Bhishma on the Bed of Arrows: the Law of Kings

About 190 minutes · in 7 sittings

The war was over, and the dead had been given their water. On the bank of the Ganga the sons of Pandu, with Vidura, with the blind king Dhritarashtra and every woman of the Bharata house, had poured the offering for fathers, sons, husbands and friends, and when it was done they stayed where they were. A month of mourning lay ahead, the month in which a family that has touched death keeps itself apart, and the Pandavas chose to pass it outside the Kuru city, beside the sacred stream. Word of where the king was camped traveled fast. Sages who had spent their lives in austerity came to see him: Vyasa, the island-born; Narada, the seer who moves between heaven and earth; the great rishi Devala; Devasthana; Kanva, each with his finest pupils. Householders deep in the Vedas came, and young men fresh from the bath that ends a student’s years. Yudhishthira received every one of them with what honors the days of mourning allowed, and they took their seats on rich carpets in a ring around him. Thousands of Brahmins offered him comfort, and none of it reached him. Then Narada, having greeted the seers with Vyasa at their head, turned to the king. “By the strength of your arms and the grace of Krishna, Yudhishthira, you have won the whole earth, and won it rightly. You came out of that terrible battle alive. You have kept the law a Kshatriya is born to. Does none of this give you joy? Your enemies are dead; will you not gladden your friends? With such fortune in your hands, I hope grief has stopped eating at you.”

The king’s grief, and the secret of Karna

“The earth is mine, yes,” Yudhishthira said. “I leaned on the strength of Krishna’s arms, on the goodwill of the Brahmins, on the might of Bhima and Arjuna, and it was conquered. And one heavy grief sits in my heart and will not move: that out of greed I caused this slaughter of my own kin. I had Abhimanyu killed, Subhadra’s dear son, and the sons of Draupadi, and so this victory, holy one, looks to me like a defeat. What will Subhadra of the Vrishni house, my own sister-in-law, say to me? What will the people of Dwarka say to Krishna when he goes home from here? And Draupadi, who has never done anything except what would please us, has lost her sons and her kinsmen, and the sight of her is a pain I cannot put down.”

Then he came to the thing that burned deepest. “There is another matter, Narada, and I must speak of it to you. My mother Kunti kept one secret too well, and my grief has grown great because of it. There was a man with the strength of ten thousand elephants, a chariot-fighter without a rival in this world, proud as a lion and with a lion’s walk, intelligent, compassionate, open-handed past measure, a keeper of hard vows. He was the shelter of Dhritarashtra’s sons. He was quick to feel a slight to his honor, impossible to stop, sure to repay every injury, furious in battle; he threw us back in one encounter after another; his hands were fast on any weapon and he knew every way of fighting. That man, Karna, was Kunti’s son, born to her in secret, our brother from the same womb. While we were pouring the water for the dead she spoke of him as the son of Surya, the Sun. She had laid that child, perfect as he was, in a basket of light reeds and given him to the current of the Ganga. The man the world took for a Suta’s boy, a child of the charioteer caste and the son of a woman named Radha, was Kunti’s firstborn. And I, hungry for a kingdom, had him killed without knowing who he was. It burns my limbs the way fire burns a heap of cotton.

“Arjuna did not know him for a brother. I did not, nor Bhima, nor the twins. He knew us. We have heard that Kunti went to him once, seeking our good, and said, ‘You are my son.’ He would not do what she asked. He told her, we are told, ‘I cannot desert Duryodhana in battle. It would be dishonorable, cruel and ungrateful. And if I made peace with Yudhishthira now, people would say I was afraid of Arjuna and his white horses. Let me first defeat Arjuna and Krishna in the field; then I will make peace with Dharma’s son.’ She said to him, ‘Fight Arjuna, then, and spare my other four.’ And Karna, with his hands joined before his trembling mother, answered, ‘Even if I have your four other sons in my power I will not kill them. You will go on having five sons, lady. If Karna dies and Arjuna lives, you have five. If Arjuna dies, you have five, counting me.’ She said, ‘Go, Karna, and do good to the brothers whose good you say you seek,’ and she went home. Arjuna has killed that man, brother killing brother, and neither she nor he ever told. Only afterward, from her own mouth, did I learn he was the eldest of us. And there is this. In the gambling hall, when Dhritarashtra’s sons were tormenting me before the whole assembly, my anger would flare and then go cold at the sight of Karna. He was saying harsh and bitter things himself that day, to please Duryodhana, and still my anger cooled when my eyes fell on his feet. They looked to me like the feet of our mother Kunti. I puzzled over that likeness for a long time and never found the reason. Why did the earth swallow his chariot wheel in the middle of the fight? Why was my brother cursed? Tell me all of it, holy one. You know what has been and what is to come.”

A key to reading this: The water-rite is the offering of water poured for the dead, and the month of mourning that follows it is the month the Pandavas spend outside the city on the bank of the Ganga. A Suta, in the words Karna himself will use to his teacher, is born of the mixing of Brahmin and Kshatriya; the world knew Karna as a Suta’s child, the son of Radha. Surya is the Sun, whom Kunti names at the water-rite as Karna’s father.

Narada’s tale: the two curses of Karna

“It is as you say,” Narada answered. “Nothing could stand against Karna and Arjuna in battle. What I am about to tell you the gods themselves do not know, so hear it as it happened.” A question had once arisen, he said: how were all the Kshatriyas to be cleansed by weapons and reach the worlds of the blessed? For that purpose a child was conceived by Kunti while she was still unmarried, a child able to set off a general war. He had great fire in him, and he grew up with the standing of a Suta. He learned the science of arms from Drona, the master of the line of Angiras who taught the Kuru princes. And as he learned, he watched. He thought about Bhima’s strength, about Arjuna’s speed with any weapon, about Yudhishthira’s intelligence and the modesty of the twins, about the friendship that had bound Krishna and Arjuna since they were boys, about the love the people bore all five, and he burned with envy. While still young he made friends with Duryodhana, led there by chance, by his own nature, and by the hatred he carried for the sons of Pandu.

Seeing that Arjuna stood above everyone in the science of weapons, Karna went one day to Drona in private. “I want to know the Brahma weapon,” he said, “with all its mantras and the power of calling it back, because I mean to fight Arjuna. You love every one of your pupils as you love your own son. Let the masters of arms count me, by your grace, as a finished warrior.” Drona was partial to Arjuna, and he knew the malice in the young man standing before him. “The Brahma weapon,” he said, “may be known by a Brahmin who has kept every vow, or by a Kshatriya who has done hard penance, and by no one else.” Karna paid him his respects, took his leave, and went without delay to Parashurama, the son of Jamadagni and the warrior sage of Bhrigu’s line, who was then living on the Mahendra mountains. He bowed his head and said, “I am a Brahmin of Bhrigu’s race.” The lie bought him his welcome. Parashurama, satisfied about his birth and family, received him kindly, and Karna was glad. On Mahendra, a range like heaven itself, he met and mixed with Gandharvas, Yakshas and gods; he acquired every weapon in due form, and the gods, the Gandharvas and the Rakshasas grew fond of him.

One day he was roaming the seashore near the hermitage, alone, with bow and sword. Without meaning to, without even knowing he had done it, he killed a cow. She belonged to a Brahmin who performed his fire-rite every day, and hers was the milk that went into the offering. Karna understood that it had been an accident, and he went to the owner and told him. “Holy one, I have killed your cow without intending it. Forgive me,” he said, and said it again and again. The Brahmin was past forgiving. “You deserve to die for this,” he said. “Take the fruit of it. The man you are always challenging, the one for whose sake you train so hard every day: when you are fighting him, the earth will swallow the wheel of your chariot. And while the earth holds your wheel and your wits have left you, your enemy will put out his strength and cut off your head. Leave me. You killed my cow in a heedless moment, and in a heedless moment your enemy will take your head.” Karna offered him cattle, wealth, jewels. The Brahmin answered, “All the words there are will never make false what I have spoken. Go or stay, do as you like.” Karna hung his head and went back to Parashurama, afraid, turning the thing over in his mind.

Parashurama, for his part, was well pleased with his pupil: with the strength of his arms, his affection, his self-control, the service he gave his teacher. He taught him, with every proper form, the whole of the Brahma weapon and the mantras for withdrawing it, and Karna lived happily in the hermitage and gave himself to the science of arms. Then came a day when the old ascetic, walking near the hermitage with Karna, grew faint from the fasts he had been keeping. He trusted the young man, and trust had become affection; he laid his head in Karna’s lap and fell into a deep sleep. While he slept a dreadful worm came, a thing whose bite was agony and which lived on phlegm and fat, flesh and blood. It reached Karna’s thigh and began to bore in. Karna could have flung it away or killed it, and either would have woken his teacher. So he let it feed. The pain was past bearing and he bore it, holding the sleeping man’s head, never flinching, never making a sound, until his blood ran down and touched Parashurama’s body. The teacher woke in alarm. “I have been made impure! What are you doing? Tell me the truth of it, and do not be afraid.” Karna told him about the worm, and Parashurama looked at it. It was shaped like a hog, with eight feet and very sharp teeth, and it was covered in bristles pointed like needles; its name was Alarka, and its limbs were shrunk with fear. The moment his eyes fell on it, the creature gave up its life and melted into the blood it had drawn. Then a Rakshasa appeared in the sky, terrible to look at, dark, red-necked, riding the clouds, able to take any shape. He joined his hands. “You have rescued me from this hell,” he said. “Bless you; you have done me good.” Asked who he was and how he had fallen so low, he said, “I was once a great Asura named Damsa. In the Krita age I was as old as Bhrigu himself, and I carried off the wife he loved. Through his curse I fell to earth as a worm; your ancestor said to me in his anger, ‘Live a life of hell, wretch, on urine and phlegm.’ I begged him to say when the curse would end, and he said, ‘It will end through Rama of my race.’ By you I am delivered.” He bowed to Jamadagni’s son and was gone.

Parashurama turned on Karna. “Fool. No Brahmin could endure agony like that. Your patience is a Kshatriya’s. Tell me the truth, and do not be afraid.” Karna was afraid, of the curse he could feel coming, and he tried to soften the old man. “Know me for a Suta, son of Bhrigu, of the race that springs from the mixing of Brahmin and Kshatriya. People call me Karna, the son of Radha. Be kind to me; I acted out of longing for weapons. A revered teacher of the Vedas and the other sciences is a father, there is no doubt of that, and so I presented myself to you as one of your own line.” He lay stretched on the ground with his hands joined, shaking. And the old man smiled, with his anger still on him, and said, “Since you dealt falsely here out of greed for weapons, the Brahma weapon will not stay in your memory. You are no Brahmin, and so, on the day you are matched with a warrior who is your equal, at the hour of your death, it will not come to you. Go. This is no place for a liar. On earth no Kshatriya will be your equal in battle.” Karna took his leave in the proper way and went. He stood before Duryodhana and told him, “I have mastered all weapons.”

A sub-tale: A teacher asleep with his head in a pupil’s lap, a worm boring into the thigh, and pain borne without a sound: the endurance that spared Parashurama’s sleep is what gave Karna away. “No Brahmin could endure agony like that,” the teacher says. “Your patience is a Kshatriya’s.” The same man who cursed him then told him that no Kshatriya on earth would be his equal in battle.

Karna’s glory, and the many causes of his fall

Narada told of the glory that followed. With his weapons won, Karna lived in great joy beside Duryodhana. There came a self-choice at Rajapura, the rich capital of Chitrangada, king of the Kalingas, where a maiden was to choose her husband from among assembled kings, and hundreds of rulers went: Shishupala, Jarasandha, Bhishmaka, Vakra, Kapotaroman, Nila, the steady Rukmi, Sringa who ruled the kingdom of women, Ashoka, Shatadhanvan, the ruler of the Bhojas, and with them kings of the south, masters-at-arms of the mlechchha tribes, and rulers from the east and the north, all in golden armlets, bright as tigers. Duryodhana came on his golden chariot with Karna beside him. When the kings were seated the maiden entered the arena with her nurse and a guard of eunuchs, and as the names were told to her she walked on past Duryodhana as she had walked past the others. He could not stand it. Drunk on his own pride, counting on Bhishma and Drona behind him, he ordered her to stop, lifted her onto his chariot, and carried her off by force. Karna rode at his back, sword on, mail on, leather guards on his fingers. The kings shouted for armor and chariots and came after the two of them, pouring arrows like clouds over a pair of hills, and Karna brought down their bows and their arrows, each with a single shaft. Some lost their bows, some came on bow in hand, some with darts and maces; he punished them all, took the drivers from many, and beat them, so that the kings picked up their own reins, said, “Away, away,” and turned from the fight. Duryodhana came home to the city named for the elephant with the girl, and with Karna’s arm to thank for her. When Jarasandha, king of the Magadhas, heard of this he challenged Karna to single combat. Both men knew the celestial weapons. They fought until the arrows were spent, the bows and swords broken, the chariots lost, and then with bare arms; and in that grip Karna was on the point of pulling apart the two halves of Jarasandha’s body, the halves that Jara had once joined. The king felt the pain of it, gave up his enmity and said, “I am satisfied.” In friendship he gave Karna the town of Malini. Until then Karna had been king of the Angas only; from that day, as Duryodhana wished, he ruled Champa as well.

“So Karna became famous on earth for the strength of his arms,” Narada said. “And then, for your good, the king of the gods came begging for the armor and the earrings he had been born with, and Karna, his wits clouded by a divine illusion, gave those treasures away. Stripped of both, he was killed by Arjuna before Krishna’s eyes. Count what it took. A Brahmin’s curse. The curse of Parashurama. The boon he granted Kunti. The illusion Indra worked on him. Bhishma’s slight, on the day the Rathas and Atirathas were told over and he rated Karna at half a chariot-warrior. Shalya’s keen tongue, which wore his spirit down. Krishna’s policy. And the celestial weapons Arjuna had gathered from Rudra and Indra and Yama and Varuna and Kubera, from Drona and from Kripa. With all of that behind him the wielder of the Gandiva bow killed Vikartana’s son, who shone like the Sun himself. Your brother was cursed, and many deceived him. He fell in battle. You should not grieve for him.”

A key to reading this: The tale of Rathas and Atirathas is the roll in which the chariot-fighters of an army are ranked before a war, and in it Bhishma set Karna down as half a chariot-warrior. Vikartana’s son is Narada’s name for Karna, whom Kunti named at the water-rite as the son of Surya. The Gandiva is Arjuna’s bow.

Narada fell silent. Yudhishthira sat sunk in thought, sighing like a snake, the tears running, a man with no strength left in him. Kunti saw it. She was nearly out of her senses with grief herself, and she spoke gently and to the point. “Do not give way like this, Yudhishthira. Kill this grief, and listen. I tried, in those days, to tell Karna that he was your brother. The god Surya tried too. Everything a friend who wished him well could say, the Sun said to him in a dream, and said again in my presence. Neither pleading nor reasons moved him; neither of us could soften him or bring him over to you. Time had him in its grip, and he had set his heart on enmity. When I saw he was bent on doing you all harm, I gave up.” Yudhishthira’s eyes were full. “You hid your counsel,” he said, “and this is the suffering it has brought on me.” And in his sorrow he cursed all the women of the world: “From this day no woman will be able to keep a secret.” Then he remembered his sons and grandsons, his kinsmen and friends, and despair closed over him like smoke over a fire.

The gist: Yudhishthira has the earth and cannot enjoy it, because the price included a brother he never knew he had. Narada answers his question with the two curses, the Brahmin’s for the cow and Parashurama’s for the lie, and then with the whole count of what it took to bring Karna down. Kunti adds that she and Surya both tried to turn Karna and failed, and her son’s grief breaks out as a curse on every woman’s power to keep a secret.

Yudhishthira declares he will renounce

Burning for Karna, sighing again and again, Yudhishthira turned to Arjuna. “If we had lived on alms in the cities of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas, Arjuna, we would not have come to this miserable end, with our own kinsmen wiped out by our hands. Our enemies the Kurus have prospered by dying, and we are stripped of everything a life is for; what fruit of righteousness can belong to men who have slaughtered their own? A curse on the ways of Kshatriyas, on might and valor, on the anger that brought this on us. Blessed are forgiveness and self-restraint and purity, renunciation and humility, harmlessness and truthful speech, all the things the hermits of the forest practice. We were proud and arrogant; out of greed and folly, wanting the sweetness of kingship, we have come to this. We saw our kinsmen lying dead on that field, men who wanted the earth as we did, and now no one could make us glad by giving us the three worlds. For the sake of the earth we killed rulers of the earth who should never have died at our hands, and we go on living, friendless, with the purpose of life gone. We were a pack of dogs fighting over a piece of meat. The meat no longer pleases us; it will be thrown aside. The men who died should not have been killed for the whole earth, or for mountains of gold, or for every horse and cow in the world. Fathers practice austerity and continence and truth, wishing for sons who will prosper. Mothers conceive by fasts and sacrifices, vows and rites, and carry the child ten months, and every day of that time they ask themselves: will he come out safely? Will he live? Will he grow strong and be honored on earth? Will he give us happiness in this world and the next? Their sons, young, with earrings bright at their ears, are dead, and all that hope with them. They died without tasting the pleasures of this world and without paying what they owed to their fathers and the gods. They were killed, mother, at the very hour their parents expected to reap the harvest of their strength. The world holds us the cause of this ruin. The fault lies with Dhritarashtra’s sons. Duryodhana’s heart was set on deceit; he nursed malice; though we never wronged him, he dealt falsely with us every time. We have not gained our end, and they have not gained theirs. They could not enjoy this earth, or women, or music; they would not listen to ministers and friends and men of learning; their jewels, their full treasury, their wide lands gave them no pleasure, because they burned with hatred of us. Duryodhana grew pale and thin watching us prosper. Shakuni, Subala’s son, told the old king so, and Dhritarashtra, a father who loved his son, put up with the son’s evil policy. He set aside Vidura and Bhishma, he would not restrain that greedy, passion-ruled prince, and he has come to ruin as I have. What other man of good birth could have spoken to kinsmen as Duryodhana spoke, hungry for battle, in Krishna’s own hearing? For his acts alone our race is destroyed, and we who killed those we should never have killed carry the blame of the world. Our enemies are dead, and our anger with them. We have sinned. And grief is dulling my mind. A sin once committed, Arjuna, is washed away by good deeds, by confessing it openly, by repentance, by gifts, by penance, by journeys to the holy waters after giving everything up, by steady meditation on the scriptures. Of all these, the man who has renounced is held to be incapable of sinning again. The Vedas say that he who renounces escapes birth and death, finds the right road, and reaches Brahman. So, with your leave, I will go to the forest. I will rise above every pair of opposites, take the vow of silence, and walk the way that knowledge points out. The scriptures say it and I have seen it with my own eyes: a man wedded to this earth cannot win the whole of religious merit. Wanting the things of the earth, I sinned. I give up the kingdom and everything in it. Rule this earth yourself. Its thorns are pulled and peace has returned to it. I have no need of a kingdom or of pleasure.”

Arjuna’s reply: the dharma of wealth and action

Arjuna heard him out like a man who has been insulted and does not mean to let it pass. He ran his tongue over the corners of his mouth, and there was a hard smile on him when he spoke. “How painful this is. You have done a thing beyond the reach of men, and now you want to throw away the prosperity it won. You killed your enemies. You hold the earth by the law of your own order. And out of a wavering heart you would abandon all of it? Where on earth has a eunuch or a man who puts things off ever won a kingdom? If this was your mind, why, mad with anger, did you kill all the kings of the earth? A man who lives by begging can enjoy nothing the earth holds. Without fortune and without means he wins no fame, no sons, no herds. If you leave this swelling kingdom to live the wretched life of a mendicant, what will the world say of you? You were born in this line of kings. You have conquered the whole earth. And you want, out of folly, to go and live in the woods like a common man, leaving virtue and profit behind? Go, and in your absence dishonest men will destroy the sacrifices, and that sin will stain you.”

He pressed the case for wealth. “King Nahusha, who did many evil things when he was poor, cried shame on that state and said poverty is for hermits. To lay up nothing for tomorrow suits the rishis, as you well know. What is called the dharma of kings rests entirely on wealth. Whoever takes a man’s wealth takes his dharma with it; which of us, then, would forgive being robbed? A poor man is accused falsely even when he is standing right there. Poverty is a kind of sin, and you should not praise it. The fallen man grieves and the poor man grieves, and I see no difference between them. Every good work flows from great wealth as streams flow from a mountain; dharma comes of it, and pleasure, and heaven itself. A man without it cannot keep himself alive, and the works of a fool who lets himself be stripped dry up like shallow streams in summer. The man who has wealth has friends. He has kinsmen. The world counts him a true man and a learned one. Wealth brings more wealth, the way tame elephants are used to capture wild ones. Courage, anger, learning, a sense of one’s own dignity, the honor of a family: all of it comes from wealth. The man who is lean in horses and cattle, in servants and guests, he is the lean one, whatever the state of his limbs. Look honestly at the gods and the Danavas. Do the gods wish for anything except the death of their own kinsmen, the Asuras? It was by a war within the family that they got their footing in heaven, and the eternal words of the Veda approve it. If taking what belongs to others were unrighteous, how could any king practice virtue on this earth? The learned have settled the matter: kings should recite the three Vedas daily, seek wealth, and spend that wealth carefully on sacrifice. No one has ever seen wealth earned without some harm to another. That is how kings conquer the world, and having conquered they call it theirs, as sons call their father’s property their own. The royal sages now in heaven declared this the duty of kings. As water runs every way from a swollen sea, wealth runs every way from a king’s treasury. This earth belonged once to Dilipa, to Nahusha, to Ambarisha, to Mandhata. Now she belongs to you. A great sacrifice is waiting for you, one with gifts of every kind and a vast heap of the earth’s produce, and if you do not perform it the sins of this kingdom will be yours. The subjects of a king who performs the horse sacrifice are cleansed by the mere sight of the bath that closes it. Mahadeva himself, in a great rite that called for every kind of flesh, poured all creatures into the fire as the offering, and then his own self. That road is eternal and its fruits are never lost. It is the great road called Dasharatha. Leave it, and what other road will you take?”

