of great energy, then the mighty Jamvunada, then Kundodara and Padati, and eighth of them Vasati. All of them were proficient in morality and profit and kind to every creature, and among them Dhritarashtra became king. Dhritarashtra had eight sons, Kundika, Hasti, Vitarka, Kratha the fifth, Havihshravas, Indrabha, and Bhumanyu the invincible. He had many grandsons besides, of whom only three were famous, Pratipa, Dharmanetra and Sunetra, and of those three Pratipa stood unrivalled on earth. Pratipa had three sons: Devapi, Shantanu, and Bahlika the mighty chariot warrior. Devapi, the eldest, took up the ascetic life because he wanted to benefit his brothers, and so the kingdom came to Shantanu and to Bahlika. Beyond these there were born in Bharata’s race numberless other fine monarchs, full of energy, equal in virtue and in ascetic power to the celestial Rishis themselves; and in the race of Manu too there were many mighty chariot warriors like the gods, whose sheer numbers swelled the Aila dynasty into the giant thing it became.

A key to reading this (why the same names keep coming back): The names in this list that make a reader sit up are not the people that reader is thinking of. Kuru’s son Janamejaya is not the Janamejaya who is sitting and listening to all this. Avikshit’s son Parikshit is not the Parikshit whom Takshaka killed. Janamejaya’s sons Dhritarashtra and Pandu are not the brothers whose quarrel becomes the war. Names came back around in these families generation after generation, which is exactly why a listener finds his own name among his ancestors. The same doubling happens with Dushyanta, who is Shakuntala’s husband in one place and Ajamidha’s son and ancestor of the Panchalas in another, and with Bhumanyu and Bahlika, each of whom names two different men in this one roll. One thing is incomplete in the source itself: Dhritarashtra is said to have eight sons, and the count is even signposted with “Kratha the fifth,” but only seven names are given. What the source has is what stands here.

The gist: Janamejaya asks for the whole line of Puru and gets it name by name: Puru, Pravira, Manasyu, the ten sons of Raudrashva, Richeyu who ruled as Anadhrishti, Matinara, Tansu, Ilina; then Dushyanta and Shakuntala’s son Bharata, who gives the race its name and whose nine sons are killed by their own mothers, after which Bharadwaja’s grace gives him Bhumanyu; Suhotra, under whose reign the earth stood thick with sacrificial stakes; Ajamidha, from whom the Panchalas and the Kushikas come; and Samvarana, broken by ten akshauhinis of Panchalas, hidden a thousand years in the forest on the Sindhu, and restored by a single syllable from Vasishtha. Samvarana and Tapati, the daughter of the sun, had Kuru, whose austerities made Kurukshetra holy, and the same stream runs down to Pratipa and to Pratipa’s sons Devapi, Shantanu and Bahlika.

I have not been satisfied, the account was so short: Janamejaya asks for the whole line a second time, and hears it back from Manu to Shantanu with the name of every king’s queen attached to it

The recitation ended and the hall went quiet in the particular way a hall goes quiet when a long list has finished. Puru down to the three sons of Pratipa, the whole descent, nothing left over. Janamejaya, sitting among the priests of the snake sacrifice with the smoke still standing over the pit, was the one man in the room whom it had not settled. Brahmana, he said, I have heard this great history of my ancestors from you, and I have heard about the great monarchs born in this line, and I am not gratified, because this charming account was so short. Be pleased to recite the narrative in full, beginning from Manu, the lord of creation. Who is there that will not be charmed by an account that is sacred in itself? The fame of these kings has swelled with their wisdom and their virtue and their accomplishments and their high character until it covers the three worlds. I have listened to their liberality, their prowess, the strength of their bodies and the vigor of their minds, their energy and their perseverance, and all of it was sweet as nectar, and I am not satiated with it. Vaishampayana heard the king out. Hear then, monarch, he said, and I will recite in full the auspicious account of your own race, exactly as I heard it from Dwaipayana before.