A key to reading this: The great rites named in these arguments are the horse sacrifice, the Rajasuya and the Sarvamedha. Arjuna says the subjects of a king who performs the horse sacrifice are cleansed by watching the bath that ends it. Dakshina is the gift of wealth a sacrificer makes at his rite, and every speaker who urges Yudhishthira to rule asks that his sacrifices be rich in it.

Yudhishthira paints the forest life, and Bhima answers

“Give me your whole attention for a little while, Arjuna,” Yudhishthira said. “Turn your mind and your hearing inward, and what I say may win your assent. I will leave the pleasures of the world and take the road the righteous walk. I will not walk the road you recommend, for your sake or anyone’s. Ask me which road a man should walk alone and I will tell you; do not ask, and I will tell you anyway. I will live in the forest with the animals whose home it is, on fruit and roots, doing the hardest penance. I will pour my offerings on the fire at the proper hours and bathe at dawn and at dusk; I will grow thin on little food, wear skins, and carry matted hair on my head. Cold, wind and heat, hunger and thirst and toil I will bear, and wear my body down as the rule prescribes. I will listen every day to the clear calls of birds and beasts glad in the woods, breathe the scent of trees and creepers heavy with flowers, and look on the hermits who live there. I will not do the smallest harm to any creature of the forest, to say nothing of those who live in villages and towns. I will feed the ancestors and the gods on wild fruit, spring water and hymns of thanks, and wait in peace for this body to fall. Or I will live alone, my head shaved, keeping silence, begging each day’s food from a single tree. Smeared with ash, sheltering in abandoned houses or at the foot of a tree, I will cast off everything dear and everything hateful. Blame and praise, hope and pain will be the same to me. I will speak to no one and wear the look of a blind, deaf fool, content, taking my happiness from my own soul. I will mock no one and frown at no one, and my face will be cheerful always. I will ask no one the way. I will take whatever road is in front of me, without noting the country or the direction, and I will not look back. Nature goes ahead of every creature, so food and drink will come somehow. If the first house gives me no clean food, I will go to another, and to seven in a row if I must. When the smoke has stopped rising from the houses and the hearth fires are out, when the pestles are put away and everyone has eaten and no beggar or guest is still abroad, then I will make my round, and ask at two houses, or three, or five at most. I will live as one who neither loves life nor waits for death. If one man cuts off my arm and another smears the other arm with sandal paste, I will wish the first no evil and the second no good. I will do nothing except open and close my eyes and take enough food and drink to keep alive. I will live free as the wind. Out of desire and ignorance I have done great sins. Men do good and evil here to keep wives, children and kin, and when their time runs out they put off the worn body and carry the whole weight of the evil themselves, for the fruit falls on the doer alone. So creatures come onto this wheel of life, which turns like a chariot wheel, and so they meet one another on it. The world’s way looks eternal and is a passing show, beset by birth, death, age, disease and pain; the man who leaves it is sure of happiness. The gods themselves fall from heaven, and great rishis from their high stations. Petty kings, by this stratagem or that, bring down a great one. Thinking on all this, the nectar of wisdom has come to me. I want a place that is lasting and does not change, and on that fearless road I will bring this body to its end.”

Bhima could hold himself no longer. “Your mind has gone blind to the truth, king, like the mind of a dull reciter who has said the Veda over so many times that he no longer hears it. If you meant to condemn the duties of kings and live in idleness, then the destruction of Dhritarashtra’s sons was for nothing. Are forgiveness and compassion and pity and harmlessness never found in a man who walks the Kshatriya road? Had we known this was your intention we would never have lifted a weapon or killed a single creature. We would have begged our bread until these bodies fell, and this terrible battle between the rulers of the earth would never have been fought. The learned say that everything we see is food for the strong; this whole world, moving and unmoving, is there for the strong man to enjoy. Those who know the Kshatriya law say that whoever stands in the way of a man taking the earth should be killed. The men who stood in our way were guilty of that, and we killed them. Now govern the earth justly. What we are doing is what a man does who digs a well and climbs out covered in mud just before he strikes water. It is what a man does who climbs a tall tree for honey and dies before he tastes it; who sets out on a long road and turns back in despair before the end; who kills every one of his enemies and then falls by his own hand; who is starving, is handed food, and will not eat; who burns with desire, wins a woman who wants him, and will not go to her. People blame us, and rightly, because we follow you, a man of weak understanding, only because you are the eldest. We have strong arms, we have learning, we have fire in us, and we obey the words of a eunuch as if we were helpless. We are the refuge of the helpless, and the world, seeing us like this, will say we have no power to gain our own ends. Think about what I say. Renunciation is laid down for kings in times of distress only, when they are broken by age or beaten by enemies. The wise do not praise it as a Kshatriya’s duty; those who see clearly hold that for a Kshatriya it is a loss of virtue. How can men born to that order and living by it condemn its duties? If those duties deserve blame, why not blame the Creator who ordained them? Men who have lost fortune and wealth, men without faith, have put it about as Vedic truth that a Kshatriya may renounce. A man who can live by his own prowess and his own effort, and takes on the outward show of renunciation, falls away from his duty. The man fit for a lonely, happy life in the woods is the man who cannot support sons and grandsons, gods and rishis, guests and ancestors. The deer and the boar and the birds live in the forest and do not reach heaven by it. If renunciation brought success, the mountains and the trees would have it first: they renounce everything, injure no one, keep clear of the world, and are perfectly continent. If filling one’s own belly were the road, every creature of the water would be perfected, having no one to feed except itself. Look: the world goes on with every creature in it busy at the work of its own nature. So a man must act. The man who does not act never succeeds.”

Arjuna’s sub-tale: the golden bird and the young renouncers

Arjuna spoke again. “There is an old story told about this, of certain ascetics and Indra. Some Brahmin youths of good family and small understanding, boys whose beards had not yet come, left their homes for the forest. They took that for virtue; they had means enough, and they walked away from fathers and brothers to live as celibate seekers. Indra felt compassion for them. He took the shape of a golden bird and spoke where they could hear. ‘What is done by those who eat the remnant of the sacrifice is the hardest thing men can achieve. It is a work of great merit, and such lives deserve every praise. Those men reach the goal of life and the highest end.’ The young rishis said, ‘Listen, this bird is praising those who live on remnants. He means us, for we live on leavings.’ The bird said, ‘I am not praising you. You are sunk in mire and very unclean. You live on offal, and you are wicked. You are no eaters of the remnant of sacrifice.’ They answered, ‘We hold our way of life to be highly blessed. Tell us, bird, what is good for us. Your words fill us with faith.’ The bird said, ‘If you will not refuse me your trust by setting yourselves against your own better selves, I will tell you words that are true and useful.’ And they said, ‘We will listen, sir. All the roads are known to you, and we wish to obey you. Teach us.’

“The bird taught them. ‘Among four-footed creatures the cow stands first. Among metals, gold. Among words, the mantras. Among two-footed creatures, the Brahmin. The mantras govern every rite of a Brahmin’s life, from those of his birth to those of his death and the burning ground, and those Vedic rites are his heaven, his road and his highest sacrifice. The life of the householder is high and holy, and it is called the field in which success is grown. By what road do the men go who condemn action? They are poor in understanding and poor in goods, and they fall into sin; because they live by abandoning the eternal paths of the gods, of the rishis and of Brahma, they arrive on paths the Vedas disapprove. There is an ordinance in the mantras that says: sacrificer, perform the sacrifice of rich gifts, and I will give you happiness in sons, in herds and in heaven. To live by the ordinance is the highest austerity of the austere. The worship of the gods, the study of the Vedas, the offerings that feed the ancestors, and attentive service to one’s teachers: these are called the hardest of penances, and by such penances the gods won their glory and power. So I tell you to take up the very heavy burden of the householder’s duties. Austerity is the root of all creatures, there is no doubt of it, and it is to be had by living the household life, on which everything depends. Those who portion out the food morning and evening among their kin, who serve guests and gods and rishis and kinsmen first and then eat what is left, are the eaters of the remnant, and they reach ends very hard to reach. True to their duties and their vows and their word, free of pride, they come to heaven and live for unending time in the realm of Indra.’ The ascetics heard him. The words were good for them and full of dharma. They said of the life of renunciation, ‘There is nothing in it,’ gave it up, and went home to live as householders. Call that old wisdom to your aid, you who know what is right, and rule the wide world, which no longer holds an enemy of yours.”

A key to reading this: The remnant the golden bird praises is the food a householder eats after he has first served guests, gods, rishis and kinsmen. The boys in the forest were living on scraps and took the praise for their own; Indra tells them that leavings of that kind are offal, and that the name belongs to the man who feeds everyone else before himself.

The gist: Yudhishthira wants to give up the kingdom he has just won and live as a silent beggar in the forest. Arjuna answers that the duty of kings rests on wealth and sacrifice, and Bhima that a Kshatriya with strength in his arms has no right to renounce: a man must act. Arjuna’s story of the golden bird carries the same charge into the household, where the heaviest and highest life belongs to the one who feeds everyone before he eats.

Nakula and Sahadeva argue: who is the true renouncer

Nakula spoke next. He was a man of few words and broad chest, and his face had gone the color of copper as he looked at the king and laid siege to his brother’s heart with reasons. “The gods themselves set up their fires at the place called Vishakha-yupa; know from that, king, that even the gods depend on the fruits of action. The ancestors, who send the rain that keeps even unbelievers alive, are at work under the ordinance. Those who reject the Veda’s command to act are atheists outright. Everyone who knows the Vedas holds the householder’s life to be the highest of the four. Understand what a true renouncer is: the man who restrains himself and gives his rightly won wealth in sacrifice to Brahmins learned in the Veda. The one who turns his back on the household, the source of so much happiness, and jumps ahead to the next stage of life has renounced only himself, and his renunciation belongs to darkness. The four ways of life were once weighed in a balance. The wise say that when the householder’s life was set in one pan it took the other three together to level it. Seeing that result, and seeing that in the household alone are both heaven and pleasure, the great rishis made it their road. The man who takes it up as a duty and gives up desire for its fruit is the real renouncer. The man of clouded mind who leaves his home for the woods, and under the dress of righteousness cannot forget what he wants, has the noose of the king of death around his neck. A deed done from vanity bears nothing; a deed done in the spirit of renunciation bears richly. The Creator made creatures meaning them to worship him with sacrifices rich in gifts, and he made creepers and trees and herbs, clean animals and clarified butter, to be the materials of those rites. Householders with wealth and grain and cattle who do not sacrifice earn lasting sin. I have never seen a king living the household life give up his wealth in any way except the Rajasuya, the horse sacrifice and the other great rites; by refusing to spend on sacrifice what you took from your enemies you show only a want of faith. A king through whose carelessness his subjects are plundered by robbers, who gives no protection to those he is set over, is called Kali in the flesh. If we go to the woods without giving horses and cattle, serving women, caparisoned elephants, villages, settled country, fields and houses to the Brahmins, we will be exactly such Kalis of the royal order. Go wandering with the great sacrifices undone, the rites for your dead undone, the holy waters unvisited, and you will be destroyed like a small cloud torn from the mass and driven by the wind. You will fall from both worlds and be born among the Pishachas. A man becomes a renouncer by casting off every attachment, inner and outer; leaving home for the forest does not do it. Who that keeps the duties of his own order would grieve for having struck down swollen enemies in battle, as Indra struck down the armies of the Daityas? You have subdued the world by the Kshatriya law. Give to those who know the Vedas, and you can go to worlds higher than heaven. You have no cause for grief.”

Sahadeva’s argument was finer. “Casting off outward things alone brings no success, and even when the attachments of the mind are cast off, success remains doubtful. Let the merit and the happiness of the man who has given up outward things while his mind still covets them be the portion of our enemies. Let the merit and the happiness of the man who governs the earth with every inward attachment cut be the portion of our friends. The word of two syllables, mama, ‘mine,’ is death itself. The word of three, na-mama, ‘not mine,’ is the eternal Brahman. Brahman and death both enter every soul unseen and drive all creatures to act. If the being called the soul can never be destroyed, then no one who destroys a body is guilty of killing. And if soul and body are born and die together, then the whole way of rites and acts the scriptures lay down would be empty. So a man of intelligence should put away his doubts about the soul’s immortality and take the road the righteous took in old times and older. The life of a king who has won the whole earth, with everything that moves and stands on it, and does not enjoy her, is surely fruitless. And the man who lives in the forest on wild fruit and roots while his attachment to the things of the earth continues lives inside the jaws of Death. See the hearts and the outward forms of all creatures as showings of your own self; those who look on all creatures as themselves escape the great fear. You are my father, my protector, my brother, my elder and my teacher. Forgive the disordered words of a man speaking in sorrow. True or false, I have said them out of the regard I bear you.”

A sub-tale: Nakula’s image of the balance holds the argument of all the brothers in small. The householder’s life in one pan outweighs any one of the other three ways of life, and it takes all three together to level the scale, because the household is where ancestors, gods and guests are fed. Sahadeva then takes the question inward: the word that kills is “mine,” and the merit he wishes on his friends is that of the king who governs the earth with every inward attachment cut.

Draupadi’s sharp words: without the rod a Kshatriya is nothing

Yudhishthira said nothing. He sat among his brothers, who looked like so many lions and tigers around him, and Draupadi fixed her eyes on her lord. She was large-eyed and high-born; she had always looked to all her husbands for loving regard and to Yudhishthira most of all, and the king had always treated her with affection and indulgence. Now she spoke. “Your brothers are crying out like chataka birds, their throats gone dry, and you will not gladden them. These men have drunk from the cup of misery all their lives. Give them the right words now. Beside the Dvaita lake, when they were living with you in cold and wind and sun, what did you tell them? ‘We will rush into battle, kill Duryodhana, and enjoy the earth that grants every wish. You will strip great chariot-fighters of their chariots and kill huge elephants and strew the field with the bodies of horsemen and heroes, and then you will perform great sacrifices with gifts in plenty, and all this suffering in the forest will end in happiness.’ You said that. Why do you crush our hearts now? A eunuch cannot enjoy wealth. A eunuch cannot have children, any more than fish can live in mud with no water. A Kshatriya without the rod of punishment does not shine, cannot enjoy the earth, and his subjects have no happiness. Friendship toward all creatures, giving, study of the Vedas, penance: these make the duty of a Brahmin. The highest duties of a king are to hold down the wicked, to cherish the honest, and never to retreat from battle. The man who knows his duty has in him both forgiveness and anger, giving and taking, terror and fearlessness, punishment and reward. You did not win the earth by study, or by gifts, or by begging. An enemy host ready to break on you with its whole weight, thick with elephants and horses and chariots, strong in three kinds of strength, guarded by Drona and Karna, Ashvatthama and Kripa: that is what you defeated and killed. That is why I ask you to enjoy the earth.

“Once you held the land called Jambu with its crowded districts, and held it by force. You held Krauncha-dvipa, west of great Meru and as large as Jambu; and Shaka-dvipa, east of Meru and as large as Krauncha; and Bhadrashva, north of Meru and as large as Shaka. You crossed the ocean and held other lands, and islands ringed by the sea with many peopled provinces. After feats past measuring, with the blessings of the Brahmins on you, how is your soul still unsatisfied? Look at your brothers, swelling with strength like bulls, like elephants in rut. Why will you not speak to them kindly? Each of you is like a god; each can stand against any enemy. If only one of you had been my husband my happiness would have been great, and I have all five, as the body has its five senses. My mother-in-law knows much and sees far, and her words cannot be false. She said to me, ‘Princess of Panchala, Yudhishthira will always keep you happy.’ You have killed many thousands of kings, and now through folly you are about to make it all worthless. When the eldest brother goes mad, the others must follow him into madness. If your brothers were in their senses they would shut you up with the unbelievers and govern the earth themselves. A man who walks the road of madness should be given the physician’s treatment, with incense and eye-salve, drugs through the nose, and the rest. I am the worst of all women, since I wish to go on living with my children dead. Do not brush aside what I say, or what these brothers are struggling to tell you. Leave the earth and you invite danger and ruin. You shine now as Mandhata and Ambarisha shone, kings whom every ruler honored. Protect your subjects in dharma; govern the goddess Earth with her mountains, forests and islands. Do not lose heart. Worship the gods in many sacrifices. Fight your enemies. Give wealth and clothing and good things to the Brahmins.”

A key to reading this: The rod, danda, is the king’s power to punish, and Draupadi’s claim is that a Kshatriya without it cannot shine, cannot enjoy the earth, and cannot make his subjects happy. Kali is Nakula’s word for a king whose carelessness lets robbers plunder the people he is set over. The lands Draupadi lists, Jambu, Krauncha-dvipa, Shaka-dvipa and Bhadrashva, are placed by her around the great mountain Meru.

Arjuna expounds the science of the rod

Arjuna spoke once more, with all the respect due an elder brother. “The man who carries the rod of punishment governs all subjects and protects them. The rod is awake when everything else sleeps, and for that the wise have called it righteousness itself. It guards dharma and it guards profit, and pleasure too, so that it is counted one with the three aims of life. Grain and wealth are both kept safe by it. One sort of sinner holds back out of fear of the rod in the king’s hand, another out of fear of Yama’s rod, another out of fear of the next world, another out of fear of what people will say. In a world made so, everything hangs on the rod. There are those whom the rod alone keeps from devouring one another; without it people would sink into the darkness of hell. The wise named it danda because it restrains the ungovernable and punishes the wicked. A Brahmin is punished by word of mouth. A Kshatriya is punished by being given only as much food as keeps him alive. A Vaishya is punished with fines and the forfeit of his goods. For a Shudra there is no punishment. Where Punishment stands ready, dark of skin and red of eye, and the king sees justly, the subjects never forget themselves. The student, the householder, the forest hermit and the wandering mendicant all keep to their roads out of fear of it. A man without fear performs no sacrifice, gives nothing away, and keeps no agreement.

“No one wins great prosperity without piercing others to the quick, without doing the hardest things, without killing as the fisherman kills. Without slaughter no man has gained fame in this world, or wealth, or subjects. Indra became the great Indra by killing Vritra. The gods who kill are the gods men worship most: Rudra, Skanda, Indra, Agni, Varuna are all slayers; Kala and Mrityu, Vayu and Kubera and Surya, the Vasus, the Maruts, the Sadhyas and the Vishvedevas are all slayers. People bow to those gods, humbled by their might. To Brahma or Dhatri or Pushan they never bow; only a few men of noble nature worship, in everything they do, the gods who are even-handed toward all creatures, self-restrained and peaceful. I see no creature in this world that lives without injuring another. Animals live on animals, the stronger on the weaker. The mongoose eats the mouse, the cat eats the mongoose, the dog eats the cat, and the spotted leopard eats the dog; and the Destroyer, when he comes, eats them all. This universe, moving and unmoving, is food for living things. The gods have ordained it so, and the man of knowledge is not dazed by it. Become what you are by birth. Only foolish Kshatriyas choke down anger and joy and hide in the woods. The ascetics themselves cannot keep alive without killing: in water, in earth, in fruit there are creatures beyond counting, some so small that their existence is only inferred, and the fall of an eyelid destroys them. Some men conquer anger and pride, leave village and town for the forest, and there grow so confused that they turn householder again. Others stay in the household, till the soil, pull up herbs, cut trees, kill birds and beasts, perform their sacrifices, and reach heaven. If punishment were done away with, creatures would soon perish; like fish in water the strong would prey on the weak. Even a dying fire blazes up again, in fright, when it is blown on. Punishment was ordained by the Creator himself to protect dharma and profit and to keep the four orders happy, righteous and modest. Without the fear of it, crows and beasts of prey would have eaten every other animal, and men, and the butter meant for the sacrifice. No one would study the Vedas, no one would milk a cow, no girl would marry. Every boundary would be swept away and the idea of property would vanish. Camels, oxen, horses, mules and asses would refuse the yoke. On punishment rest heaven and this world both. If the rod is not kept raised, the dog will lick the sacrificial butter and the crow will carry off the first offering.

“Righteously or unrighteously, this kingdom is ours now, and our duty is to put grief away. Enjoy it and perform sacrifices. Fortunate men live with the wives they love, eat good food, wear fine clothes, and earn virtue gladly. Everything we do depends on wealth, and wealth depends on the rod. Duties were declared only so that the world’s relations could go on. There is abstention from injury, and there is injury done from righteous motives, and of the two the better is the one by which righteousness is won. No act is wholly good and none is wholly evil; in every act something of both is seen. Men geld their animals and cut their horns, set loads on them, tether them and beat them. In a world that is hollow and painful and rotten with abuse, follow the old customs of men. Sacrifice, give, protect your subjects, practice dharma, kill your enemies and guard your friends, and do not lose heart while you kill. The man who takes up a weapon and kills an armed enemy advancing on him takes on no sin, for it is the attacker’s own wrath that calls up the wrath of the one who strikes him down. The inner soul of every creature cannot be killed; how then can one be killed by another? A man moves into a new house, and in the same way a creature moves through body after body, leaving the worn forms and taking new ones. Those who see truly call that change death.”

The gist: Draupadi and Arjuna make one case from two sides. She reminds the king of what he promised his brothers by the Dvaita lake and tells him that a Kshatriya without the rod neither shines nor rules. He builds the theory: the rod is awake when all else sleeps, fear of it keeps every order of life on its road, and without it the strong would eat the weak as fish do in water. Arjuna makes no claim that the work is clean. No act, he says, is wholly good or wholly evil, and a king must act all the same.

Bhima calls for the war within, and Yudhishthira’s teaching on contentment

When Arjuna had finished, Bhima, a man of great wrath, gathered all his patience and spoke to his eldest brother. “You know every duty, king. Nothing is hidden from you. We try always to copy your conduct, and we cannot. ‘I will say nothing, I will say nothing’: that was my wish. Grief forces me to speak, so hear me. Your faculties are in a daze, everything is put at risk, and we are being made weak and wretched with you. How does the ruler of the world, a master of every science, let his understanding cloud over like a coward’s? You know the right roads and the wrong ones; you know what is and what will be. So I will give you the reasons for taking up the sovereignty. There are two kinds of disease, of the body and of the mind, and each is born of the other; neither is ever found alone. A man who broods over a past pain of body or mind gets pain out of pain and suffers twice. Cold, heat and wind are the three qualities of the body. When they are in balance there is health, and when one overpowers the others there are remedies: cold is checked by heat and heat by cold. Goodness, passion and darkness are the three qualities of the mind. Their balance is the mind’s health, and when one prevails there are remedies too: grief is checked by joy, and joy by grief. One man, in the middle of happiness, chooses to remember his old sorrows; another, in sorrow, remembers old happiness. You were never a man to be sad in grief or glad in joy. Do not use your memory now to grow sad in a time of good fortune. Or, if it is your nature to suffer so, why not remember what you saw with your own eyes: Draupadi, in a single cloth, in her season, dragged before the assembly? Why not remember our expulsion from the city, the deerskins, the great forests? Have you forgotten what Jatasura did to us, the battle with Chitrasena, what we suffered from the king of Sindhu? Have you forgotten the kick Kichaka gave the princess while we lived in hiding? A battle as fierce as the one you fought with Bhishma and Drona is before you now, and it must be fought with the mind alone. Arrows are no use in it, or friends, or kin. If you give up your life before you win it, you will take another body and have to fight these same enemies again. Fight it today. Put aside the concerns of the body and conquer the enemy in your mind. Then take the road your father took and govern the kingdom well. By good fortune the sinful Duryodhana is dead with all his followers. Perform the horse sacrifice with its rites and its gifts. We are your servants, and so is Krishna.”

“Discontent,” Yudhishthira answered, “a heedless clinging to earthly goods, restlessness, might, folly, vanity, anxiety: touched by these faults, Bhima, you covet sovereignty. Be free of desire, rise above joy and grief, find stillness, and try to be happy. The matchless king who rules this boundless earth will have one stomach. Why praise such a life? Desires cannot be filled in a day or in many months; desire, which can never be satisfied, is not filled in a whole lifetime. A fire fed with fuel blazes, and unfed it goes out. Put out the fire in your belly with a little food when it rises. Conquer your stomach first, and the earth is conquered with it, and what is for your lasting good is won. You praise desire, enjoyment and prosperity. Those who have given up enjoyment and worn their bodies thin with penance reach the worlds of blessedness. Getting a kingdom and keeping it are bound up with both right and wrong. The tiger kills many animals to fill one stomach, and weaker beasts, driven by greed, live on what he leaves. Kings who accept the earth’s goods and then practice renunciation are never content; look at the loss of sense in them. Those who live on the leaves of trees, who husk their grain with two stones or with their teeth, who live on water or on air, are the ones who conquer hell. Set the king who rules this wide earth beside the man to whom gold and pebbles are the same, and it is the second who has gained the object of his life. There are two famous roads, the road of the ancestors and the road of the gods. Those who perform sacrifices go by the first, and those who seek release go by the second. By penance, by continence, by study, the great rishis cast off their bodies and went to regions beyond the reach of death. Worldly enjoyments have been called bonds, and they have been called action; freed of both, a man reaches the highest end. There is a verse Janaka sang, who was free of the pairs of opposites and of desire: ‘My treasures are immense, and I have nothing. If the whole of Mithila were burned to ashes, nothing of mine would burn.’ A man on a hilltop looks down on men in the plain, and in that way one who has climbed to the top of the mansion of knowledge sees people grieving over things that call for no grief. The fool does not see it. When a man sees creatures in their endless variety as one, as so many streamings from a single essence, he is said to have reached Brahman. Those who come that far attain the supreme and blissful end. The ignorant do not, nor the small-souled, nor those without penance. Everything rests on the understanding.”

A key to reading this: Yudhishthira names two roads: the road of the ancestors, traveled by those who perform sacrifices, and the road of the gods, traveled by those who seek release. Janaka is the king of Mithila whose verse he quotes, a ruler with immense treasure who said that nothing of his would burn if his whole city burned.

Arjuna’s sub-tale: King Janaka and his queen

The speech stung Arjuna, and grief burned in him as he answered. “People tell an old story, of the ruler of the Videhas and his queen, and of what she said to her lord, in her sorrow, when he had abandoned his kingdom to live as a beggar. King Janaka cast off wealth, children, wives, treasures of every kind, the settled path of merit, and the sacred fire itself, and shaved his head. His beloved queen saw him so: stripped of his wealth, sworn to harm no creature, free of every vanity, ready to live on a handful of fallen barley picked grain by grain from the cracks in a field. She was a woman of great strength of mind. She came to him when no one else was near, and without fear, and in anger, she told him this: ‘Why have you taken up begging and left a kingdom full of wealth and grain? A handful of fallen barley is no fit thing for you. Your resolve does not agree with your acts, for you have thrown away a great kingdom and you covet a handful of grain. With that handful, will you satisfy guests, gods, rishis and ancestors? Your labor is wasted. You were the support of thousands of Brahmins versed in the three Vedas, and of many others; how can you want to beg your food from them today? You have given up your blazing fortune and you look around you as a dog looks for its food. Today your mother is sonless because of you, and your wife, the princess of Kosala, is a widow. These helpless Kshatriyas wait on you with all their hopes of fruit and merit. Kill those hopes, and to what world will you go, when release itself is doubtful and creatures depend on action? You have neither this world nor the next, sinful as you are, since you wish to live having cast off your wedded wife. You were a great holy lake to all creatures, a mighty tree that sheltered everyone; how can you wait on others now? Even an elephant that stops all work is eaten by packs of flesh-eaters and by worms without number. What then of you?

“‘How could your heart be set on a life that asks for an earthen pot and a three-headed staff, that makes a man give up his very clothes and allows him a handful of barley when everything else is gone? If a kingdom and a handful of barley are the same to you, why give up the kingdom? If the handful of barley has become a thing you cling to, your first resolve has fallen to the ground. And if you truly can give up everything, then who am I to you, and who are you to me, and what kindness can you show me? If you are inclined to kindness, rule this earth. Those who want happiness and are poor, without means, abandoned by friends, may take to renunciation. The man who copies them by leaving palaces and beds, carriages, robes and jewels does wrong. One man is always taking gifts and another is always giving them; you know the difference, and which of the two stands higher. A gift to one who lives on gifts, or to one swollen with pride, is wasted like butter poured on a forest fire. A fire does not die until it has burned everything thrown into it, and a beggar is not quiet until he has his dole. In this world the food a charitable man gives is the sure support of the pious. If the king does not give, where will those who seek release go? Those who have food in their houses are householders, and mendicants live on them. Life flows from food, and so the giver of food is the giver of life. No one is a mendicant for having given up his goods or for living on alms; the true mendicant is the man who gives up the possessions and pleasures of the world with a sincere mind. Unattached at heart while seeming attached, standing apart from the world with every bond broken, looking on friend and enemy alike: that man is free. Men shave their heads and put on the brown robe and wander, still bound by many ties, still watching for worthless wealth. Those who cast off the three Vedas, their work and their children, and take up the triple staff and the brown robe, have little understanding. Know that the brown robe, put on without first putting off anger and the other faults, is put on for the sake of a living. So keep your passions in check, and win the worlds of bliss by supporting those who are truly pious among the men of matted hair and shaven heads, the naked, the ragged, the wearers of skins and of brown cloth. Who is more virtuous than the man who keeps his sacred fire, who sacrifices with animals and with gifts, and who gives day and night?’ King Janaka is counted a man who knew the truth,” Arjuna said, “and even he was confused about his duty. Do not be confused. By harming no one, by casting off desire and anger, by protecting all creatures, by giving, by cherishing our elders, by satisfying gods and guests and all beings, by honoring the Brahmins and by speaking the truth, we will reach whatever worlds we wish.”

A sub-tale: The queen catches her husband in a contradiction. If a kingdom and a handful of barley are equal to him, he had no reason to leave the kingdom; if the barley has become something he clings to, he has renounced nothing. Her test of a renouncer is inward: unattached at heart, friend and enemy alike to him, every bond broken. The shaved head and the brown robe, worn over anger and wanting, she calls a way of earning a living.

Yudhishthira takes the side of knowledge, and Devasthana answers

“I know both the Vedas and the scriptures that lead to Brahman,” Yudhishthira said. “The Vedas hold precepts of both kinds, those that teach action and those that teach the giving up of action. The scriptures are confusing, and their conclusions rest on reasons; and the truth that is in the mantras is known to me. You know weapons, Arjuna, and the ways of heroes. You cannot truly understand the sense of the scriptures. If you knew duty as it is, you would see that such words should not have been spoken to me even by a man with the clearest sight into the texts. And what you said, you said out of a brother’s love, and it was fitting, and I am pleased with you. No one in the three worlds is your equal in the duties of battle. Speak of those subtleties, which no one else can enter, and do not doubt my understanding. You know the science of war, and you have never waited on the old. Those who have studied this matter in brief and at length have reached a conclusion: of penance, renunciation and the knowledge of Brahman, the second is higher than the first and the third higher than the second. Your belief that nothing is higher than wealth is an error, and I will show you why. The righteous give themselves to penance and to the study of the Vedas. The rishis, who have many lasting worlds for their own, have the merit of penance. Men of quiet soul, without enemies, living in the woods, have gone to heaven through penance and study. By restraining desire and casting off the darkness born of folly, the pious go by the northern road to the regions kept for those who renounce. The southern road, which leads to regions of light, is kept for men of action, who remain subject to birth and death. The end that seekers of release keep before their eyes cannot be described. Yoga is the best way to it, and it is hard to explain. The learned turn the scriptures over and are led this way and that; having mastered the Vedas and the forest books they miss the real, like men who look for solid timber in an uprooted banana plant. The soul cannot be seen by the eye or told in words. It is exceedingly subtle, and it goes its round of births among the creatures of the earth, keeping before it the root of action. Turn it toward itself, the spring of every blessing, restrain every desire of the mind, cast off every kind of action, and a man becomes free and happy. When there is such a road, walked by the righteous and reached by knowledge, why do you praise wealth, which is full of every calamity? There are clever fools, skilled in argument, who deny the soul and travel the earth making speeches in assemblies against the true teaching on release, and it is very hard to bring them to accept it. Men who know the truth reach Brahman by penance and understanding, and great happiness by renunciation.”

When he stopped, the great ascetic Devasthana, an eloquent man, spoke to the king with reasons of his own. “Arjuna has told you there is nothing higher than wealth. I will speak to that; listen closely. You have won the earth righteously, Ajatashatru, king without an enemy, and having won her you should not abandon her without cause. The Vedas point out four ways of life. Pass through them one after another. For the present you should perform great sacrifices with rich gifts. Even among the rishis some are engaged in the sacrifice that is study and some in the sacrifice that is knowledge, so you must understand that the ascetics too are given to action. The Vaikhanasas are said to teach that the man who does not seek wealth is higher than the man who does. I think anyone who followed that teaching would fall into many faults. Men gather goods for sacrifice only because the ordinance tells them to. The man who, misled by his own judgment, gives wealth to the undeserving and withholds it from the deserving does not know that he takes on the sin of killing an unborn child, and to tell the deserving from the undeserving is no easy thing. The Creator made wealth for sacrifice, and he made man to guard that wealth and to perform the sacrifice. So the whole of one’s wealth should go to sacrifice, and pleasure will follow of itself. Indra surpassed all the gods by performing many sacrifices with rich gifts, and having won their chiefship he shines in heaven. Mahadeva, clad in deerskins, poured his own self as the offering in the sacrifice called Sarva and became the first of the gods. King Marutta, the son of Avikshit, overcame Indra himself by the abundance of his wealth; at his great sacrifice every vessel was of gold, and Shri came in person. And you have heard how King Harishchandra earned great merit and great happiness by his sacrifices; he was a man, and by his wealth he overcame Indra. Everything, then, should go to sacrifice.”

“There is an old history told in this connection,” Devasthana went on, “the discourse Brihaspati gave when Indra asked him. ‘Contentment is the highest heaven,’ Brihaspati said. ‘Contentment is the highest bliss. Nothing is higher. When a man draws in all his desires as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the natural radiance of his soul soon shows itself. When he fears no creature and no creature fears him, when he has conquered desire and aversion, he is said to see his own soul. When in word and thought he seeks to injure no one and wants nothing, he is said to reach Brahman.’ Whatever religion creatures follow, they gather its fruit. Wake to that. Some praise peace and some praise exertion; some praise contemplation; some praise both peace and exertion. Some praise sacrifice and others renunciation, some giving and others receiving. Some give up everything and live in silent meditation. Some praise sovereignty and the care of subjects, after the killing and cutting and piercing of enemies; some would pass their days in retirement. The learned, looking at all this, conclude that the religion of injuring no creature is the one the righteous approve. Harmlessness, truthful speech, justice, compassion, self-restraint, children by one’s own wives, gentleness, modesty, patience: the practice of these is the highest religion, as the self-born Manu said. Keep it with care. The Kshatriya who knows the truths of a king’s duty and takes the sovereignty on himself, who restrains his soul at all times, who looks alike on what he likes and what he dislikes and lives on the remains of the sacrificial feast, who holds down the wicked and cherishes the good, who makes his subjects walk the road of virtue and walks it himself, who at last hands his crown to his son and goes to the forest to live on what grows wild and follow the Vedas without sloth: that Kshatriya is sure of excellent fruit in this world and the next. The final release you speak of is very hard to win, and its pursuit is beset with obstacles. The Rudras, the Vasus and the Adityas, the Sadhyas and hosts of kings keep this religion, and by it they reach heaven.”

A key to reading this: The four ways of life Devasthana tells the king to pass through in order are those of the student, the householder, the hermit in the forest and the wandering mendicant, as Arjuna listed them when he spoke of the rod. The sin of killing an unborn child is the weight Devasthana gives to wealth handed to the undeserving and withheld from the deserving.

The gist: Yudhishthira holds that knowledge of Brahman stands above renunciation and renunciation above penance, and that wealth is a road full of calamity. Devasthana answers with an order of doing things: rule and sacrifice now, pass through the four ways of life one after another, and at the end hand the crown to a son and go to the forest. Between the two he sets Brihaspati’s teaching on contentment, the tortoise drawing in its limbs.

Vyasa’s teaching, and the rod-tale of Shankha and Likhita

Arjuna tried once more. “You know every duty,” he told his brother. “You have won by the Kshatriya law a sovereignty that is hard to win, and beaten every enemy. Why do you burn? For Kshatriyas death in battle is held to be worth more than many sacrifices; so the ordinance says. Penance and renunciation are the duties of Brahmins. The duties of Kshatriyas are fierce and bound up with weapons, and it is laid down that when their time comes they should die by weapons on the field. The heart of a Kshatriya is hard as thunder. Indra himself was a Brahmin, and he became a Kshatriya in his acts and fought his sinful kinsmen eight hundred and ten times; for those acts he is honored and holds the chiefship of the gods. Sacrifice as Indra did, with rich gifts, and be free of this fever. Those who were killed have reached the highest end, made pure by weapons. What happened was ordained to happen, and destiny cannot be resisted.” Yudhishthira did not answer him. Then Vyasa, the island-born, spoke. “What Arjuna says is true, gentle Yudhishthira. The highest religion the scriptures declare rests on the duties of the household. A life in the woods, with those duties cast off, has not been laid down for you. Gods, ancestors, guests and servants all depend on the householder for their living; birds and beasts and many other creatures are kept by him. His is the hardest of the four ways of life, hard for anyone whose senses are unrestrained, and you must practice it. You know the Vedas and you have earned great merit by penance. Carry the burden of your ancestral kingdom as an ox carries its load. Penance, sacrifice, forgiveness, learning, begging, restraint of the senses, contemplation, solitude, contentment and the knowledge of Brahman are what Brahmins should strive for. The duties of Kshatriyas you know: sacrifice, learning, exertion, ambition, wielding the rod of punishment, fierceness, the protection of subjects, knowledge of the Vedas, penance, good conduct, the gathering of wealth, and gifts to the deserving. Of all these, wielding the rod is called the first. Strength must always live in a Kshatriya, and on strength the rod depends. Brihaspati sang a verse about it: ‘As a snake swallows a mouse, the earth swallows the king who is inclined to peace and the Brahmin who is too fond of his home.’ And it is told that the royal sage Sudyumna, by wielding the rod and nothing else, reached the highest success, like Daksha himself, the son of Prachetas.”

“Holy one,” Yudhishthira said, “by what acts did Sudyumna reach that success? I want to hear his story.” Vyasa told it. “There were two brothers, Shankha and Likhita, men strict in their vows. Each had his own dwelling on the bank of the river Bahuda, and both places were lovely, set among trees that were always heavy with flowers and fruit. One day Likhita came to his brother’s hermitage. Shankha had gone out, on no particular errand. Likhita picked a quantity of ripe fruit and began to eat it without a qualm, and he was still eating when Shankha came home. ‘Where did this fruit come from,’ Shankha asked, ‘and why are you eating it?’ Likhita went up to his elder brother, greeted him, and said with a smile, ‘I took it from right here.’ Shankha was filled with rage. ‘You have committed theft by taking this fruit yourself. Go to the king and confess what you have done. Say to him: King, I have taken what was not given to me. Know me for a thief, keep the duty of your order, and give me a thief’s punishment at once.’

“Likhita went, as his brother commanded, to King Sudyumna. The king heard from his gatekeepers who had come, and walked out with his counselors to receive him. ‘Tell me why you have come, revered one,’ he said. ‘Consider it already done.’ The sage answered, ‘Promise first that you will do it, and having heard me, keep the promise. I ate fruit that my elder brother had not given me. Punish me for it without delay.’ Sudyumna said, ‘If a king is held competent to wield the rod, he must be held equally competent to pardon. Your act is cleansed. Consider yourself forgiven, and tell me what else you wish; I will certainly do it.’ Likhita asked no other favor. So the king had both his hands cut off, and Likhita bore the punishment and went away. He came back to Shankha full of affection and said, ‘I have been punished as I deserved. Forgive this wretch now.’ Shankha said, ‘I am not angry with you, and you did me no injury. Your virtue had taken a blow, and I have rescued you from that. Go at once to the Bahuda and offer water to the gods, the rishis and the ancestors, and never again set your heart on sin.’ Likhita bathed in the sacred stream and began the water-rite, and at the ends of his stumps two hands appeared, like two lotuses. He came back in wonder and showed them to his brother. ‘I did this by my penances,’ Shankha said. ‘Do not be surprised. Providence was the instrument.’ Likhita asked him, ‘If your penances had such power, why did you not purify me at the start?’ Shankha told him, ‘I could not have acted otherwise. I am not the one set to punish you. The ruler who punished you has been purified himself, and you with him, and the ancestors too.’ That king became great by this act and reached the highest success, like the lord Daksha. To rule his subjects is the duty of a Kshatriya, and any other road is the wrong one for him. Do not give way to grief. Listen to your brother, who speaks for your good. The duty of kings is to wield the rod. Shaving the head is no part of it.”

A sub-tale: An elder brother sends the younger to the king for a thief’s punishment, and the king, who would have pardoned him, cuts off his hands because the sage will accept nothing less. Shankha explains afterward that he holds no anger: his brother’s virtue had been damaged, and only the ruler was entitled to punish. The punishment, he says, purified the king, the offender and the ancestors together, and when Likhita poured the water his hands came back like two lotuses.

Vyasa’s statecraft, and the story of Hayagriva

Vyasa spoke again to Kunti’s son. “Let these brothers of yours, great chariot-fighters all, have the wishes they cherished while they lived in the woods. Rule the earth as Yayati, the son of Nahusha, ruled it. Your misery in the forest is over; enjoy happiness for a time. When you have earned and enjoyed merit, wealth and pleasure with your brothers, then you may go to the woods. First be free of the debt you owe to those who ask of you, to the ancestors, and to the gods. Perform the Sarvamedha and the horse sacrifice, and set your brothers too at great sacrifices rich in gifts, and your fame will be great. There is a saying; act on it and you will not swerve from virtue. Only men whose ways are the ways of robbers counsel a king toward a career of war and victory. A king who weighs place and time, whose judgment rests on the scriptures, may pardon even a band of robbers and take on no sin. A king who collects his sixth in tribute and does not protect his kingdom takes on a fourth part of its sins. The king whose understanding rests on the scriptures, who sets aside lust and anger and treats all his subjects evenly, as a father would, never sins. If, struck by destiny, he fails in something he ought to do, that failure is no trespass. By force and by policy he must put down his enemies. He must allow no sin in his kingdom, and he must see that virtue is practiced. Brave men, men respectable in their ways and virtuous in their acts, the learned, Brahmins who know the Vedic texts and rites, and men of wealth should have his special protection. In deciding suits and carrying out religious works, only men of great learning should be employed. A prudent king never rests his whole confidence on one person, however accomplished. The king who does not protect his subjects, whose passions are ungoverned, who is full of vanity, pride and malice, sins and earns the name of tyrant. If his subjects waste away for want of protection, struck down by the gods and ground down by robbers, the sin of all of it stains the king. There is no sin in an act done wholeheartedly, after full thought and counsel with those able to give it. Our tasks fail or succeed through destiny; let the king only exert himself, and sin will not touch him.