Daksha begot Aditi, and Aditi begot Vivasvat, and Vivasvat begot Manu, and Manu begot Ila, and Ila begot Pururavas. Pururavas begot Ayus, Ayus begot Nahusha, and Nahusha begot Yayati. Yayati had two wives, Devayani the daughter of Ushanas and Sharmishtha the daughter of Vrishaparva, and a verse fixes their children in place: Devayani gave birth to Yadu and Turvasu, and Vrishaparva’s daughter Sharmishtha gave birth to Druhyu, Anu and Puru. From Yadu come the Yadavas and from Puru the Pauravas. Puru’s wife was Kausalya, and on her he begot Janamejaya, who performed three horse sacrifices and a sacrifice called Vishvajit and then walked into the woods. That Janamejaya married Ananta, the daughter of Madhava, and begot Prachinwat, who took his name from his own campaigning, since he had conquered the eastern countries as far as the confines of the region where the sun comes up. Prachinwat married Asmaki of the Yadavas and begot Sanyati. Sanyati married Varangi, the daughter of Drishadvat, and begot Ahayanti. Ahayanti married Bhanumati, the daughter of Kritavirya, and begot Sarvabhauma. Sarvabhauma took Sunanda, the daughter of the Kekaya prince, by force, and on her begot Jayatsena, who married Sushrava, the daughter of the Vidarbha king, and begot Avachina. Avachina married a second princess of Vidarbha, Maryada by name, and begot Arihan. Arihan married Angi and begot Mahabhauma. Mahabhauma married Suyajna, the daughter of Prasenajit, and of her was born Ayutanayi, who carries that name because he performed a sacrifice at which the fat of an ayuta of male beings was required, an ayuta being ten thousand.

Ayutanayi took Kama, the daughter of Prithushravas, and by her had Akrodhana, who took Karambha, the daughter of the king of Kalinga, and of her was born Devatithi. Devatithi took Maryada, the princess of Videha, and of her was born a son named Arihan, the second man of that name within four generations. Arihan took Sudeva, the princess of Anga, and begot Riksha. Riksha married Jvala, the daughter of Takshaka, and begot Matinara, and at Matinara the roll stops walking and stands still for a moment. Matinara performed the twelve years’ sacrifice on the bank of the Sarasvati, the one the tradition calls efficacious above others, and when it was finished the river came before the king in her own person and chose him for a husband. On her he begot Tansu, and a verse marks that birth: Tansu was born of Sarasvati by Matinara. Tansu begot Ilina on his wife, the princess Kalingi. Ilina begot five sons on Rathantari, and the eldest of the five was Dushyanta. Dushyanta took Shakuntala, the daughter of Vishvamitra, and begot Bharata on her, and two verses stand at that place in the record. The mother is the sheath of flesh in which the father begets the son, and the father himself is the son; therefore, Dushyanta, support your son and do not insult Shakuntala. A god among men, the father becoming the son, rescues himself from hell. Shakuntala has spoken the truth: you are the author of this child’s being. Because the king supported his child after hearing those words from the messenger of the sky, Shakuntala’s son came to be called Bharata, which means the supported.

Bharata married Sunanda, the daughter of Sarvasena the king of Kashi, and begot Bhumanyu. Bhumanyu married Vijaya, the daughter of Dasharha, and begot Suhotra, who married Suvarna, the daughter of Ikshvaku, and had by her a son named Hasti, who founded the city that has been called Hastinapura after him ever since. Hasti married Yashodhara, the princess of Trigarta, and begot Vikunthana. Vikunthana took Sudeva, the princess of Dasharha, and of her was born Ajamidha. Ajamidha had four wives, Raikeyi, Gandhari, Vishala and Riksha, and on them two thousand four hundred sons, and out of that whole number one man carried the line forward, Samvarana. Samvarana took Tapati, the daughter of Vivasvat, and of her was born Kuru. Kuru married Subhangi, the princess of Dasharha, and begot Viduratha, who took Supriya of the Madhavas and begot Anashvan, who married Amrita of the Madhavas, and of her was born Parikshit. Parikshit took Suvasa, the daughter of the Vahudas, and begot Bhimasena. Bhimasena married Kumari, the princess of Kekaya, and begot Pratisravas, whose son was Pratipa. Pratipa married Sunanda, the daughter of Shibi, and begot three sons, Devapi, Shantanu and Bahlika. Devapi went into the woods as a hermit while he was still a boy, and Shantanu became king, and a verse is set down about him as well: old men whom this monarch touched felt a pleasure that cannot be described and were restored to their youth, and for that reason the king was called Shantanu.