“I will tell you what became of an ancient king named Hayagriva, a hero whose deeds were without stain. He killed a great number of his enemies in battle, and at the last, with no follower beside him, he was defeated and killed. He had done everything that keeps enemies in check and used every good means by which men are protected, and he won great fame from the battles he fought. Robbers hacked him with their weapons; he fought them boldly, gave up his life in the fight, and now enjoys great bliss in heaven. His bow was the sacrificial stake and his bowstring the cord that binds the victim. His arrows were the small ladle and his sword the large one, and blood was the clarified butter he poured. His chariot was the altar, the wrath he felt in battle was the fire, and the four fine horses yoked to that chariot were the four Hotri priests. He poured his enemies onto that fire as the offerings, and at the close of the rite his own life-breaths, and so King Hayagriva was freed of sin and takes his pleasure in the worlds of the gods. He had guarded his kingdom with policy and intelligence. He had studied the Vedas and the other scriptures, held the four orders to their duties, performed sacrifices and drunk the Soma, satisfied the Brahmins with gifts, and ruled the earth with vigor and without pride, the rod justly in his hand. He was learned, he practiced renunciation, he acted from faith, and he was grateful. The learned and the honest praise such a life. He won heaven and the worlds kept for heroes.”

A key to reading this: The sixth is the share of tribute a king collects, and Vyasa’s rule is that a king who takes it without protecting his kingdom takes a fourth of the kingdom’s sins as well. In the figure of Hayagriva’s last battle every part of a sacrifice has its counterpart: the stake, the binding cord, the two ladles, the butter, the altar, the fire, and the four Hotri priests, whose place is taken by the four horses of his chariot.

The teaching of Time: the story of Senajit

Yudhishthira heard the island-born sage, and saw that Arjuna was angry. He bowed to Vyasa. “This sovereignty and all its pleasures give my heart no joy. Grief is eating its core. I hear the wailing of these women who have lost their husbands and their children, and I find no peace.” Vyasa, master of yoga and of the Vedas, answered him. “No man gains anything by his own acts, or by sacrifice and worship, and no man can give anything to another. Man gains everything through Time. The Creator made the course of Time the means of getting. When Time is against him a man gets nothing by intelligence or study, and sometimes an ignorant fool wins wealth. In bad times neither science nor spells nor drugs bear fruit; in good times the same things, rightly used, succeed. By Time the winds blow hard. By Time the clouds fill with rain, the ponds are covered with lotuses, the trees of the forest come into flower. By Time the nights are dark or moonlit, and the moon grows full. Until their Time comes, trees bear no flowers or fruit, rivers do not run fierce, and birds, snakes, deer, elephants and the other animals do not come into their season. Until its Time comes, no woman conceives. With Time come winter, summer and the rains. Until his Time comes no one is born and no one dies, the infant does not speak, the boy does not come to youth, and the sown seed puts out no sprout. Until the Time comes the sun does not rise above the horizon or go down to the western hills, the moon does not wax or wane, and the sea with its high waves neither rises nor ebbs.

“There is an old story about this, told by King Senajit in his grief. The course of Time, which nothing resists, touches every mortal, he said. All earthly things ripen in Time and are destroyed. Some men kill others, and the killers are killed in turn; that is how the world talks. In truth no one kills and no one is killed. One man thinks men kill; another thinks they do not. The birth and the destruction of every creature are ordained by its own nature. When his wealth is lost, or his wife or son or father dies, a man cries out, ‘What sorrow!’ and by dwelling on it makes it grow. Why do you grieve like a fool? Why grieve for those who are themselves subject to grief? Grief grows by being indulged, as fear grows by being yielded to. This body itself is not mine. Nothing on this earth is mine, or else it belongs as much to others as to me. Seeing this, the wise are not deluded. There are thousands of causes for sorrow and hundreds for joy, and every day they work on the ignorant and never on the wise. There is only sorrow in this world, and no happiness; sorrow springs from the affliction called desire, and happiness from the affliction called sorrow. Sorrow follows happiness and happiness follows sorrow, and no one has either without end. Happiness always ends in sorrow, and sometimes it comes out of sorrow itself. The man who wants lasting happiness must abandon both. Whatever is the root of his sorrow or his worry he should cast off, as he would a limb bitten by a snake. Pleasant or unpleasant, whatever comes should be borne with an unshaken heart. Hold back even a little from what pleases your wife and children, and you will learn who belongs to whom, and why. The very stupid and the masters of their souls are happy here; those in between suffer. This is what Senajit said, a man of great wisdom who knew what is good and bad in this world, and duty, and happiness and misery. The man who grieves at other people’s griefs can never be happy, for there is no end of grief. Prosperity and adversity, gain and loss, death and life wait on every creature in turn, and so the wise man of quiet soul is neither lifted by joy nor sunk by sorrow.

“To be engaged in battle is called a king’s sacrifice. A due observance of the science of punishment is his yoga. The gift of wealth in sacrifice, the dakshina, is his renunciation. All three should be counted among the acts that make him pure. By governing the kingdom with intelligence and policy, casting off pride, performing sacrifices, and looking on everything and everyone with kindness and an even eye, a king takes his pleasure after death in the world of the gods. By winning battles, protecting his kingdom, drinking the Soma, advancing his subjects, wielding the rod with judgment, and casting off his body at last in a fight, a king is happy in heaven. By studying the Vedas and the other scriptures, guarding the realm well, and holding the four orders to their duties, he is made pure. And that king stands highest whose conduct is praised, even after his death, by the people of his city and his country, by his counselors and by his friends.”

A key to reading this: Time, in Vyasa’s teaching, is the means the Creator made for every gain: wind, rain, birth, death, the rising of the sun and the turn of the tide wait on it, and so do the fortunes of men. The three words he gives the king at the end are terms of the religious life turned to the work of ruling: battle is the king’s sacrifice, the science of punishment his yoga, and the dakshina he gives his renunciation.

The gist: Yudhishthira cannot rest for the wailing of the women, and Vyasa answers with Time. Nothing is won or lost by a man’s own act; everything comes in its season, and Senajit’s old words follow from that: no one kills and no one is killed, and grief grows by being fed. Vyasa then turns the teaching back toward the throne. He asks the king to rule, and he names battle, the rod and the giving of gifts as a king’s sacrifice, yoga and renunciation.

The faults of wealth, and Yudhishthira’s vow to fast to death

Yudhishthira turned again to Arjuna, and this time he argued. “You think nothing is higher than wealth, and that a poor man can have neither heaven nor happiness nor his wishes. It is not so. Many are seen who won success through the sacrifice that is Vedic study. Many sages won lasting worlds of bliss by penance. Those who keep the practices of the rishis, living in continence and learning every duty, are the ones the gods regard as Brahmins. Count as truly virtuous the rishis given to the study of the Vedas and those given to the pursuit of true knowledge; all our acts depend on the men of knowledge. That, we know, is the opinion of the Vaikhanasas. The Ajas, the Prishnis, the Sikatas, the Arunas and the Kitavas all went to heaven by the merit of Vedic study. By the acts the Vedas point to, by battle, by study, by sacrifice, by the hard restraint of passion, a man goes to heaven on the sun’s southern path, and I told you before that those worlds belong to men of Vedic action. The northern path is traveled by those given to the penances of yoga; the bright, lasting worlds it leads to belong to them, and of the two it is the northern path that those who know the Puranas praise. Understand that heaven is won through contentment. From contentment comes great happiness, and nothing is higher. There is the old discourse of Yayati, by which a man may learn to draw in all his desires as a tortoise draws in its limbs. When he fears nothing and nothing fears him, when he wants nothing and hates nothing, he is said to have reached the state of Brahman. Now hear me closely. Some desire virtue, some good conduct, some wealth. A man may want wealth as a means to virtue, and he would do better to give up the wanting. Many faults cling to wealth, and so to the rites performed with it; we have seen it with our own eyes. The man who wants wealth finds it very hard to give up what ought by every means to be given up. Good deeds are rare in those who pile up riches. It is said that wealth is never won without injury to others, and that once won it brings troubles in crowds. A narrow-hearted man, tempted by even a little of it, sets the fear of repentance aside and does violence to others, blind to the sin of Brahmin-killing he takes on. He burns when he must give a share to his servants, as though robbers had taken it; and if he gives nothing, he is reviled. The man without wealth is never blamed. Free of every attachment, living on what little alms he gets, he can be happy in every way. Those who know the old scriptures recite verses on this: the Creator made wealth for the sake of sacrifice, and made man to guard it and to perform the rites, and so all wealth should go to sacrifice and none to the gratification of desire. For that reason the wise hold that wealth belongs to no one on earth. Give it, with a trusting heart. And even then two faults attach to it: the gift made to the undeserving, and the gift withheld from the deserving. Those who give to men fallen from the duties of their order live for a hundred years afterward on filth. So hard is even the virtue of giving.”

Then the grief rose to its full height. “Abhimanyu, a boy, is fallen. The sons of Draupadi are fallen, and Dhrishtadyumna, and Virata, and King Drupada, and Vasushena, who knew every duty, and the royal Dhrishtaketu, and kings from many lands, and grief will not let go of me, a wretch who killed his kin. I am greedy for a kingdom past all measure, and I have destroyed my own race. I used to roll in play on his chest and his limbs, and I have had Ganga’s son killed for the lust of rule. I saw our grandfather, that lion of a man, with Shikhandi coming at him, shaking and reeling under Arjuna’s arrows, which struck like thunderbolts. I saw his tall body stuck all over with blazing shafts and himself grown weak as an old lion, and my heart hurt. I saw him sway like a mountain peak and fall, his strength gone, on the floor of his own chariot with his face to the east, and my senses left me. He had fought Rama of Bhrigu’s line himself, bow in hand, for many days on the field that Kuru made holy. At Varanasi, for the sake of brides, he had challenged all the Kshatriyas of the world from a single chariot. He had burned the unconquerable king Ugrayudha with his weapons. And he knew that Shikhandi, the prince of Panchala, was to be his death, and still he would not strike him. Such a man Arjuna killed. When I saw the grandfather stretched on the earth and covered in blood, a fever seized my heart. He guarded us and reared us when we were children, and I had him killed, I, a sinner greedy for a kingdom that will last a few days. And our teacher, the great archer Drona, whom every king revered: I went up to him and lied to him about his son. The memory burns every limb I have. He said to me, ‘Tell me truly, king, whether my son still lives.’ Of everyone there he asked me, expecting the truth. I spoke the word ‘elephant’ under my breath and deceived him. I threw off the garment of truth and told my teacher, in battle, that Ashvatthama was dead, when it was an elephant of that name that had been killed. To what worlds will I go after that? I had my eldest brother Karna killed, that terrible fighter who never left a field. Who is more sinful than I am? Out of greed I sent Abhimanyu, a child, a lion’s cub from the hills, into the array that Drona himself was guarding. I am like a man guilty of killing an infant, and since that day I have not been able to look Arjuna or lotus-eyed Krishna in the face. I grieve for Draupadi, who has lost her five sons as the earth might lose her five mountains.

“I am a great offender, a great sinner, a destroyer of the earth. I will not rise from this seat. I will waste my body and die. Know me, the killer of my teacher, as one who has sat down here in the vow of Praya. I have ended my own race, and I must do this so that I am not born again among any other order of beings. I will give up all food and drink and, without moving from this place, dry up the life-breaths that are so dear. I ask you humbly, great ascetic, give me leave and go wherever you please. Let everyone give me leave. I will cast off this body.” Vyasa stopped him, and his first words were, “This cannot be.” Then he said, “You should not give way to such grief, king. I will say again what I have said once. All this is destiny. Every creature that is born shows first a coming together, and dissolution overtakes it at the last. Like bubbles on water they rise and are gone. Whatever is heaped up crumbles, and whatever rises falls. Union ends in parting and life ends in death. Idleness is pleasant for a while and ends in misery; skilled labor is painful for a while and ends in happiness. Wealth, prosperity, modesty, contentment and fame live in labor and skill, and none of them in idleness. Friends have no power to give happiness, nor enemies to give misery. Wisdom does not bring wealth, and wealth does not bring happiness. The Maker created you for work, son of Kunti. Success comes from work. You have no right to avoid it.”

A key to reading this: The vow Yudhishthira declares is Praya: to sit in one place without food or drink until the life-breaths dry up. The lie he confesses is the one he told Drona in battle. An elephant named Ashvatthama had been killed; he told his teacher that Ashvatthama was dead and spoke the word “elephant” under his breath.

The tale of Asma: destiny taught to Janaka

Vyasa set about lifting the grief of a man who had resolved to end himself. “There is an old story told here, known as the discourse of Asma. Janaka, the ruler of the Videhas, was once filled with sorrow, and he brought his doubts to a wise Brahmin named Asma. ‘How should a man who wants his own good conduct himself,’ Janaka asked, ‘when kinsmen and wealth come to him, and when they are destroyed?’ Asma said, ‘Joys and griefs fasten on a man’s body the moment it is formed. Either may come, and whichever comes robs him of his reason at once, as the wind scatters gathering clouds. In good times he thinks, I am of high birth, I can do whatever I like, I am no ordinary man, and his mind is soaked in that threefold vanity. Given over to every pleasure, he begins to waste the wealth his ancestors laid up. In time he is poor, and then he comes to think that taking what belongs to others is a fine thing. And the king punishes that breaker of law, that robber of other men’s goods, as a hunter puts his arrows into a deer. Such men seldom live past twenty or thirty years of the hundred that are a man’s span. A king should watch how all creatures behave and use his intelligence to find remedies for the great sorrows of his subjects. Every sorrow of the mind has one of two causes: delusion, or the coming of distress. There is no third.

“‘Old age and death, like a pair of wolves, devour all creatures, the strong and the weak, the short and the tall. No man escapes them, even the one who has conquered the whole sea-girt earth. Whether it is happiness or sorrow that comes, it should be enjoyed or borne without elation and without dejection. There is no way around either. The evils of life overtake a man in youth, in his middle years, or in age; they can never be avoided, while the good things he covets never come. The absence of what he likes, the presence of what he dislikes, good and evil, bliss and woe, all follow destiny. The birth of creatures and their death, their gains and their losses, are fixed beforehand. As scent, color, taste and touch arise by nature, so happiness and misery arise from what was ordained. Seats and beds and carriages, prosperity, food and drink come to creatures and leave them as Time’s course runs. Physicians fall ill. The strong grow weak. The prosperous lose everything. High birth, health, beauty, prosperity and the things men enjoy are all won through destiny. The poor, who do not want them, have many children, and the rich are seen to have none. Disease, fire, water, weapons, hunger, poison, fever, death, falls from high places: each overtakes a man according to the destiny he was born under. We see one man suffer many ills who has not sinned, and another who has sinned carry no weight of trouble. We see a rich man die young and a poor man drag on, bent with age, for a hundred years. The low-born may live very long, and the son of a noble line die as quickly as an insect. The rich have no appetite, and the poor can digest chips of wood. Hunting, dice, women, wine and brawls are condemned by the wise, and many men deeply read in the scriptures are given to them all the same. Air and space, fire, moon and sun, day and night, the lights of the sky, the rivers and the mountains: who makes them, and who holds them up? Cold and heat and rain come round by Time’s course, and so do the happiness and the misery of men. Neither medicines nor spells can save a man whom old age has seized or death has overtaken.

“‘Two logs floating on the great ocean come together and are parted again. So creatures meet, and so, when the time comes, they are parted. Time treats alike the rich man among his women and his singers and the helpless man who eats what others give him. A thousand ties are formed in this world, mother and father, son and wife. Whose are they, in truth, and whose are we? No one can become anyone’s own. Our meeting with wives and kinsmen and friends is the meeting of travelers at a roadside inn. Where am I? Where shall I go? Who am I? How did I come here? For what, and for whom, do I grieve? A man who turns these questions over finds quiet. Life and all that surrounds it turns like a wheel, and the company of those we love does not last. No one understands that the world is sinking in the ocean of Time, which is very deep and full of those great crocodiles, old age and death. Many physicians are seen struck down with their whole families, for all their study of medicine; with their bitters and their oils they cannot get past death, as the ocean cannot get past its shores. Men skilled in compounds are broken by old age like trees broken by elephants. Men rich in penance, given to study, to charity and to sacrifice, do not escape either. No year, no month, no fortnight, no day, no night that has once passed ever returns. Man, whose life is so brief, is forced in Time’s course onto the broad road every creature must walk. One cannot keep company for long even with one’s own body; how then with anyone else? Where is your father today, king, and where your grandfather? You do not see them, and they do not see you. No one can see heaven or hell; the scriptures are the eyes of the good. Shape your conduct by them. A man should keep the vow of continence first, then beget children, then perform sacrifices, to pay the debt he owes to the ancestors, the gods and men. The king who is bent on virtue, who takes of the earth’s goods only the share the scriptures allow him, wins a name that spreads through all the worlds.’ The ruler of the Videhas, a man of clear understanding, heard these words full of reason and was freed from his grief. He took Asma’s leave and went home. And you, cast off your grief and rise. You are the equal of Indra. Let your soul be glad. You won the earth by the Kshatriya law. Enjoy her, and do not set my words aside.”

A key to reading this: The pair of wolves in Asma’s teaching are old age and death, which devour every creature, the conqueror of the sea-girt earth included. The debt he speaks of is owed to the ancestors, the gods and men, and it is paid in order: the vow of continence first, then children, then sacrifices.

Krishna’s consolation, and the story of Srinjaya

Yudhishthira still said nothing, and Arjuna turned to Krishna. “Dharma’s son is burning with grief for his dead kinsmen. Comfort him, Krishna. We have all fallen into danger again; drive this grief out of him.” Krishna turned his face to the king. Yudhishthira could never set Krishna aside; from their earliest years Krishna had been dearer to him than Arjuna himself. Krishna took up the king’s hand, a hand marked with sandal paste and like a column of marble, and began to speak, and those who listened were glad as he spoke. His face, with its fine teeth and eyes, was bright as a lotus fully opened at sunrise. “Do not give way to a grief that wastes your body. Those who were killed in this battle will not be got back by any means. The Kshatriyas who fell in that great fight are like the things a man gains in a dream, which vanish when he wakes. They were heroes, every one, and ornaments of battle. They went down rushing with their faces to the enemy. None of them was killed with a wound in the back, and none while running. They fought with heroes, gave up their lives, and went to heaven made pure by weapons. They kept the Kshatriya’s duty, they had courage, they knew the Vedas and their branches, and they have reached the end that heroes reach. You should not grieve for them, least of all when you have heard how the great rulers of old left this world.

“There is an old discourse told here, the one Narada gave Srinjaya when that king was sunk in grief for the death of his son. Narada said to him: ‘I, you, and all creatures, Srinjaya, are subject to happiness and misery, and all of us must die. What cause is there for sorrow? Listen while I tell you of the great good fortune of kings of old, and listen closely, for you will put your grief down as you hear it. The telling of their history is lovely to hear; it quiets evil stars and lengthens life.’ Then Narada named sixteen kings, one after another. And after each he said the same thing to the grieving father: that this king had surpassed Srinjaya in the four things that count, religious merit, knowledge, renunciation and wealth, that he was purer than Srinjaya’s son, and that death took him too. ‘Your son never performed a sacrifice and never made a gift,’ Narada told him. ‘Knowing this, quiet your mind.’”