The second telling carries something the first one left out, which is the women. Every generation in it arrives with a marriage attached, and the marriages chart the reach of the house more plainly than any account of its campaigns could. A daughter of Ikshvaku. A daughter of the king of Kashi. Two princesses of Vidarbha in successive generations, and a daughter of the king of Kalinga, and a princess of Videha, and a princess of Anga, and a princess of Trigarta, and women of the Kekayas and the Dasharhas and the Madhavas, generation after generation, until the map of the marriages is the map of the north. One of these women was carried off by force, and the record says so and offers no apology for it. One of them was a river who rose out of her own water to choose the man who had sacrificed on her bank for twelve years. One of them was the daughter of the sun. And one of them was Jvala, a daughter of Takshaka, which is a name out of the world of the snakes and the name of the snake whose bite had made this very sacrifice necessary; the reciter set it down in its place in the line and went on without pausing over it, and the king listening in the smoke let it pass. The roll runs down at last to three brothers, one of whom walked out of it into the forest before he was old enough to rule, and it ends on a king whose touch could make an old man young again, and on a name that came from that touch.

A key to reading this (one line, two lists): This is the same descent that was recited a moment ago, and the two versions do not agree in every particular. Several names in the middle change, some kings appear here who were absent there, and this time every generation is given with the mother’s name and her father’s house, which the first list left out. The text keeps both and cancels neither, so both stand here as they stand there. Two names in this roll need care: the Janamejaya named here is Puru’s son, and the Parikshit named here is Anashvan’s son, and neither is the Janamejaya at whose sacrifice the story is being told or the Parikshit whose death caused it. Names return again and again in this family, which is why a listener meets his own name among his ancestors. Ushanas, the father of Devayani, is Shukra, met earlier in this chapter under that name. Whether the Takshaka whose daughter Jvala married Riksha is the Naga of the snake sacrifice, the text does not say.

The gist: The long list of kings has just ended, and Janamejaya says it was too short to satisfy him and asks to hear the line again in full from Manu, the lord of creation. Vaishampayana gives it as he heard it from Dwaipayana, starting further back: Daksha, Aditi, Vivasvat, Manu, Ila, Pururavas, Ayus, Nahusha, Yayati, and the five sons of Yayati’s two queens. From Puru the descent comes down name by name, and this time each king arrives with his wife: Kausalya and Janamejaya, Ananta and Prachinwat who conquered the east, Asmaki and Sanyati, and so through Sarvabhauma, Ayutanayi who sacrificed with the fat of ten thousand, Akrodhana, Devatithi and Riksha. Riksha’s son Matinara sacrifices twelve years on the Sarasvati and the river chooses him herself, and their son is Tansu, from whom come Ilina, Dushyanta, and Bharata, whose name is made from the supporting that the voice in the sky commanded. After Bharata come Bhumanyu, Suhotra, Hasti who founded Hastinapura, Vikunthana, Ajamidha with his two thousand four hundred sons, Samvarana, Kuru born of Tapati the daughter of the sun, Viduratha, Anashvan, Parikshit, Bhimasena, Pratisravas and Pratipa. Pratipa’s three sons close the roll: Devapi takes to the forest as a boy, Bahlika is known for his strength, and Shantanu becomes king, the one whose touch restored old men to youth.

The genealogy arrives at the man listening to it: Ganga’s son who became Bhishma, three children got by a sage who came when he was remembered, a stag in the woods who was not a stag, and the sentence in which Vaishampayana tells a king where he himself came from

Shantanu married Ganga, and she bore him a son called Devavrata, who in time became known to the whole earth as Bhishma. It was Bhishma who wanted his father content, and it was Bhishma who arranged the marriage that brought Satyavati, also called Gandhakali, into the house. In her girlhood Satyavati had already borne a son to Parashara, and that son was Dvaipayana. On her Shantanu begot two more, Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Chitrangada was killed by the Gandharvas before he came of age. Vichitravirya lived to be king and married the two daughters of the king of Kashi, Ambika and Ambalika, and then died without a child. So Satyavati sat with the arithmetic of it: the line of Dushyanta ran through this house and through no other, and the house had run out of sons. Thinking that far, she thought of the sage Dvaipayana, and thinking of him was enough. He stood before her and asked what her commands were. Your brother Vichitravirya has gone to heaven childless, she said. Beget virtuous children for him. Dvaipayana consented, and three children were born of that consent, Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura.

By a boon of Dvaipayana, King Dhritarashtra had a hundred sons on his wife Gandhari, and of that hundred four became famous, Duryodhana, Duhshasana, Vikarna and Chitrasena. Pandu had two jewels of wives, Kunti, who is also called Pritha, and Madri. One day, hunting, Pandu came on a stag covering its mate, and the stag was a Rishi who had taken that form. Pandu shot it in that attitude, before its desire was satisfied. The arrow went in and the shape went out of it, and the Rishi lay there in his own body saying what a dying man says when he has the right to be heard. You know virtue, Pandu, and you know what pleasure there is in the satisfaction of desire. My desire was unsatisfied, and you have killed me. Therefore you also, when you are so engaged and before you are satisfied, shall die. Pandu went pale at the curse, and from that day he did not go in to his wives. Through my own fault I have been cursed, he told them, and I have heard that for the childless there are no regions hereafter. So he asked Kunti to raise up offspring for him, and Kunti said, let it be so, and did it. By Dharma she had Yudhishthira, by Maruta, Bhima, and by Shakra, Arjuna. Pandu, well pleased with her, said that her co-wife was childless too and should be made to bear as well. Kunti said, let it be so, and imparted to Madri the mantra of invocation, and the twin Ashvins raised on Madri the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. Then one day Pandu saw Madri wearing her ornaments, and his desire kindled, and at the touch of her he died. Madri went up on the pyre with her lord, and her last words to Kunti were that her two boys were to be brought up with affection.

After some time the ascetics of the woods took those five to Hastinapura and presented them to Bhishma and Vidura, and when the presenting was done the ascetics vanished where they stood, in front of everyone. Flowers came down on the spot as their speech ended, and the celestial drums were beaten in the sky. Bhishma took the boys in. They reported their father’s death and performed his last honors by the rule. They grew up in that house, and as they grew Duryodhana’s jealousy of them grew with them, until the sinful man was acting with the appetite of a Rakshasa and casting about for any means of driving them out. What must be can never be frustrated, so all of it came to nothing. Then Dhritarashtra sent them to Varanavata by an act of deception, and they went willingly, and an attempt was made there to burn them alive, which failed because Vidura had warned them. After that they killed Hidimba, went on to a town called Ekachakra, killed a Rakshasa there named Baka, and went to Panchala, where they won Draupadi for a wife and brought her back to Hastinapura. For a while they lived in peace, and in that while their children were born.