• Marutta, the son of Avikshit. The gods came to his sacrifice, the one called Vishvasrij, with Indra, Varuna and Brihaspati at their head. He challenged Indra and defeated him in battle. Brihaspati, wishing Indra well, had refused to officiate for him, and Samvarta, Brihaspati’s younger brother, performed the rite. In his reign the earth gave crops without being tilled. At that sacrifice the Vishvedevas sat as courtiers, the Maruts served out the food and drank the Soma, and the Sadhyas were present, and the gifts he made surpassed any ever made by gods, Gandharvas or men.
• Suhotra, the son of Atithi. For one whole year Indra rained gold on his kingdom, and the earth, with him for her lord, became Vasumati in fact as well as in name. The rivers of his realm carried golden tortoises, crabs, alligators, sharks and porpoises, which Indra had showered into them, and Suhotra, seeing them in hundreds and thousands, was filled with wonder. He gathered up the gold that covered the land, performed a sacrifice at Kurujangala, and gave all of it to the Brahmins.
• Brihadratha, king of the Angas. He gave away a hundred thousand horses. In one sacrifice he gave a hundred thousand maidens adorned with gold, in another a hundred thousand elephants of the best breed, and as sacrificial gifts a hundred million bulls in golden chains, with thousands of cows beside them. When he sacrificed by the hill called Vishnupada, Indra grew drunk on the Soma and the Brahmins on the gifts. No man has been born, or will be, who gave what the king of the Angas gave in his seven Soma sacrifices.
• Shibi, the son of Ushinara. He held the whole earth as a man holds the leather shield in his hand. Riding a single chariot that won every battle, he made the earth ring with the rattle of his wheels and subdued every monarch. In one sacrifice he gave away all the cattle and horses he had, the tame and the wild. The Creator himself judged that no king before or after could carry the burden Shibi carried, a hero with the prowess of Indra.
• Bharata, the son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, a king with a vast and well-filled treasury. He offered three hundred horses to the gods on the banks of the Yamuna, twenty on the Sarasvati and fourteen on the Ganga, and so performed, in that order, a thousand horse sacrifices and a hundred Rajasuyas. No king can match his deeds, as no man can rise into the sky by the strength of his arms. He raised altars without number and gave the sage Kanva countless horses and untold wealth.
• Rama, the son of Dasharatha. He cherished his subjects as his own children. In his realm there were no widows and no one helpless. The clouds rained in season, the crops were abundant, no one died by water or by fire, and no one feared disease. Every man lived a thousand years and had a thousand children; even the women did not quarrel. The trees bore flowers and fruit without fail, and every cow filled a drona measure to the brim. After fourteen years of hard penance in the forest he performed ten horse sacrifices of great splendor, open to all. Young, dark, red-eyed, with arms that reached his knees and a lion’s shoulders, he sat on the throne of Ayodhya for ten thousand years and ten hundred more.
• Bhagiratha, of the race of Ikshvaku. At one of his sacrifices Indra, drunk on the Soma, overcame many thousands of Asuras by the strength of his arms. At another the king gave away a million maidens adorned with gold, each seated on a chariot drawn by four horses; with each chariot went a hundred elephants in golden chains, behind each elephant a thousand horses, behind each horse a thousand cows, and behind each cow a thousand goats and sheep. The river goddess Ganga, already named Bhagirathi, sat on the lap of this king who lived beside her stream, and from that she came to be called Urvashi; she of the three courses had agreed to be his daughter.
• Dilipa, whose deeds the Brahmins love to recite. At one great sacrifice he gave the whole earth, with all her wealth, to the Brahmins, and gave it gladly. At every sacrifice of his the chief priest received a thousand elephants made of gold. His sacrificial stake was of gold, ringed and shining, and six thousand gods and Gandharvas danced on it for joy while Vishvavasu played the seven notes on his vina in their midst, so that every creature thought the great Gandharva was playing for him alone. His elephants, in housings of gold, lay down in the roads. Three sounds never ceased in his house: the chanting of the Vedas, the twang of bows, and the cry of “Let it be given.”
• Mandhata, the son of Yuvanashva, who conquered the three worlds. His father drank, by mistake, the mantra-hallowed butter meant for his queen, and the child was born in the king’s own belly; the Maruts drew him out through his father’s side. The gods saw the beautiful infant lying on his father’s lap and asked one another who would nurse him. Indra said, “He shall be nursed by me,” and from those words came the name Mandhata. Indra put a finger in the child’s mouth and it gave milk; in twelve days the boy looked twelve years old, and in a hundred he was a grown youth. The whole earth came under his rule in a single day. He defeated King Angada, Marutta, Asita, Gaya and Brihadratha of the Angas, and when he fought Angada the gods thought the sky was splitting at the twang of his bow. All the earth from where the sun rises to where it sets is called the field of Mandhata. He performed horse sacrifices and a hundred Rajasuyas, and gave the Brahmins rohita fish ten yojanas long and one broad.
• Yayati, the son of Nahusha. Having subdued the whole world with its seas, he traveled across it and marked it with sacrificial altars, one after another, the distance between them measured by the throw of a heavy piece of wood, until he came to the shore of the sea. He performed a thousand sacrifices and a hundred Vajapeyas and gave the Brahmins three mountains of gold. He killed many Daityas and Danavas in battle and divided the earth among his children. At the last he set aside his other sons, Yadu and Druhyu at their head, placed Puru on the throne, and went into the forest with his wife.
• Ambarisha, the son of Nabhaga, whom his subjects looked on as virtue in a body. At one of his sacrifices he assigned a million kings, each of whom had himself performed thousands of sacrifices, to wait on the Brahmins. The pious said that such a thing had never been done before and never would be again. Those kings, by Ambarisha’s merit, gained the fruit of the horse sacrifice and followed their lord by the southern path.
• Shashabindu, the son of Chitrasena. He had a hundred thousand wives and a million sons, all of them in golden armor and all fine bowmen. Each prince married a hundred princesses; each princess brought a hundred elephants; with each elephant came a hundred chariots, with each chariot a hundred horses in trappings of gold, with each horse a hundred cows, and with each cow a hundred sheep and goats. All of that wealth beyond counting Shashabindu gave to the Brahmins at a horse sacrifice.
• Gaya, the son of Amurtarayas. For a hundred years he lived on what was left of the sacrificial food. Agni, pleased, offered him boons, and he asked that his wealth be inexhaustible however much he gave, that his regard for virtue last forever, and that his heart always delight in truth; and he received them. For a thousand years he performed the horse sacrifice at every new moon, every full moon and every fourth month, and rising from each he gave a hundred thousand cows and hundreds of mules. At his great horse sacrifice he had a ground of gold made, a hundred cubits long and fifty wide, and gave it as the fee. He gave away as many cows as there are grains of sand in the Ganga.
• Rantideva, the son of Sankriti. By the hardest penance he won from Indra the boons he asked: abundant food, many guests, a faith that would never lessen, and never to have to ask anything of anyone. The animals of field and forest came to his sacrifices of their own accord, and from the fluid that ran off their hides rose the great river still called Charmanvati. When he offered a Brahmin a hundred nishkas the gift was refused with a murmur, and when he said a thousand it was taken. Every vessel in his palace was of gold. On the nights when guests stayed with him, twenty thousand one hundred cows were slaughtered, and even so the cooks, with rings in their ears, would call out, “There is plenty of soup, take as much as you like; of meat we have not as much today as on other days.”
• Sagara, of the race of Ikshvaku, whose rule covered the whole earth. Sixty thousand sons walked behind him like the stars that attend the moon in a cloudless autumn sky. He satisfied the gods with a thousand horse sacrifices and gave deserving Brahmins palaces with golden columns, furnished with rich beds and lotus-eyed women, which the Brahmins divided among themselves at his command. In his anger he had the earth dug up, and the ocean came to lie on her breast; and so the ocean is called Sagara, after him.
• Prithu, the son of Vena. The great rishis gathered in the great forest and installed him as sovereign of the earth. He was called Prithu because it was thought he would advance all mankind, a Kshatriya because he protected people from injury, and a Raja because every creature, on seeing him, said it had become attached to him. In his reign the earth gave crops untilled, every leaf held honey, and every cow gave a jugful of milk. Men were healthy and afraid of nothing, and lived in the fields or in houses as they chose. When he wished to cross the sea the waters grew solid, and the rivers lay calm for him. At one great horse sacrifice he gave the Brahmins twenty-one mountains of gold, each three nalwas in measure.

“‘What are you thinking of, Srinjaya, sitting silent?’ Narada said at the end. ‘It seems you do not hear me. If you have not heard, then all this talk of mine has been wasted, like medicine or food given to a man on the point of death.’ Srinjaya answered, ‘I am listening, Narada. Your discourse on the royal sages of great deeds and great fame is fragrant as a garland of flowers, and it has the power to drive grief away. It was not wasted. The very sight of you freed me from grief. As a man is never sated with drinking nectar, I am not sated with your words. And if you, who see truly, are inclined to show grace to a man burning for the death of his son, then by that grace my son will surely live again and be with me once more.’ Narada said, ‘I will give you back your son, Suvarnashthivin, the child Parvata gave you, whose life is gone. He shall be bright as gold, and he shall have a thousand years.’”

A sub-tale: Narada’s roll of sixteen kings runs from Marutta to Prithu. Each is remembered for sacrifices and gifts on a scale no one could match, and several for conquest as well: Marutta defeated Indra, Shibi subdued every monarch from a single chariot, and the whole earth came under Mandhata in a day. After each name comes the same refrain, that this king surpassed Srinjaya in merit, knowledge, renunciation and wealth, and died. Krishna repeats the roll to Yudhishthira for the reason Narada first spoke it.

The secret of Suvarnashthivin: the tale of Narada and Parvata

Yudhishthira had a question before he would let the story go. “How did Srinjaya’s son come to be Suvarnashthivin? Why did Parvata give him that child, and why did the child die? In those days every man lived a thousand years. Why did Srinjaya’s son die in infancy? Was he Suvarnashthivin in name only, or in fact, and how did it come about? I want to know all of it.” Krishna said, “I will tell you the facts as they happened. There are two rishis, first among the seers of the world, Narada and Parvata. Narada is the mother’s brother, and Parvata is his sister’s son. Once, long ago, the uncle and the nephew left heaven together in high spirits for a pleasant ramble on earth, wanting the taste of clarified butter and rice, and they wandered the world living on the food men eat. They were fond of each other, and in their gladness they made a compact. Whatever wish either of them might conceive, good or bad, he would tell the other; and whichever of them kept a wish back would lie under the other’s curse. With that agreed between them, those two great rishis came to King Srinjaya, the son of Sitya, and said, ‘For your good we will stay with you a few days. See to all our wants.’ The king said, ‘So be it,’ and made them his guests. After a time, in his gladness, he brought his daughter before them, a girl of the fairest complexion. ‘This daughter of mine will wait on you both,’ he said. ‘She is bright as the filaments of the lotus, lovely, faultless of limb, accomplished and sweet in her ways. Her name is Sukumari.’ The rishis said, ‘Very well.’ And the king told her, ‘Child, serve these two Brahmins as you would the gods or your own father.’ She said, ‘So be it,’ and did as she was told.

“Her dutiful service and her beauty, which had no equal, soon woke a tender flame in Narada. It grew in the saint’s heart as the moon grows, night by night, in the bright fortnight. He was overcome with shame, and he could not bring himself to tell his sister’s son of that burning attachment. Parvata understood everything, by his ascetic power and by the signs. He was inflamed with rage, and he resolved to curse the lovesick Narada. ‘Of your own accord you made a compact with me,’ he said, ‘that whatever wish either of us cherished, good or bad, would be told to the other. Those were your own words, and you have broken them. You did not tell me that the maiden Sukumari’s charms had pierced your heart. For that I will curse you. You are a man vowed to continence. You are my teacher, an ascetic and a Brahmin, and still you broke the compact you made with me. Listen. This Sukumari shall be your wife, there is no doubt of it. And from the hour of your marriage she and all men shall see you as an ape. Your true features will be gone, and an ape is what you will appear to everyone.’ Narada heard him, and the uncle’s wrath rose to meet the nephew’s. ‘You have ascetic merit and continence and truth and self-restraint,’ he said, ‘and you are devoted to virtue always, and for all that you shall not succeed in going to heaven.’ So they cursed each other, full of rage and the wish for vengeance, and blazed at each other like a pair of maddened elephants.

“From that day Parvata wandered the earth, honored everywhere, as his power deserved. And Narada received the hand of Srinjaya’s daughter, the faultless Sukumari, with every due rite. The princess saw him exactly as the curse had said. The last of the wedding mantras had only just been spoken when she looked at the celestial rishi and saw the face of an ape. She did not slight her lord for it. She gave him her love. She was chaste, and she devoted herself to him wholly, and never in her heart wished for any other husband among gods, sages or Yakshas. Then one day Parvata, in the course of his wandering, entered a lonely forest and found Narada there. He bowed to him and said, ‘Show me your grace. Give me leave to go to heaven.’ Narada saw him kneeling there with his hands joined, a man with no joy left in him, and Narada had even less. ‘You cursed me first,’ he said. ‘You said, be an ape. After that I cursed you, in anger, and said that from that day you should not live in heaven. It was not well done of you, for you are like a son to me.’ And the two saints freed each other from their curses. Sukumari saw her husband in his celestial form, blazing with beauty, and ran from him, taking him for some other man. Parvata called after her, ‘This is your own husband. Have no scruple. This is the rishi Narada, your lord, of one soul with you. Do not doubt it.’ He reassured her in many ways and told her of the curse that had lain on her husband, and the princess grew calm again. Then Parvata went to heaven, and Narada went home.” Krishna looked across the gathering. “The rishi Narada, who was himself a part of all this, is sitting here. Ask him, and he will tell you everything that happened.”

A key to reading this: The name Suvarnashthivin is the one Parvata gives the son he promises Srinjaya; Yudhishthira, asking for the story, calls him the child whose excreta were gold. The curse on Narada takes hold at the wedding itself, as the last of the marriage mantras is spoken.

The gist: Narada and Parvata, uncle and nephew, bind themselves to tell each other every wish. Narada falls in love with Srinjaya’s daughter Sukumari and is ashamed to say so; Parvata curses him to wear an ape’s face from the hour of his marriage, and Narada curses Parvata out of heaven. Sukumari loves her husband with the face the curse gave him. When the two sages release each other in a lonely forest she runs from the radiant stranger, and Parvata has to tell her who he is.

The end of Suvarnashthivin’s tale, and Narada’s own account

Yudhishthira turned to Narada. “Holy one, I want to hear of the birth of the child whose excreta were gold.” And Narada, sitting among the sages on the bank of the Ganga, took up the tale himself. “It is as Krishna has told you. You have asked, and I will tell the part that remains.

“My sister’s son, the great ascetic Parvata, and I came to Srinjaya, that conqueror among kings, to live with him for a while. He honored us with every rite and gave us whatever we wished for, and we made his house our home. The season of rains went by. The time came for us to leave, and Parvata spoke to me, and what he said was weighty and suited the hour. ‘We have lived in this king’s house for some time, Brahmin, and he has honored us highly. Think what return we should make him.’

“I looked at Parvata, whose face is a blessing to see, and said, ‘Nephew, this is for you to do. You have great power, and all of it rests with you. Let the king be made happy by your boons, and let him have his wishes. Or, if you prefer, let him gain his end through the ascetic merit of us both.’

“So Parvata sent for King Srinjaya and said to him, ‘We are very well pleased, king, with the care you have shown us, which came from a sincere heart. You have our leave: think what boon you would ask. Only let it be a boon that carries no enmity to the gods and no destruction to men. Take a boon, then, for we think you deserve one.’ Srinjaya answered, ‘If you are pleased with me, my object is gained already. That is itself my greatest gain, and I count it the fulfillment of everything I desire.’

“Parvata would not leave it there. ‘Ask, king, for the wish you have been carrying in your heart this long time.’ And Srinjaya said, ‘I want a son. Let him be a hero, with great fire in him, firm in his vows and long-lived, highly blessed, and equal in splendor to the chief of the gods himself.’

“Parvata said, ‘Your desire shall be fulfilled. Your child, however, will not live long, for the wish behind such a son is a wish to prevail over the chief of the gods. He will be known by the name Suvarnashthivin. He will have a splendor like Indra’s. Take care to protect him, always, from that god.’ Srinjaya began to plead with him to ordain it otherwise. ‘Let my son be long-lived, sage, through your ascetic merit.’ Parvata said nothing. He was partial to Indra.

“I saw how the king’s heart had sunk, and I spoke to him. ‘Think of me, king, when trouble comes, and I promise I will come when you think of me. Do not grieve. I will give your beloved child back to you, even if he is dead, in his living form.’ Having said that, the two of us left him and went where we wished, and Srinjaya went back to his palace.

“Some time passed, and a son was born to the royal sage Srinjaya, a boy of great prowess who blazed with energy. He grew like a great lotus in a lake, and he was Suvarnashthivin in fact as well as in name. So strange a thing was soon known all over the world. The chief of the gods came to know of it too, and knew it for the fruit of Parvata’s boon.

“Indra, the slayer of Vala and Vritra, feared the humiliation the child might bring him when he was grown, and he began to watch for the prince’s unguarded moments. He summoned his celestial weapon, Thunder, which stood before him in a bodily shape, and gave it a command. ‘Go, take the form of a tiger, and kill this prince. When he is grown, this son of Srinjaya may humble me by his achievements, as Parvata said.’ From that day Thunder, the breaker of enemy cities, kept a constant watch for the boy’s lapses.

“Srinjaya, meanwhile, was full of joy in a child whose splendor was like Indra’s own. He went with his wives and the other women of his household to live for a time in the middle of a forest. One day, on the shore of the Bhagirathi, the boy was running here and there at play with his nurse beside him. He was only five years old, and already he had the strength of a great elephant. A powerful tiger came on him suddenly. The little prince shook violently as the tiger crushed him, and soon he fell lifeless on the ground. The nurse screamed. And the tiger, having killed the prince, vanished on the spot through Indra’s power of illusion.

“The king heard the nurse crying and ran to the place in great alarm. He saw his son there, drained of blood, lying lifeless on the ground like the moon dropped out of the sky. He took the boy up on his lap, covered in blood as he was, and with his heart struck through he began to lament. The royal women came running to where the king was, weeping and wild with grief.

“In that state the king thought of me, and fixed his whole mind on it. I knew he was thinking of me, and I appeared before him. He was stricken, and I recited to him all those stories which the hero of Yadu’s race has just recited to you. Then, with Indra’s permission, I brought Srinjaya’s child back to life. What is ordained must happen. It cannot be otherwise.

“After that Prince Suvarnashthivin was the delight of his mother and father. When his father had gone to heaven he took the throne, and he ruled for one thousand and one hundred years. He worshiped the gods in many great sacrifices rich in gifts and satisfied the gods and the ancestors. He fathered many sons, whose children multiplied the race, and after many years he went the way of all nature. Put away the grief that has risen in your heart, as Krishna has counseled you, and Vyasa of the hard penances. Rise, king. Carry the burden of your ancestral kingdom, and perform great sacrifices, so that the worlds you desire may be yours.”

A key to reading this (sandhi): The compact between the uncle and the nephew had a single term: whatever wish either conceived, good or bad, he would tell the other, and the one who kept a wish back would fall under the other’s curse. Narada kept back his love for Sukumari, and Parvata, who read it by his ascetic power and by signs, held him to the terms. Parvata is also the one who grants Srinjaya the son, names him Suvarnashthivin, and warns that the boy must be guarded from Indra.

The gist: Narada tells the rest himself. Srinjaya asks the departing sages for a son equal in splendor to the king of the gods; Parvata grants him and warns that such a child will be short-lived. Indra sends his thunderbolt in the shape of a tiger, the five-year-old prince is killed on the bank of the Bhagirathi, and Narada, remembered by the father in his grief, brings the boy back with Indra’s permission. “What is ordained must happen,” Narada says, and with that he tells Yudhishthira to rise and take up his kingdom.

Vyasa’s question: who is the doer, God, man, or chance?

Yudhishthira sat on, silent and sunk in grief, and Vyasa spoke to him again. “The protection of subjects is the duty of kings. Men who keep to duty hold duty to be all-powerful. Walk, then, in the steps of your ancestors. For Brahmins penance is the duty; that is the eternal ordinance of the Vedas. The Kshatriya is the protector of every person in respect of his duties. The man who, greedy for earthly things, breaks through wholesome restraints, that offender against the peace of society, should be put down with a strong hand. The senseless man who tries to overstep authority, be he an attendant, a son, or even a saint, must be punished by every means, or even killed. The king who acts otherwise sins. He who does not protect the moral law when it is being trampled is himself a trespasser against it. The Kauravas were trespassers against it, and you have killed them with their followers. You have kept the duties of your own order. Why, then, do you give way to this grief? The king should kill those who deserve death, give to those who deserve gifts, and protect his subjects as the ordinance directs.”

“I do not doubt the words that fall from your lips,” Yudhishthira said. “Everything that belongs to morality and duty is known to you. And still, for the sake of a kingdom, I have caused many men to be killed. Those deeds are burning me, Brahmin. They are eating me away.”

Vyasa put the question to him plainly. “Is the Supreme Being the doer, or is man the doer? Is everything in the world the result of chance, or are the fruits we enjoy and suffer the results of earlier acts? Take them one at a time. Suppose that man does everything he does, good or bad, because the Supreme Being drives him to it. Then the fruits of those acts should fasten on the Supreme Being. When a man cuts down a tree in the forest with an axe, the sin is the man’s, and by no means the axe’s. Or someone may say that the axe is only the tool and the consequence belongs to the living agent. Very well; then the sin might as easily be laid on the man who made the axe, and that can hardly be true. And if it is unreasonable that one man should bear the consequence of an act done by another, then, following the same rule, you should lay the whole responsibility on the Supreme Being.

“Suppose instead that man himself is the agent of all his acts, the virtuous and the sinful. Then there is no Supreme Director at all, and whatever you have done can bring no evil consequence on you. No one, king, can turn aside from what is destined. Suppose destiny is the result of the acts of former lives. Then no sin can fasten on a man in this life, just as the sin of felling the tree cannot touch the maker of the axe. And if you think it is chance alone that acts in the world, then such an act of destruction could never have happened and never will.

“If a man needs to settle what is good and what is evil in the world, let him go to the scriptures. In them it is laid down that kings should stand with the rod of punishment raised in their hands. I think that acts, good and bad, turn here continually like a wheel, and that men receive the fruits of the acts they do. One sinful act gives rise to another. So avoid all evil acts, and do not set your heart on grief like this. Hold to the duties of your own order, even where they are open to reproach. This destroying of yourself does not look well in you. Expiations have been ordained for evil acts. A man who is alive can perform them, and a man who dies cannot. So keep your life, king, and perform those acts of expiation. If you leave them undone, you may have cause to repent in the next world.”

A key to reading this (danda): When Vyasa sends Yudhishthira to the scriptures to learn what is good and what is evil, the rule he cites from them is that kings should stand with the rod of punishment raised. It is the same danda Draupadi and Arjuna argued for, and here Vyasa applies it without softening: whoever breaks through wholesome restraints, be he an attendant, a son or a saint, is to be punished or even killed, and a king who fails to do so sins.

The gist: Vyasa lays out four ways of answering the question of who acts. If the Supreme Being drives every act, the fruit belongs to the Supreme Being. If man alone acts and there is no Director, no evil consequence can follow. If destiny comes from former lives, no sin attaches in this one. If chance rules, such a destruction could never have happened. On his own account he holds that acts turn like a wheel and men receive their fruits, and his practical counsel is to stay alive and perform the expiations laid down.

Time alone is the destroyer, and the example of the war of gods and demons

“Sons and grandsons, brothers and fathers, fathers-in-law and teachers, mothers’ brothers and grandfathers have fallen, grandfather,” Yudhishthira said. “Many great Kshatriyas, kinsmen by marriage, friends, companions, sisters’ sons, and leading men from many countries have fallen. I alone caused them to be killed, out of desire for a kingdom. They were heroic kings, devoted to righteousness; every one of them had drunk the Soma in sacrifice. What end will I come to, having caused their deaths? I burn day after day to think that the earth has lost so many kings who were lions, all of them in the fullness of their fortune. I saw this slaughter of kinsmen and of millions of other men, and I burn. And what will become of the women who have lost sons, husbands and brothers? They will call the Pandavas and the Vrishnis cruel murderers; thin with grief, they will throw themselves on the ground. Seeing no father, no brother, no husband, no son, they will give up their lives and go to the house of Yama. I have no doubt of it. The course of morality is very subtle, and it is plain that we will be stained with the guilt of killing women. We have killed kinsmen and friends, a sin past expiation, and we must fall into hell head downward. So we will waste our limbs with the hardest penance. Tell me, grandfather, what way of life I should take up.”