Yudhishthira begot Prativindhya, Bhima begot Sutasoma, Arjuna begot Shrutakirti, Nakula begot Shatanika and Sahadeva begot Shrutakarma. Besides these, Yudhishthira won Devika, daughter of Govasana of the Shaivya tribe, at a self-choice ceremony, and had Yaudheya of her. Bhima won Valandhara, daughter of the king of Kashi, offering his own prowess as her dower, and had Sarvaga of her. Arjuna went to Dvaravati and carried off Subhadra, the sweet-spoken sister of Vasudeva, by force, and came home to Hastinapura pleased with himself, and of her was born Abhimanyu, accomplished in everything and as dear to Vasudeva as his own life. Nakula won Karenumati, the princess of Chedi, and had Niramitra of her. Sahadeva won Vijaya, daughter of Dyutimat the king of Madra, at a self-choice ceremony, and had Suhotra of her. And some time before any of this, Bhimasena had begotten Ghatotkacha on Hidimba. Eleven sons in all, and the one who carried the family forward was Abhimanyu. He married Uttara, the daughter of Virata, and she brought forth a dead child. Kunti lifted the child into her lap at the command of Vasudeva, who said that he would revive this child of six months. The boy had come before his time and had been burnt by the fire of Ashvatthama’s weapon, so that strength and energy had been taken out of him, and Vasudeva gave them back and gave him prowess besides. When the reviving was finished Vasudeva named him: because this child has been born in an extinct race, he shall be called Parikshit. And Parikshit married Madravati, your mother, O king, and of her you were born, Janamejaya. You in turn have begotten two sons on your wife Vapushtama, Shatanika and Shankukarna, and Shatanika has begotten one son on the princess of Videha, Ashvamedhadatta.

So the recitation closes where the man hearing it is sitting. I have now told you, O king, the history of the descendants of Puru and of the Pandavas, Vaishampayana said, and then he said what should be done with it. This excellent history, which increases virtue and is holy, should always be listened to by Brahmanas who keep their vows, by Kshatriyas devoted to the practices of their order and ready to protect those under them, by Vaishyas with attention, and by Shudras with reverence, whose chief occupation the text describes as waiting upon the other three orders. Brahmanas learned in the Vedas, and other persons who recite this sacred history with attention and reverence or listen to it when it is recited, conquer the heavens and reach the abode of the blessed, and are honored ever afterward by the gods, by Brahmanas and by other men. This holy history of the Bharatas was composed by the venerable and illustrious Vyasa. Those who know the Vedas, and any others who hear it recited with reverence and without malice, earn great religious merit and win heaven, and even when they have sinned nobody disregards them. There is a verse on the point, which says that this Bharata is equal to the Vedas, that it is holy and excellent, that it bestows wealth and fame and long life, and that men should therefore listen to it with all their attention.

A key to reading this (how a list turns into an address, and two men named Shatanika): This chapter opened with a king who wanted to hear about his ancestors, and here the list catches up with him. After Parikshit the next name in the sequence is Janamejaya, the man in the chair, and after that his own two sons. The name Parikshit is explained the moment it is given, by Vasudeva, on the ground that the child was born into a race that had been reduced to nothing. Shatanika appears twice in this stretch and belongs to a different person each time, first to Nakula’s son by Draupadi and then to Janamejaya’s own son. One more thing is worth watching: the marriage of Shantanu and Ganga passes here in a single sentence, because a genealogy moves at the speed of names. The next chapter takes that one sentence and opens it from the beginning, with a curse pronounced in Brahma’s court long before either of them came down to the river.

The gist: The line runs fast from Shantanu to the present: Devavrata by Ganga, who became Bhishma; Chitrangada and Vichitravirya by Satyavati, one killed by Gandharvas and the other dead without issue; then Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura got by Dvaipayana at Satyavati’s asking; Gandhari’s hundred sons; the Rishi in the form of a stag whose curse kills Pandu at Madri’s touch; the five sons raised on Kunti and Madri; Varanavata, Hidimba, Baka, Draupadi; the eleven sons of the Pandavas; Uttara’s dead child revived by Vasudeva and named Parikshit because his race had been emptied out; and then the sentence the whole chapter has been traveling toward, that Parikshit married Madravati and Janamejaya is her son. The telling ends with what listening to it is worth.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Adi Parva (Adivansavatarana and Sambhava sub-books). This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections LIX-XCV (59-95); 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.