Vyasa thought hard for a time and then answered. “Remember the duties of a Kshatriya and do not give way to grief. All those Kshatriyas fell in the keeping of their own duties. They were after great prosperity and great fame on earth, they were all subject to death, and they have perished through the working of Time. You were not their slayer. Bhima was not, nor Arjuna, nor the twins. Time took their life-breaths, by the great law of change. Time has no mother and no father and no one he is inclined to favor. He is the witness of the acts of all creatures, and by him they were taken. This battle was only an occasion he appointed. He causes creatures to be killed through creatures; that is how his power, which nothing resists, shows itself. Know that Time, in his dealings with creatures, is tied to the bond of action and is the witness of every act, good and bad, and that it is Time who brings round the fruits of our acts, full of bliss or of woe. Think of the acts of the Kshatriyas who have fallen. Those acts were the causes of their destruction. Think of your own acts, your vows kept with a restrained soul. And think how you were forced by the Supreme Ordainer to do such a deed as this.

“A weapon made by a smith or a carpenter is under the control of the man who handles it and moves as he moves it. In the same way this universe, controlled by actions done in Time, moves as those actions move it. The births and deaths of creatures take place without any cause that can be assigned, at perfect random, and so grief and joy are needless. This entanglement of your heart is a delusion. And yet, if it would please you, perform the rites of expiation, and wash yourself clean of what you call your sin.

“It is heard that the gods and the Asuras fought each other. The Asuras were the elder brothers and the gods the younger. Both coveted prosperity, and the battle between them was fierce; it lasted thirty-two thousand years. The gods made the earth one wide sheet of blood, killed the Daityas, and took possession of heaven. Then a number of Brahmins who had got possession of the earth, men who knew the Vedas, lost their heads to pride and took up arms with the Danavas to help them in the fight. They were known by the name of Shalavrika, and they numbered eighty-eight thousand. The gods killed all of them. Those wicked men who wish virtue extinguished and set sin moving deserve to be killed, as the furious Daityas were killed by the gods. If by killing one man a family may be saved, or by killing one family a whole kingdom, that killing is no transgression. Sin sometimes takes the form of virtue, king, and virtue sometimes takes the form of sin. Those who are learned know which is which. So take comfort. You know the scriptures well.

“You have only followed the road the gods themselves walked before you. Men like you never go to hell. Comfort your brothers and all your friends. The man who goes into sinful acts with his eyes open, who commits them and feels no shame and continues exactly as he was, is the one the scripture calls a great sinner. For him there is no expiation, and his sins never grow less. You were born in a noble line. You were forced into this by the faults of others; you did it most unwillingly; and having done it, you repent. The horse sacrifice, that grand rite, has been named as an expiation for you. Make ready for it, and you will be freed of your sins. Indra, with the Maruts to help him, defeated his enemies and performed a hundred sacrifices one by one, and so came to be called Shatakratu. Freed of sin, in possession of heaven, with many worlds of bliss and great happiness and prosperity for his own, he shines among the Maruts and lights every quarter of the sky. The Apsaras honor Shachi’s lord in the heavens, and the rishis and the other gods worship him.

“You won the earth by your prowess, and by your prowess every king was beaten. Go now with your friends to the kingdoms of those kings, and set their brothers, their sons or their grandsons on their thrones. Be kind even to the children still in the womb. Make your subjects glad and happy, and rule the earth. Where a king has left no son, set his daughter on the throne. Women are fond of pleasure and power, and by this they will put off their sorrow and be happy. When you have comforted the whole empire in this way, worship the gods in a horse sacrifice as Indra did in the old days. It is not right for us to grieve for those Kshatriyas. The Destroyer’s power took their senses from them, and they died in the keeping of the duties of their order. You have done a Kshatriya’s duty and you hold the earth without a thorn in it. Keep your own duties, son of Kunti, and happiness in the other world will be yours.”

A sub-tale: In the war of the gods and the Asuras, which lasted thirty-two thousand years, eighty-eight thousand Brahmins called Shalavrikas armed themselves on the side of the Danavas. They knew the Vedas, and pride had turned their heads, and the gods killed every one of them. Vyasa tells it to a king who is sick at having caused the deaths of his elders and his teacher, and he draws the rule himself: those who wish virtue extinguished deserve to be killed, as the Daityas were.

The gist: Yudhishthira’s fear now is for the widows, and for the hell he believes he has earned. Vyasa answers that Time killed the Kshatriyas and the battle was only the occasion Time appointed. He adds a hard maxim, that killing one man to save a family, or one family to save a kingdom, is no transgression, and a harder one, that sin can wear the form of virtue and virtue the form of sin. Then he gives the king work: restore the heirs of the dead kings to their thrones, daughters where there are no sons, and perform the horse sacrifice.

Which acts call for atonement, and when those same acts are no sin

“After doing what acts does a man become liable to expiation?” Yudhishthira asked. “And what must he do to be freed of sin? Tell me, grandfather.” Vyasa said, “A man becomes liable to expiation by leaving undone the acts that are ordained, by doing those that are forbidden, and by behaving deceitfully. The student under the vow of continence who rises after the sun has risen or lies down while it is setting; the man with a rotten nail or black teeth; the man whose younger brother marries before him, and the man who marries before his elder brother; the killer of a Brahmin; the man who speaks ill of others; the man who marries a younger sister before the elder is married, and the man who marries the elder after the younger; one who falls from a vow; one who kills any member of the twice-born orders; one who teaches the Vedas to a person unworthy of them, and one who will not teach them to a person who is worthy; one who takes many lives; one who sells flesh; one who has abandoned his sacred fire; one who sells knowledge of the Vedas; one who kills his teacher, or a woman; one born in a sinful family; one who kills an animal wilfully; one who sets fire to a dwelling; one who lives by deceit; one who acts against his teacher; and one who has broken a compact: all these are guilty of sins that call for expiation.

“There are other acts that no one should do, acts forbidden by the world and by the Vedas alike. To reject one’s own creed and practice another’s. To assist at the sacrifice or the rites of one who is not worthy of that help. To eat forbidden food. To desert one who begs for protection. To neglect the keep of servants and dependents. To sell salt and treacle and things of that kind. To kill birds and animals. To refuse, though able, to give a child to a woman who asks it. To omit the daily gifts, the handfuls of grass for the cattle and the rest. To withhold the dakshina. To humiliate a Brahmin. Those who know duty have declared that no one should do these things. The son who quarrels with his father, the man who violates his teacher’s bed, and the man who neglects to father children on his wedded wife are all sinful. These, in brief and at length, are the acts and omissions by which a man becomes liable to expiation.

“Now hear the circumstances in which men commit these very acts and are not stained. If a Brahmin who knows the Vedas well takes up arms and rushes at you in battle to kill you, you may go against him and take his life, and you will not be guilty of killing a Brahmin. There is a mantra in the Vedas that lays this down, and I tell you only what the Vedas sanction. He who kills a Brahmin fallen from his own duties and advancing weapon in hand to slaughter is no true Brahmin-killer; in such a case it is the wrath of the one that goes against the wrath of the other. A man who drinks strong liquor in ignorance, or on the advice of a virtuous physician when his life is in danger, should have the rites of his initiation performed over again. Everything I told you about the eating of forbidden food may be cleansed by such rites. Union with the teacher’s wife at the teacher’s own command does not stain the pupil; the sage Uddalaka had his son Shvetaketu fathered by a disciple. A man who steals for his teacher in a season of distress is not stained, so long as he takes from someone other than a Brahmin and keeps no part of it for himself; the man who steals to buy his own pleasures is stained. A falsehood may be spoken to save one’s own life or another’s, for the sake of one’s teacher, to please a woman, or to bring about a marriage. A vow of continence is not broken by a dream; the expiation laid down in that case is to pour clarified butter on the blazing fire.

“If the elder brother has fallen from his order or renounced the world, the younger takes on no sin by marrying. Union with a woman at her own asking does not destroy virtue. No one should kill an animal, or have one killed, except in a sacrifice; animals were made sacred, and fit for that use, by the kindness the Creator himself showed them in his ordinance. A gift made in ignorance to an undeserving Brahmin brings no sin, and neither does a failure, through ignorance, to give to one who deserves it. A man takes on no sin by casting off an adulterous wife; by such treatment the woman herself may be made clean, and the husband keeps clear of fault. One who knows the true use of the Soma takes on no sin by selling it. One who dismisses a servant unable to do his work is untouched. I have now told you the acts a man may do without sin. I will speak next of expiation, in detail.”

A key to reading this (atonement): The word expiation names the rite or penance by which a sin, once done, is washed off, and Vyasa’s first rule about it is that the same act can require expiation in one case and none in another. He gives the offenses first, among them the killing of a Brahmin, the eating of forbidden food, theft, falsehood and marrying out of turn, and then the circumstances that clear a man of each.

The gist: Vyasa gives two lists. The first is of acts and omissions that call for expiation, from sleeping at sunset under a student’s vow to killing a Brahmin. The second is of the cases in which those very acts leave no stain: the armed Brahmin who attacks to kill, liquor taken in ignorance or on a physician’s order, a theft committed for a teacher in distress, a lie told to save a life. Uddalaka and his son Shvetaketu are named in the second list among the rest.

The full range of atonements, and Manu’s teaching on pure and impure food

“By penance, by religious rites and by gifts a man may wash off his sins, provided he does not commit them again,” Vyasa said. “The man who has killed a Brahmin is cleansed if for a full twelve years he lives on one meal a day, and that begged; does everything for himself; goes his begging round with a human skull in one hand and a khatvanga staff in the other; lives in continence and is always ready for exertion; casts off all malice; sleeps on the bare ground; and proclaims his offense to the world. He may be cleansed by dying of his own will, on the advice of men learned in the scriptures, on the weapon of one who lives by arms; or by throwing himself head down three times into a blazing fire; or by walking a hundred yojanas reciting the Vedas all the way; or by giving his whole property to a Brahmin who knows the Vedas, or enough to keep that Brahmin for life, or a furnished house; and by protecting cows and Brahmins. By living for six years on the scantiest of meals he may be cleansed; by a harder vow about food, in three years; by one meal a month, in a single year; and by an absolute fast, in a very short time. There is no doubt, too, that a man is cleansed by the horse sacrifice. Those guilty of killing a Brahmin who have taken the final bath at the close of that rite are cleansed of all their sins; this is an injunction of great authority in the Vedas. He who lays down his life in a battle fought for a Brahmin’s sake is cleansed of the killing of a Brahmin.

“He who gives a hundred thousand cows to those who deserve gifts is cleansed of the killing of a Brahmin, and of all his sins. He who gives twenty-five thousand cows of the Kapila kind, every one with a calf, is cleansed of all his sins. He who, at the point of death, gives a thousand cows with their calves to the poor and deserving is freed from sin. So is he who gives a hundred horses of the Kamboja breed to Brahmins of regulated conduct; and so is he who gives even one person everything that person asks and afterward speaks of it to no one. A man who has once taken liquor is made pure, here and hereafter, by drinking liquor scalding hot. By falling from the top of a mountain, by entering a blazing fire, or by renouncing the world and setting out on the journey that has no end, a man is freed of all his sins. A Brahmin who drinks liquor may reach the world of Brahma by performing the sacrifice Brihaspati laid down; Brahma himself has said so. If, having drunk, he is humbled, makes a gift of land, and never touches it again, he is cleansed. The man who has violated his teacher’s bed should lie down on a sheet of heated iron, and having cut off the mark of his sex should leave the world for the woods with his eyes turned always upward. Women are cleansed of all their sins by living a regulated life for one year. One who lies to his teacher or acts against him is cleansed by doing something that pleases the teacher. One fallen from the vow of continence is cleansed by wearing a cow’s hide for six months and keeping the penances laid down for the killing of a Brahmin. The adulterer and the thief are cleansed by a year of strict vows, and the thief must return, by every means he has, goods of the value he stole. The brother who married before his elder, and the elder who was passed over, are cleansed by a strict vow kept for twelve nights. Those who know the scriptures take no account of the sins women commit in their hearts; whatever those sins are, their monthly course scours them as ash scours a metal plate.

“It is laid down that a Brahmin should acquire and practice the full measure of virtue; a man of the royal order a measure less by a fourth; a Vaishya a fourth less than the Kshatriya; and a Shudra a fourth less than the Vaishya. The weight or lightness of a sin, for each of the four orders, is to be fixed on that principle. One who has killed a bird or an animal, or cut down living trees, should proclaim his sin and fast for three nights. A Brahmin may be cleansed of all the sins he has committed unknowingly by reciting the Gayatri in a sacred place, living on frugal fare, casting off malice, anger and hate, unmoved by praise and blame, keeping silence, under the open sky by day and by night, and plunging into a stream or lake in his clothes three times in the day and three in the night. There is expiation for every sin except those called Mahapatakas, the great sins. Sins are of two classes, those committed knowingly and those committed unknowingly; the first are grave and the second light, and there is expiation for both. These ordinances are laid down for those who believe and have faith. They are of no use to atheists, or to men in whom pride and malice rule. For the reasons I have given, king, you will be cleansed of all your sins, for you killed your enemies in the discharge of a king’s duties, and to protect your life and your inheritance. Or if, after all this, you still hold yourself sinful, perform expiation. Do not throw your life away in a grief that does not become a wise man.” The king thought for a short while, and then he spoke again.

“Tell me, grandfather, what food is clean and what unclean, what gift is praiseworthy, and who should be counted deserving of gifts and who undeserving.” Vyasa said, “There is an old account told here, of a discourse between the ascetics and Manu, the lord of creation. In the Krita age an assembly of rishis strict in their vows came to the great Manu as he sat at his ease and asked him to speak on duties. ‘What food should be taken? Who is a deserving person? What gifts should be made? How should a man study, what penances should he perform and how, and what acts should be done and what left undone? Tell us everything, lord of creation.’ The divine, self-born Manu answered them. ‘Listen while I set out the duties in brief and at length. In regions that have not been forbidden, the silent recitation of sacred mantras, the fire offering, fasts, knowledge of the self, sacred rivers, and places where pious men live: these are the acts and the objects that cleanse. Certain mountains cleanse as well, and the eating of gold, and bathing in water into which gems and precious stones have been dipped. A journey to the holy places and the eating of sanctified butter cleanse a man quickly. No man is called wise who indulges in pride, and if he wishes to live long he should drink hot water for three nights. To refuse what has not been given, to give, to study, to do penance, to harm no one, to speak truth, to be free of anger, and to worship the gods in sacrifice: these are the marks of virtue.

“‘And what is virtue may, according to time and place, be sin. Taking what belongs to another, untruth, injury and killing may, under special circumstances, become virtue. For those able to judge, acts are of two kinds, virtuous and sinful, and from the worldly and the Vedic points of view they are good or bad according to their consequences. From the Vedic point of view, virtue and sin fall under action and inaction. Inaction, by which is meant abstention from the Vedic rites and a life of contemplation, leads to release from rebirth. The consequences of action, the practice of the rites, are repeated death and rebirth. From the worldly point of view, evil acts lead to evil and good acts to good, and virtue and sin are told apart by the character of what follows from them. Acts that look evil, when they are undertaken for reasons connected with the gods, the scriptures, life itself, and the means by which life is kept up, bear good consequences. When an act is undertaken in the expectation, however doubtful, that it will do mischief to someone later, or when its consequence is plainly mischievous, expiation has been laid down. When an act is done in anger or with a clouded judgment, the expiation is pain given to the body, as precedent, scripture and reason direct. When something is done to please or displease the mind, the sin of it may be cleansed by sanctified food and the recitation of mantras.

“‘The king who in a particular case lays the rod of punishment aside should fast for one night. The priest who in a particular case does not advise the king to punish should fast for three nights. The man who, out of grief, tries to kill himself with a weapon should fast for three nights. There is no expiation for those who cast off the duties and practices of their order and class, their country and their family, and abandon their very creed. When a doubt arises about what should be done, the injunction of the scriptures is whatever ten persons versed in the Vedic scriptures declare, or three of those who recite them constantly.

“‘The bull, earth, small ants, worms bred in dirt, and poison should not be eaten by Brahmins. They should not eat fish that have no scales, or four-footed creatures of the water such as frogs, the tortoise alone excepted. The water-birds called bhasas, ducks, suparnas, chakravakas, diving ducks, cranes, crows, shags, vultures, hawks and owls; all four-footed animals that eat flesh and have long sharp teeth; birds; animals with two teeth and animals with four; and the milk of the sheep, the she-ass, the she-camel, the cow that has just calved, of woman and of the deer: none of these should be taken by a Brahmin. Food cooked by a woman who has lately given birth, and food cooked by a person unknown, should not be eaten. If a Brahmin eats food cooked by a Kshatriya, it lessens his energy. Food provided by a Shudra dims his Brahmin’s luster. Food provided by a goldsmith, or by a woman who has neither husband nor children, shortens his life. The food of a usurer is the same as dirt, and the food of a woman who lives by prostitution is the same as semen. The food of men who tolerate the unchastity of their wives, and of men ruled by their wives, is forbidden. So is the food of the miser who neither enjoys his wealth nor gives; of the seller of Soma, the shoemaker, the unchaste woman, the washerman, the physician and the watchman; food given by a crowd, or by a man at whom the whole village points; the food of one who lives off dancing girls, of one who married before his elder brother, of professional bards and panegyrists, and of gamblers; food brought with the left hand, stale food, food mixed with liquor, food already tasted, and the leavings of a feast. Cakes, sugarcane, potherbs and rice boiled in sweetened milk are not to be taken once they have lost their relish, nor the flour of fried barley and other fried grain, mixed with curds, once it has grown stale. Rice boiled in sweetened milk, food mixed with sesame, meat and cakes that have not been dedicated to the gods should not be taken by Brahmins who live as householders. Such a Brahmin should first satisfy the gods, the rishis, guests, the ancestors and the household deities, and then take his own food. A householder who lives so in his own house becomes like a mendicant who has renounced the world, and living with his wives he earns great religious merit.

“‘No one should make a gift for the sake of fame, or from fear, or to a man who has done him a service. A virtuous man does not give to those who live by singing and dancing, or to professional jesters, or to one who is drunk, or insane, or a thief, or a slanderer, or an idiot, or pale of hue, or lacking a limb, or a dwarf, or a wicked person, or one born in a low and wicked family, or one who has not been sanctified by the keeping of vows. No gift should be made to a Brahmin who has no knowledge of the Vedas. Gifts should be made only to a Shrotriya, one who has that learning. An improper gift and an improper acceptance bring evil on the giver and on the taker both. A man who tries to cross the ocean on a rock, or on a mass of catechu, sinks along with his support, and in the same way giver and taker go down together. A fire covered with wet fuel does not blaze, and a taker of gifts who is without penance, study and piety can do the giver no good. Water held in a human skull and milk held in a bag of dogskin are fouled by the vessel, and so the Vedas bear no fruit in a man who is not of good conduct. One may give, out of compassion, to a low Brahmin who has neither mantras nor vows, who is ignorant of the scriptures and full of envy. One may give, out of compassion, to a person who is poor or suffering or ill. He should not give in the belief that any benefit or religious merit will come to him from it. A gift to a Brahmin without the Vedas is made fruitless by the fault of the one who receives it. An elephant made of wood, an antelope made of leather, and a Brahmin who has not studied the Vedas: all three have nothing of the thing except the name. A eunuch with women, a cow with a cow, a bird without feathers: such is a Brahmin without mantras. Grain with no kernel, a well with no water, butter poured on ashes: such is a gift to a Brahmin without learning. He is an enemy to all, the destroyer of the food offered to gods and ancestors, and no better than a robber of other men’s wealth.’ I have told you in brief everything Manu said on that occasion. It is a high discourse, and everyone should hear it.”

A key to reading this (karma and akarma): Manu divides conduct, from the Vedic point of view, into action and inaction. Action is the practice of the Vedic rites, and its consequence is repeated death and rebirth. Inaction is abstention from those rites and a life of contemplation, and it leads to release. From the worldly point of view he judges an act by what follows from it, good from good and evil from evil.

The gist: Vyasa sets out the expiations, heaviest first: twelve years of begging with a skull in the hand for the killing of a Brahmin, or death in battle for a Brahmin’s sake, or the bath that closes the horse sacrifice, or great gifts of cattle. He scales the weight of sin by a fourth for each order below the Brahmin and tells Yudhishthira that a king who killed in the discharge of his duty is clean. Then, through Manu’s discourse to the rishis, come the rules of clean and unclean food and of gifts: what a Brahmin may not eat, whose food he may not take, and why a gift to a Brahmin without the Vedas is butter poured on ashes.

Vyasa’s instruction: ask Bhishma himself, and the entry into Hastinapura

“Holy one,” Yudhishthira said, “I want to hear in detail what the duties of kings are, and the duties, in full, of all four orders. I want to hear what conduct a man should adopt in seasons of distress, and how I may bring the world under me while keeping to the road of morality. This discourse on expiation and on fasts has filled me with curiosity and with joy. And yet the practice of virtue and the work of a king are always at odds, and my mind is worn dull with turning over how the two can be reconciled.”

Vyasa, who knew the Vedas better than any man living, turned his eyes on Narada, that ancient who knows everything, and then said to the king, “If you wish to hear of duty and morality in full, ask Bhishma, the old grandfather of the Kurus. He knows every duty and his knowledge is whole, and he will clear your heart of every doubt on this hard subject. The goddess of the heavenly river of three courses gave him birth. He has seen with his own eyes all the gods with Indra at their head. By his dutiful service he pleased the celestial rishis, Brihaspati first among them, and learned from them the duties of kings. He mastered, with its interpretations, the science that Ushanas knows and that the teacher of the gods knows. Under hard vows he learned all the Vedas and their branches from Vasishtha and from Chyavana of Bhrigu’s line. Long ago he studied under Sanatkumara, the eldest son of the Grandsire himself, who knows the truths of mind and spirit. He learned the whole duty of ascetics from the lips of Markandeya, and he had all his weapons from Parashurama and from Indra. He was born among men, and yet his death is in his own keeping. He is childless, and yet, as we have heard, many worlds of bliss await him. Rishis of great merit were always the companions of his court. Nothing that can be known is unknown to him. Go to him before he gives up his breath.”

Yudhishthira answered Satyavati’s son. “I have brought about a great and hideous slaughter of kinsmen. I have offended against everyone, and I am a destroyer of the earth. And Bhishma himself, who always fought fairly, I caused to be killed by deceit. How can I go to him and ask about duty and morality?”

It was Krishna, the chief of Yadu’s race, who spoke then, wishing well to all four orders. “This stubbornness in grief does not become you. Do what the holy Vyasa has said. The Brahmins and these brothers of yours stand before you like men pleading with the god of the clouds at the end of summer. What is left alive of the assembled kings is here, and the people of all four orders of your kingdom of Kurujangala. Do it to please these Brahmins. Do it in obedience to your elder, Vyasa. Do it at the request of those of us who wish you well, and of Draupadi. Do what we ask of you, and what is good for the world.”

Then the king rose from his seat, for the good of the whole world. Krishna had asked him, and the island-born Vyasa, and Devasthana, and Arjuna, and many others, and he put his grief and his anxiety down. He knew the Vedas and the science that interprets them, and everything men hear and ought to hear; his mind grew quiet, and he settled what he should do next. Ringed by all of them like the moon by the stars, and setting Dhritarashtra at the head of the train, he made ready to enter the city. He worshiped the gods and thousands of Brahmins. Then he mounted a new white chariot, spread with blankets and deerskins, hallowed with Vedic mantras, and yoked to sixteen white bullocks with auspicious marks, and with bards and singers praising him he rode like Soma, the moon, on his chariot of nectar. Bhima took the reins. Arjuna held over his head a white umbrella that shone like a white cloud set with stars. The twins, Nakula and Sahadeva, took up two yak-tail fans, white as moonlight and set with gems, to fan the king. The five brothers in their ornaments, on one chariot, looked like the five elements. Behind them on another white chariot, drawn by horses quick as thought, came Yuyutsu. Krishna followed with Satyaki on his own bright chariot of gold, with Shaibya and Sugriva in the traces. The eldest uncle of Pritha’s son went at the head of the train with Gandhari, in a litter carried on men’s shoulders. The other women of the Kuru house, and Kunti and Draupadi, rode in fine carriages with Vidura leading them, and behind came chariots and ornamented elephants, foot soldiers and horse. The city and its streets were dressed for him: garlands of flowers and banners without number along the way he would pass, incense in the streets, powdered scents and blossoms and fragrant plants underfoot, wreaths overhead, new metal jars filled to the brim with water at the door of every house, and groups of fair young girls standing at their appointed places. So, with his friends around him and sweet words in his ears, the son of Pandu passed in through the well-adorned gate.

Thousands upon thousands of citizens had come out to see the sons of Pritha enter. The squares and streets, with the crowd growing every moment, swelled like the sea at moonrise. The great houses along the way, hung with every ornament and full of women, seemed to shake under the weight of them. In soft and modest voices the women praised Yudhishthira, and Bhima and Arjuna, and the two sons of Madri, and they called to Draupadi, “You deserve all praise, blessed princess of Panchala, who wait beside these men as Gautami waits beside the seven rishis. Your acts and your vows have borne their fruit.” With their praises and their talk and the shouting of the men, the city filled with noise. Yudhishthira went through the streets as became him and came to the palace of the Kurus, and the people of the city and the provinces crowded up with words that pleased him. “By good fortune, king, you have beaten your enemies. By good fortune you have your kingdom back through virtue and prowess. Be our king for a hundred years, and guard your subjects in dharma as Indra guards those who live in heaven.” Blessed so at the gate, and taking the benedictions the Brahmins spoke from every side, he entered the palace, which was like the house of Indra, and stepped down from the chariot. He went in to the household gods and worshiped them with gems and scents and garlands. When he came out again, Brahmins were waiting with auspicious things in their hands to bless him, and he stood among them like the clear moon among stars. With his priest Dhaumya and his eldest uncle beside him he honored them, with due rites, with sweets and gems and gold in plenty, with cows and robes and whatever else each one wanted. A shout went up, “This is a blessed day,” and filled the whole sky, loud and clear as the calling of a flock of swans. Then drums rolled and conches sounded for the victory.

A key to reading this (rajadharma against dharma): Yudhishthira states the difficulty himself: the practice of virtue and the discharge of a king’s duties are always at odds, and his mind is dulled with trying to reconcile them. He asks for the duties of kings, the duties of the four orders, and conduct in seasons of distress. Vyasa answers by naming the one man who learned the duties of kings from the celestial rishis and the Vedas from Vasishtha and Chyavana, and who is still alive to be asked.

The gist: Vyasa hands the teaching to Bhishma, who knows every duty and whose death waits on his own will, and tells the king to go before the old man gives up his breath. Yudhishthira shrinks from facing the grandfather he caused to be killed by deceit. Krishna presses him, and he rises, mounts a white chariot behind sixteen white bullocks with Bhima at the reins, and enters Hastinapura.

The deceit of the rakshasa Charvaka, and the coronation

A little while later, when the Brahmins had fallen silent, a Rakshasa named Charvaka spoke up. He was a friend of Duryodhana’s, and he had disguised himself as a Brahmin; he stood there in the dress of a religious mendicant, with a rosary, a tuft of hair on his head and the triple staff in his hand, proud and unafraid among the thousands of Brahmins, men of penance and vows, who had come to bless the king. He wished the Pandavas evil, and he had consulted none of them. “All these Brahmins have made me their spokesman,” he said to the king, “and this is what they say. ‘Shame on you. You are a wicked king, a killer of kinsmen. What have you gained by destroying your own race? You have killed your elders and your teacher, and the proper thing for you now is to throw your life away.’”

The Brahmins were shaken. Stung by the speech, they raised an uproar, and then all of them, and the king with them, were struck dumb with anxiety and shame. Yudhishthira spoke first. “I bow to you, and I beg you humbly, be kind to me. Do not cry shame on me. I will lay down my life soon.” Then the Brahmins cried out together, “Those are not our words. May you prosper, king.” They knew the Vedas, and penance had made their understanding clear, and with the eye of the spirit they saw through the speaker’s disguise. “This is the Rakshasa Charvaka, the friend of Duryodhana. He has put on a mendicant’s dress to serve his friend. We said nothing of the kind. Let this fear leave you, and may good fortune stay with you and your brothers.” Then, beside themselves with rage, those Brahmins uttered the sound Hun. Clean of every sin themselves, they cursed the sinful Rakshasa and killed him where he stood. Burned up by the power of those knowers of the Veda, Charvaka fell dead, like a tree with all its shoots blasted by Indra’s thunder. The Brahmins, duly honored, blessed the king and went away, and the son of Pandu and all his friends were glad.

Then Krishna, who knows all things, spoke to the king as he stood there with his brothers. “In this world Brahmins are always the objects of my worship. They are gods on earth, with poison in their speech, and they are very easy to please. Long ago, in the Krita age, a Rakshasa named Charvaka performed hard penance for many years at Badari. Brahma urged him again and again to ask for boons, and at last he asked to be free of fear from every being in the universe. The Lord of the universe gave him that high boon, immunity from fear at the hands of all creatures, with a single limit: he was to be careful how he offended the Brahmins. With the boon in hand, that sinful Rakshasa, mighty and fierce in his deeds, began to torment the gods. They gathered and went to Brahma to ask for their enemy’s destruction, and the eternal god told them, ‘I have already arranged the means by which this Rakshasa will soon die. There will be a king named Duryodhana. Among men he will be this creature’s friend, and out of affection for him the Rakshasa will insult the Brahmins. Stung by the wrong he does them, the Brahmins, whose strength is in their speech, will curse him in their wrath, and he will be destroyed.’ That same Charvaka lies there dead, killed by the curse of the Brahmins. Do not grieve. Your kinsmen all died in the keeping of the Kshatriya’s duty, and those heroes have gone to heaven. Attend to your own duties now. Put down your enemies, protect your subjects, and honor the Brahmins.”

Freed of his grief and the fever of his heart, the son of Kunti took his seat, facing east, on a fine seat of gold. On another golden seat, bright and beautiful, sat Satyaki and Krishna, facing him. Bhima and Arjuna sat on either side of the king on two seats set with gems. On a white throne of ivory decked with gold sat Kunti with Sahadeva and Nakula. Sudharman, Vidura, Dhaumya and the Kuru king Dhritarashtra each had a seat that blazed like fire, and Yuyutsu, Sanjaya and Gandhari sat where Dhritarashtra sat. The king touched the white flowers set before him, the swastikas, the vessels filled with many things, the earth, the gold, the silver and the gems. Then all his subjects came to see him with the priest at their head, bringing auspicious things, and everything the rite of coronation requires was brought in plenty: golden jars filled to the brim, and jars of copper, of silver and of earth; flowers and fried paddy and kusha grass; cow’s milk; fuel of shami, pippala and palasha wood; honey and clarified butter; ladles of udumbara wood; and conches adorned with gold. At Krishna’s request the priest Dhaumya built, by the rule, an altar sloping gently toward the east and the north. He seated Yudhishthira, with Draupadi the daughter of Drupada beside him, on a handsome seat called Sarvatobhadra, firm-footed, covered with a tiger skin and bright as flame, and he began to pour the offerings of butter on the fire with the proper mantras. Then Krishna, prince of the Dasharha line, rose from his seat, took up the consecrated conch, and poured its water on the head of Kunti’s son. At his request the royal sage Dhritarashtra and all the subjects did the same. Bathed in that water with his brothers, the son of Pandu was beautiful to see. Panavas and anakas and drums were struck. The king accepted the gifts his subjects brought and honored them with gifts in return, and to the Brahmins who spoke blessings over him, men of learning and good conduct, he gave a thousand nishkas. In voices sweet as the calling of swans they wished him prosperity and victory. “By good fortune, Yudhishthira, the victory is yours. By good fortune you have won back your place by prowess. By good fortune Arjuna and Bhima and you and the two sons of Madri are well, with your enemies dead and yourselves alive out of a battle that destroyed so many heroes. Attend now, without delay, to what should be done next.” So Yudhishthira the just, with his friends about him, was installed on the throne of a great kingdom.

A sub-tale: Krishna’s account places the cause of Charvaka’s death long before the war. In the Krita age the Rakshasa won from Brahma immunity from fear at the hands of all creatures, with one limit, that he take care how he offended the Brahmins. When he turned the boon against the gods, Brahma told them the means of his death was already arranged: a king named Duryodhana would be his friend, and for that friend’s sake he would insult the Brahmins and be destroyed by their curse.

The gist: A Rakshasa in a mendicant’s dress tells the newly arrived king, in the name of the Brahmins, that he should kill himself. The Brahmins disown the speech, see through the disguise, and destroy Charvaka with a single sound. Krishna explains the old boon behind it. Then Yudhishthira is seated facing east, Dhaumya builds the altar and pours the offerings, the water of the consecrated conch is poured on the king’s head, and he is installed on the throne.

Yudhishthira’s first ordering of the realm, the funeral rites, and the praise of Krishna

When his subjects had spoken, Yudhishthira answered them. “The sons of Pandu must be great men, since their merits, true or false, are recited by such an assembly of Brahmins. You plainly look on us with favor, to describe us so freely. King Dhritarashtra, though, is our father and our god. If you wish to please me, give him your obedience always and do what pleases him. I have slaughtered all my kinsmen, and I live for him alone. My great duty is to serve him watchfully in everything. If you and my friends hold me worth your favor, behave toward Dhritarashtra as you did before. He is the lord of the world, and of you, and of me. The whole earth, with the Pandavas, belongs to him. Keep these words of mine in your minds.” Then he told them they might go where they pleased. When the citizens and the people of the provinces had been dismissed, he appointed his brother Bhima as Yuvaraja, the heir to the throne. He gladly appointed Vidura, a man of great intelligence, to assist him with his counsel and to oversee the sixfold requirements of the state. Sanjaya, old in years and accomplished in everything, he made general director and supervisor of the finances. Nakula was to keep the register of the forces, give them their food and their pay, and see to the other business of the army. Arjuna was to resist hostile forces and punish the wicked. The priest Dhaumya was to attend daily to the Brahmins and to every rite in honor of the gods. Sahadeva was to stay always at his side, for the king thought that this brother should guard him in all circumstances; and he set others to other tasks as he judged each one fit. To Vidura and to Yuyutsu he gave a command: “Do everything my royal father Dhritarashtra wishes, promptly and with care. Whatever is to be done for the citizens and the people of the provinces, do it in your own departments, after taking the king’s permission.”

After this Yudhishthira had the Shraddha, the rite for the dead, performed for every one of his kinsmen killed in the battle. King Dhritarashtra too, for the good of his sons in the other world, gave excellent food, cows, great wealth and many beautiful and costly gems to the Brahmins. Yudhishthira, with Draupadi beside him, gave much wealth for the sake of Drona and of Karna, of Dhrishtadyumna and Abhimanyu, of the Rakshasa Ghatotkacha, Hidimba’s son, of Virata and his other well-wishers who had served him loyally, of Drupada and of the five sons of Draupadi. For each of them he satisfied thousands of Brahmins with wealth and gems, cows and clothes. He performed the Shraddha as well for every king who had fallen in that battle and left no kinsman or friend behind. And for the souls of all his friends he had houses founded where food was given out, and places where water was given, and tanks dug in their names. So he paid the debt he owed them and gave the world no cause to blame him, and he went on protecting his subjects in dharma. He showed Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Vidura, all the elder Kauravas and all the officers the honor he had always shown them. He honored and protected the women whom the battle had left without husbands and sons. And to the destitute, the blind and the helpless he gave food, clothing and shelter, out of a great compassion.

With the kingdom his again and the ceremony of installation over, Yudhishthira joined his hands and spoke to lotus-eyed Krishna of the Dasharha race. “By your grace, Krishna, by your policy and might, your intelligence and prowess, I have my ancestral kingdom back. I bow to you again and again. You have been called the One only Being, and the refuge of all who worship, and the twice-born adore you under names without number. Salutations to you, Creator of the universe. You are its soul, and it has sprung from you. You are Vishnu, you are Jishnu, you are Hari, you are Krishna, you are Vaikuntha, and the first of all beings. The Puranas say you took birth seven times in the womb of Aditi, and it was you who were born of Prishni. The learned say you are the three ages. You are the lord of our senses, the great Lord worshiped in sacrifices, the great swan. You are three-eyed Shambhu. You are one, though known as Vibhu and Damodara. You are the great Boar, you are Fire, you are the Sun; the bull is on your banner, and Garuda also. You are Truth, the giver of food, and Guha, the general of the gods. You are the Ocean; you are without attributes. You are Emperor, Virat and Svarat, the chief of the gods and the cause from which the universe came. You are the sage Kapila, and you are the Dwarf. You are Sacrifice embodied, and Dhruva, and Garuda. You are the one the Vedas describe, the great holder of the waters, Brahman, the sacred refuge. You are Hiranyagarbha, the mantras svadha and svaha, and Keshava. You are the cause from which all this has sprung, and you are its dissolution. In the beginning it is you who create the universe, and it is under your control. Salutations to you, bearer of the bow Sharnga, the discus and the sword.” So he praised him in the middle of the court, and Krishna was pleased, and gladdened Pandu’s eldest son with many kind words in return.

The king dismissed his subjects, and they went to their homes. Then he comforted his brothers. “Your bodies were torn in the great battle by weapons of every kind,” he said to Bhima and Arjuna and the twins. “You are worn out. Grief and anger have scorched your hearts. Through my fault you suffered the miseries of exile in the forest like common men. Enjoy this victory now in gladness and at your ease. Rest, recover the full use of your faculties, and come to me again in the morning.” With Dhritarashtra’s approval he gave Bhima the palace of Duryodhana, with its many fine buildings and rooms, its gems of every kind and its servants, men and women, and Bhima entered it as Indra enters his own house. Arjuna, at the king’s command, received the palace of Duhshasana, which was in no way inferior, with its gateway of gold, its wealth and its attendants. The palace of Durmarshana was finer still, like the mansion of Kubera, bright with gold and every gem; the king gave it gladly to Nakula, who deserved it and who had grown thin in the great forest. The palace of Durmukha, lovely and adorned with gold, full of beds and of lotus-eyed women, he gave to Sahadeva, who was always busy with what would please him, and Sahadeva was as glad as the Lord of treasures when he was given Kailasa. Yuyutsu, Vidura and Sanjaya, Sudharman and Dhaumya went to the houses they had owned before. Krishna, with Satyaki, entered the palace of Arjuna like a tiger entering its cave in the hills. Food and drink had been made ready for them all. The princes passed the night happily, woke glad, and presented themselves before King Yudhishthira.

A key to reading this (the six requirements of the realm): Yudhishthira’s first act as king is to divide the work. Bhima is made Yuvaraja. Vidura is given the king’s counsel and the oversight of the sixfold requirements of the state. Sanjaya has the finances; Nakula the register, the food and the pay of the forces; Arjuna the resisting of hostile forces and the punishing of the wicked; Dhaumya the Brahmins and the rites of the gods; and Sahadeva the guarding of the king’s person.

The gist: The new king tells his subjects that Dhritarashtra is still lord of the world and asks them to obey the old man as before. He assigns each brother and elder a charge, performs the Shraddha for every kinsman killed, and for every king who died leaving no one behind, and founds houses of food, places of water and tanks in their names. Widows, the destitute, the blind and the helpless are given food, clothing and shelter. Then, in open court, he praises Krishna under name after name as the one from whom the universe comes.

The secret of Krishna’s trance: Bhishma remembering him

With the kingdom in his hands, Yudhishthira set each of the four orders to its duties. He gave a thousand Brahmins of the Snataka order a thousand nishkas each. He satisfied the wishes of his servants and dependents and of the guests who came to him, the undeserving and the unorthodox among them. To his priest Dhaumya he gave cows in thousands, wealth, gold, silver and robes. He behaved toward Kripa as a man should toward his teacher, went on honoring Vidura greatly, and placed his kingdom at the disposal of Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Vidura. With everyone content, the citizens included, he went with joined hands to Krishna. He found him seated on a large couch adorned with gold and gems, the color of a dark cloud, in robes of yellow silk and celestial ornaments, blazing like a jewel set in gold, the Kaustubha gem on his chest like the rising sun on the eastern mountain. Yudhishthira came up smiling. “Did you pass the night happily? Are all your faculties in their full strength? Through your grace we have the kingdom back and the whole earth under us; through your grace we have won victory and great fame and have not fallen from the duties of our order.” Krishna said not a word. He was deep in meditation. “How wonderful this is,” Yudhishthira said, “that you, whose prowess has no measure, are sunk in meditation! Is all well with the three worlds? You have withdrawn into the fourth state, and my mind is full of wonder. The five life-breaths that move in the body you have brought to stillness. Your senses you have gathered into your mind, and speech and mind into your understanding, and all of them into your soul. The hair on your body stands up. You are as motionless as a wooden post or a stone, as still as a lamp flame burning where there is no wind. If I am fit to hear the cause, if it is no secret of yours, drive away my doubt. I ask it as a favor, I am your worshiper, and I bow my head to you.”

Krishna brought his mind, his understanding and his senses back to their usual sphere, and said with a soft smile, “Bhishma, lying now on a bed of arrows, like a fire that is about to go out, is thinking of me. So my mind was fixed on him. My mind was fixed on the man the twang of whose bowstring and the clap of whose palms Indra himself could not bear. I was thinking of him who, at the self-choice of the daughters of the king of Kashi, defeated all the assembled kings in a moment and carried off three princesses for the marriage of his brother Vichitravirya. I was thinking of him who fought Rama of Bhrigu’s race for twenty-three days without a pause, and whom Rama could not overcome. He gathered in all his senses, fixed his mind by the help of his understanding, and sought refuge in me; that is why my mind was centered on him. I was thinking of him whom Ganga conceived and bore as human mothers bear, and whom Vasishtha took as a pupil; of that hero who knows all the celestial weapons and the four Vedas with their branches; of the favorite disciple of Rama, Jamadagni’s son, a vessel of the sciences; of him who knows the past, the future and the present.

“When he has gone up to heaven by his own achievements, the earth will look like a moonless night. So go to Ganga’s son, Yudhishthira, humbly, and ask him what you wish to learn. Ask him about the four branches of knowledge, which concern morality, profit, pleasure and release. Ask him about the sacrifices and the rites laid down for the four orders, about the four ways of life, and about the duties of kings in full. When Bhishma disappears from the world, every kind of knowledge will disappear with him. That is why I urge you to go now.”

Yudhishthira’s voice was choked with tears. “What you have said of Bhishma’s greatness is true, and I do not doubt a word of it. I have heard Brahmins speak of his high blessedness. If your heart is inclined to grace, Krishna, then let us go to him with you at our head. When the sun turns to the north, Bhishma will leave this world for the regions he has won. He deserves to see you.” Krishna turned to Satyaki, who was sitting beside him. “Let my chariot be yoked.” Satyaki went out at once and gave the order to Daruka, and Daruka made it ready: a chariot adorned with gold, set with emeralds and moon-gems and sun-gems, its wheels cased in gold, quick as the wind, bright as the morning sun, with Garuda on its standard and many banners flying; and yoked to it, in trappings of gold, Sugriva and Shaibya and the other two, horses swift as thought. He came back with joined hands and said that it was ready. Out on the field, Bhishma lay on his bed of arrows among the greatest of the Brahmins, his body pierced with arrows beyond counting and shining like the sun among its rays. Vyasa was there, and Narada, Devasthana, Jaimini, Paila, Shandilya, Devarata, Maitreya, Asita, Vasishtha, Kaushika, Harita, Lomasha, Brihaspati and Shukra, Chyavana, Sanatkumara, Kapila, Valmiki, Tumburu, Maudgalya, Rama of Bhrigu’s line, Trinabindu, Pippalada, Samvarta, Pulaha, Kashyapa, Pulastya, Kratu, Daksha, Parashara, Marichi, Angiras, Gautama, Galava, Dhaumya, Mandavya, Markandeya and many more, so that he lay among them like the moon among the planets and stars. With a pure heart and joined palms he thought of Krishna in mind, word and act, and in a strong, glad voice he sang his praise. “You are without beginning and without end. Neither the gods nor the rishis know you. All the worlds and all created things live in you and enter you again, strung on you like gems on a thread. You are called Hari of the thousand heads, the thousand feet, the thousand eyes; you are called Narayana, the refuge of the universe; you are the subtlest of the subtle and the highest of the high. You were born of Devaki and Vasudeva as fire is born of two sticks. You have filled heaven with your head and the earth with your feet. The directions are your arms and the sun is your eye. A single bow of the head to Krishna is equal to ten horse sacrifices; and the man of ten horse sacrifices is born again, while the man who bows to Krishna is freed from birth. I seek your protection. Think what will be for my good.” He said, “Salutations to Krishna,” and bowed. And Krishna, knowing by his yoga of the old man’s devotion, gave him heavenly knowledge reaching over the past, the present and the future.

A key to reading this (the northern course): Yudhishthira says that Bhishma will leave this world when the sun turns to the north, and that is the limit on everything Krishna urges here. Earlier Yudhishthira told Arjuna that the sun’s northern path, Uttarayana, is the one the knowers of the Puranas praise. Vyasa has said that Bhishma’s death is in his own keeping; Krishna adds that when he goes, every kind of knowledge goes with him.

The gist: Yudhishthira finds Krishna motionless in meditation and asks the cause. Krishna answers that Bhishma, on his bed of arrows, was thinking of him, and names what Bhishma is: the victor at the self-choice in Kashi, the man Rama of Bhrigu’s line could not beat in twenty-three days, Vasishtha’s pupil, a knower of past, present and future. He tells the king to go and ask while there is time. On the field Bhishma praises Krishna among the assembled sages, and Krishna gives him knowledge of the three times.

The journey to Kurukshetra, and Parashurama’s twenty-one clearings of the Kshatriyas

Krishna rose from his seat and mounted his chariot, and Satyaki rode with him. Yudhishthira and Arjuna went on a second chariot, Bhima and the twins on a third, and Kripa, Yuyutsu and Sanjaya of the Suta caste each on his own, chariots that looked like moving towns and shook the earth with the rattle of their wheels. As he went Krishna listened gladly to the Brahmins who spoke his praise, and greeted the people who stood along the streets with joined hands and bowed heads. With standards and banners flying and quick horses under the yoke they came soon to Kurukshetra and drove down onto the field. It was covered with hair and marrow and bones, the place where millions of Kshatriyas had cast off their bodies. There were hills on it made of the carcasses and bones of elephants and horses, and human heads and skulls lay scattered across it like conch shells. Thousands of funeral pyres had marked it, heaps of armor and weapons lay everywhere, and the wide plain looked like the drinking ground of the Destroyer himself, used and lately abandoned. The great chariot-fighters drove on quickly, looking at a battlefield haunted by crowds of spirits and thronged with Rakshasas. And as they went Krishna spoke to Yudhishthira of the prowess of Jamadagni’s son, Rama of the axe, the Parashurama who had taught Karna. “There, far off, you can see the five lakes of Rama. There Rama offered the blood of Kshatriyas to the spirits of his ancestors. It was here that he gave up his task, having cleared the earth of Kshatriyas three times seven times.”

“I have great doubts about what you say,” Yudhishthira answered, “that Rama emptied the earth of Kshatriyas three times seven times. If the very seed of the Kshatriyas was burned up, how was the order revived? How was it destroyed, and how did it grow again? Millions of Kshatriyas died in terrible chariot battles, and the earth was strewn with their bodies. For what reason did Rama of Bhrigu’s line do this? Clear away my doubt, Krishna. The highest knowledge comes from you.” And Krishna, as the chariot ran, told him all of it. “Hear the story of Rama’s power and his birth as I heard it from great rishis. Jahnu had a son named Rajas. Rajas had a son named Balakashva, and King Balakashva had a son named Kushika, a man of righteous conduct, who was like Indra on earth. Kushika did the hardest penance, wishing to have the lord of the three worlds for his son, and Indra, seeing him so engaged and fit to father a son, entered into the king with his own force and was born as Kushika’s son, known as Gadhi. Gadhi had a daughter named Satyavati, and he gave her as wife to Richika, a descendant of Bhrigu. Her husband was greatly pleased with the purity of her conduct, and he cooked the sacrificial food of milk and rice in order to give her father Gadhi a son. He called his wife and said, ‘This portion of the hallowed food is for you, and this other portion is for your mother. A son will be born of her who will blaze with energy, a champion among Kshatriyas, unconquerable by Kshatriyas, and the killer of the greatest of them. And for you, blessed lady, this portion will bring a son of great wisdom, the image of calm, rich in penance, a Brahmin above all others.’ Having said this, Richika set his heart on penance and went to the woods.

“About that time King Gadhi, who had resolved on a pilgrimage to the holy waters, arrived with his queen at Richika’s hermitage. Satyavati took the two portions and, glad and in great haste, told her mother what her husband had said. And the queen mother gave her daughter the portion meant for herself, and in her ignorance took the portion meant for her daughter. So Satyavati, her body shining, conceived a child of terrible form, destined to be the destroyer of the Kshatriyas. Richika looked and saw what kind of child lay in her womb, and he said to his wife, ‘You have been deceived by your mother, blessed lady, through the exchange of the hallowed portions. Your son will be a man of cruel deeds and a vengeful heart. Your brother, born of your mother, will be a Brahmin given to penance. Into the food meant for you I had placed the seed of the supreme and universal Brahman, and into the food meant for your mother the whole sum of Kshatriya energy. Because the portions were exchanged, what was intended will not happen. Your mother will have a Brahmin child, and you will have a son who becomes a Kshatriya.’ Satyavati threw herself down, laid her head at his feet, and said, trembling, ‘Holy one, do not say such a thing to me, that I will have a wretch among Brahmins for my son.’ Richika said, ‘I did not intend this for you. A son of fierce deeds has been conceived in you only because the portions were exchanged.’ She said, ‘If you wished, sage, you could create other worlds; what is a child to that? Give me a son who is righteous and devoted to peace.’ Richika said, ‘I have never spoken a falsehood, lady, even in jest, and certainly I spoke none over food prepared with Vedic formulas at a kindled fire. Destiny ordained this long ago; I have seen all of it by my penances. All the descendants of your father will have the virtues of Brahmins.’ Satyavati said, ‘Then let it be our grandson who is such, and let me have a son of peaceful ways.’ And Richika answered, ‘I see no difference between a son and a grandson, fair one. It will be as you say.’

“So Satyavati bore, in Bhrigu’s line, a son given to penance and to peaceful ways: Jamadagni, a man of ordered vows. And Kushika’s son Gadhi fathered a son named Vishvamitra, who had every quality of a Brahmin and, though born in the Kshatriya order, was a Brahmin’s equal. Jamadagni, that ocean of penance, fathered a son of fierce deeds, who mastered the sciences and the science of arms among them, and who was like a blazing fire. That son was Rama, the destroyer of the Kshatriyas. He pleased Mahadeva on the mountains of Gandhamadana and begged weapons of the great god, above all the axe of fierce energy the god carried in his hands, and with that axe, which had no equal for fiery splendor and sharpness, he had no equal on earth. Meanwhile there was Arjuna, the mighty son of Kritavirya, a Kshatriya and the ruler of the Haihayas. He had great energy and was highly virtuous in his conduct, and through the grace of the rishi Dattatreya he had a thousand arms. With the strength of those arms he subdued in battle the whole earth, with her mountains and her seven islands, became a very powerful emperor, and at last gave the earth away to the Brahmins in a horse sacrifice. Once the god of fire came to him thirsty and begging, and the thousand-armed king gave him alms. The fire sprang from the points of his arrows, hungry to consume, and burned villages and towns, kingdoms and the hamlets of cowherds. It burned mountains and great forests. And with the king of the Haihayas to help it and the wind to fan it, it burned the hermitage of Apava, a delightful place where at that time no one was living. Apava saw his retreat burned by that powerful Kshatriya and cursed him in his wrath. ‘You did not spare even these woods of mine, Arjuna. For that, Rama of Bhrigu’s line will cut off your arms.’

“Arjuna was mighty and brave, a lover of peace, respectful to Brahmins, a protector and a giver, and he gave no thought to the curse. It was his sons, powerful, always haughty and cruel, who became the cause of his death. Without the knowledge of the king of the Haihayas the princes seized the calf of Jamadagni’s homa cow and carried it off, and for that a quarrel arose between Jamadagni and the Haihayas. Rama, Jamadagni’s son, in his wrath cut off the arms of Arjuna and brought back his father’s calf, which was wandering in the inner enclosures of the king’s palace. Then Arjuna’s foolish sons went together to the hermitage of Jamadagni while Rama was out gathering sacred fuel and grass, and with the points of their lances they struck the rishi’s head from his body. Rama burned with rage at his father’s death, and he swore to rid the earth of Kshatriyas and took up arms. He put out his strength and quickly killed every son and grandson of Kritavirya. Killing Haihayas by the thousand in his fury, he turned the earth to a mire of blood, and soon he had stripped her of all her Kshatriyas. Then he was filled with compassion, and he withdrew into the woods.

“Some thousands of years went by. Rama was wrathful by nature, and now he was accused of cowardice. Paravasu, the grandson of Vishvamitra and the son of Raibhya, a man of great ascetic merit, began to taunt him in public. ‘Rama, those righteous men who gathered at the sacrifice when Yayati fell, Pratardana and the rest, were they not Kshatriyas by birth? Your vow is false. Your boast among men is empty. You ran to the mountains for fear of Kshatriya heroes.’ Rama heard him and took up his weapons again, and again he strewed the earth with Kshatriya bodies by the hundred. Those Kshatriyas he spared, and there were hundreds, multiplied in time and became mighty kings, and Rama slaughtered them in their turn and did not spare the children. The earth was strewn again, with the bodies of children born before their time. As soon as Kshatriya children were born, Rama killed them. Some Kshatriya women, all the same, managed to protect their children from his wrath. When he had emptied the earth of Kshatriyas three times seven times, the descendant of Bhrigu completed a horse sacrifice and gave the earth away as the sacrificial gift to Kashyapa.

“Kashyapa wished to save what was left of the Kshatriyas. Pointing with the hand that still held the sacrificial ladle, he said, ‘Great sage, go to the shores of the southern ocean. You must not live, Rama, within what is now my dominion.’ At those words Ocean at once made a region for Jamadagni’s son on his farther shore, a land called Shurparaka. Kashyapa, having accepted the earth as a gift, made a present of it to the Brahmins and entered the great forest. Then Shudras and Vaishyas, acting as they pleased, began to take the wives of Brahmins. When anarchy sets in on earth, the weak are oppressed by the strong, and no man is master of his own property. With no Kshatriyas of virtue to protect her, and oppressed by the wicked in that disorder, the earth sank quickly toward the lowest depths. Kashyapa saw her sinking in her fear and held her on his lap; and because the great rishi held her on his lap, his uru, the earth is known by the name Urvi. Then the goddess Earth, for her own protection, pleased Kashyapa and begged a king of him.

“The Earth said, ‘There are some great Kshatriyas, Brahmin, whom I have hidden among women. They were born in the race of the Haihayas. Let them protect me. There is another, of Puru’s race, the son of Viduratha, who has been brought up among bears in the Rikshavat mountains. Another, the son of Saudasa, has been protected out of compassion by Parashara, that tireless sacrificer; though he was born in a twice-born order he does every kind of work for the rishi like a Shudra, and so he is named Sarvakarman. Shibi’s son Gopati has been brought up in the forest among cattle. Let him protect me. Pratardana’s son Vatsa has been brought up among calves in a cowpen. Let that prince protect me. The grandson of Dadhivahana and son of Diviratha was hidden and guarded on the banks of the Ganga by the sage Gautama. His name is Brihadratha, and he has been protected by wolves and by the mountains of Gridhrakuta. Many Kshatriyas of the race of Marutta have been saved as well, brought up by Ocean, and equal in energy to the lord of the Maruts. These children of the Kshatriya order are heard of in different places, living among artisans and goldsmiths. If they protect me, I will stay unmoved. Their fathers and grandfathers were killed for my sake by Rama, and it is my duty to see their funeral rites performed. I do not wish to be protected by my present rulers. Arrange it quickly, sage, that I may stand as I stood before.’ So Kashyapa sought out the Kshatriyas the goddess had named and installed them as kings in due form. The Kshatriya lines that exist today are the offspring of those princes. That is how it happened, son of Pandu, in the old days.”

A sub-tale: Richika prepared two portions of hallowed food. Into his wife’s he had placed the seed of Brahman, and into her mother’s the whole sum of Kshatriya energy. The mother, in ignorance, exchanged them. So Gadhi’s queen bore Vishvamitra, born a Kshatriya and the equal of a Brahmin, and Satyavati, who begged that the fierceness pass to her grandson, bore the peaceful Jamadagni, whose son was Rama of the axe.

A key to reading this (twenty-one times): Krishna’s account gives the count its stages. After his father’s murder Rama killed the sons and grandsons of Kritavirya and thousands of Haihayas, and withdrew to the woods. Thousands of years later, taunted by Paravasu, he took up arms again. The Kshatriyas he spared multiplied and became kings, and he killed those too, down to the newborn. Three times seven times the earth was emptied, and each time some remained, for some Kshatriya women succeeded in protecting their children.

The gist: Crossing the field of Kurukshetra, Krishna points out the five lakes of Rama and, at Yudhishthira’s question, tells the story behind them: the exchanged portions that made Vishvamitra and Rama what they were, the thousand arms of Arjuna of the Haihayas, the stolen calf, the murder of Jamadagni, and the earth emptied of Kshatriyas three times seven times. At the end the Earth herself names the hidden princes, and Kashyapa makes them kings; from them the Kshatriya lines of the present descend.

At the bed of arrows: the talk of Krishna and Bhishma, and the boon of divine sight

Yudhishthira was filled with wonder. “The prowess of Rama, who in his wrath emptied the earth of Kshatriyas, was like Indra’s own,” he said to Krishna. “And the children of the Kshatriyas, in their fear of him, were hidden and reared by cattle, by Ocean, by leopards, bears and apes. This world of men deserves all praise, and those who live in it are fortunate, since such a feat was done in it by a Brahmin.” With that their talk ended, and the two of them came to where Ganga’s son lay on his bed of arrows. They saw Bhishma stretched there, bright as the evening sun wrapped in its own rays, with ascetics around him as the gods surround Indra, on a most sacred spot on the bank of the river Oghavati. Seeing him from a distance, Krishna and the king, the four Pandavas, Kripa and the rest got down from their chariots. They gathered in their restless minds, stilled their senses, and went up to the great rishis. Krishna, Satyaki and the others bowed to the seers, with Vyasa at their head, and then approached the son of Ganga and sat down around him.

Krishna looked at Bhishma, who was like a fire dying down, and his heart was heavy as he spoke. “Are your perceptions as clear as they were? I hope your understanding is unclouded. I hope your limbs are not tortured by the pain of these arrow wounds. Grief of mind weakens the body too. By the boon your father Shantanu gave you, your death depends on your own will; I myself do not have the merit that won you that. The smallest pin lodged in the body gives pain. What is there to say of hundreds of arrows? And surely pain cannot be said to afflict you. You are able to teach the gods themselves about the origin and the dissolution of living creatures. Everything of the past, the future and the present is known to you. I saw you, in the enjoyment of a swelling kingdom, sound of limb and in perfect health, with women all around you, give up the company of women. Apart from Shantanu’s son Bhishma we have never heard of anyone in the three worlds who, lying on a bed of arrows at the point of death, could hold death itself off by the power of his penance. We have never heard of anyone so devoted to truth, to penance, to giving, to sacrifice, to the science of arms, to the Vedas and to the protection of those who ask for protection, so harmless to all creatures, so pure in conduct and so self-restrained, who was also so great a chariot-fighter. On a single chariot you could subdue the gods, the Gandharvas, the Asuras, the Yakshas and the Rakshasas. The Brahmins always speak of you as the ninth of the Vasus, and by your virtues you have gone beyond them all and are the equal of Indra. Now drive out the grief of Pandu’s eldest son, who is burning for the slaughter of his kinsmen. The duties of the four orders and the four ways of life are known to you, and all that is taught in the four branches of knowledge, the eternal duties laid down in Yoga and Sankhya, the duties of those born of mixed orders, the customs of particular countries, tribes and families, the histories and the Puranas. There is no one else who can settle the doubts that rise in these matters. Men of such knowledge live only to comfort those whose minds have gone dark.”

Bhishma raised his head a little and joined his hands. “Salutations to you, divine Krishna. You are the origin of all the worlds and their dissolution. You are the Creator and the Destroyer, and no one can overcome you. The universe is your handiwork; you are its soul, and it has sprung from you. You are beyond the five elements. Salutations to you who are the three worlds and are above the three worlds. What you have said of me has let me see your divine attributes as they are shown in the three worlds, and I see your eternal form. You stand closing the seven paths of the Wind. Your head fills the sky and your feet the earth. The directions are your two arms, the sun is your eye, and Indra is your strength. In your robes of yellow, the color of the atasi flower, you look to us like a cloud shot with lightning. I am devoted to you, I seek your protection, and I wish for a blessed end. Think, lotus-eyed one, what would be good for me.”

Krishna said, “Because your devotion to me is very great, I have shown you my celestial form. I do not show myself to one who is not devoted to me, or to a devotee who is not sincere, or to one whose soul is unrestrained. You are devoted to me and you have always kept to righteousness. Your heart is pure; you are self-restrained, given to penance and to gifts. Through your own penances, Bhishma, you are fit to see me. Those regions from which there is no return are ready for you. Fifty-six days still remain for you to live. Then, casting off your body, you will have the blessed reward of your acts. Look: the gods and the Vasus, in forms of fiery splendor, are waiting for you unseen on their chariots until the moment the sun enters on its northern course. When the sun turns north, you will go to the regions from which no man of knowledge ever comes back to this earth. And when you leave this world for that one, all knowledge will die with you. That is why all these people have gathered and come to you, to hear you speak on duty and morality. Yudhishthira is firm in truth, and grief for his slaughtered kinsmen has clouded his learning. Speak to him words of truth, full of morality and of yoga, and quickly drive that grief away.”

Bhishma answered him. “Master of all the worlds, Shiva, Narayana, I have heard your words and I am filled with joy. And what words of instruction can I speak in your presence, when everything that speech can treat is already contained in your speech? Whatever is done or ought to be done in either world comes from your intelligent self. A man who could lecture on heaven before the king of the gods could lecture on morality, pleasure, profit and release before you. My mind is shaken by the pain of these arrow wounds. My limbs are weak, and my understanding is not clear. These shafts are like poison or fire, and I have no strength to say anything. My strength is leaving me; my life-breaths are hurrying to go; the vital parts of my body are burning; my words come out slurred. How can I venture to speak? Be kind to me. I will say nothing. Forgive me. Brihaspati himself, the master of speech, would falter if he had to speak before you. I can no longer tell the quarters of the sky apart, or the sky from the earth. It is only by your power that I am still alive. Speak yourself, for the good of King Yudhishthira the just, for you are the ordainer of every ordinance. How can a man like me speak while you are here, the eternal creator of the universe? It would be a pupil lecturing in front of his teacher.”

Krishna said, “Those words are worthy of you, the first man of Kuru’s race, great in soul, great in patience, and master of every subject. As for what you say of the pain of your arrow wounds, receive this boon from me, Bhishma, by my grace. Discomfort, stupor, burning, pain, hunger and thirst shall not overcome you. Your perceptions and your memory shall be unclouded. Your understanding shall not fail you. Your mind, freed from the qualities of passion and darkness, shall rest always in the quality of goodness, like the moon come out from the clouds. Whatever subject touching duty, morality or profit you think on, your understanding will enter it. You will have celestial sight and see the four orders of created things. With the eye of knowledge you will see every created thing you try to recall, as a man sees fish in a clear stream.”

Then the great rishis, Vyasa among them, praised Krishna with hymns from the Rig, the Yajur and the Sama Vedas. A shower of flowers of every season fell from the sky on the place where Krishna, Ganga’s son and the son of Pandu were. Celestial instruments of every kind sounded in the air, and the companies of Apsaras began to sing. No sign of evil was seen anywhere. A pure and pleasant breeze began to blow, carrying every fragrance. The quarters of the sky grew clear and quiet, and the animals and birds moved about in peace. Soon afterward the thousand-rayed sun was seen going down in the west, like a fire at the far edge of a great forest. The rishis rose and saluted Krishna, Bhishma and King Yudhishthira, and Krishna and the sons of Pandu, Satyaki, Sanjaya and Kripa bowed to them in return. “We will come back tomorrow,” the sages said, and went quickly to their own places. Krishna and the Pandavas saluted Bhishma, walked around him in reverence, and climbed onto their chariots. Many other chariots went with them, with golden poles, and elephants in rut like moving hills, horses swift as Garuda, and foot soldiers with bows; and that host, moving at speed, went in two divisions, one before the princes and one behind, like the two currents of the great river Narmada where the Rikshavat mountains stand across her and part her. The moon rose before them and gladdened the army, putting back into the herbs and plants of the earth the sap the sun had drawn out of them. So Krishna and the sons of Pandu came into the Kuru city, which was as splendid as the city of Indra, and went to their houses like tired lions going to their caves.

A key to reading this (fifty-six days): Krishna tells Bhishma that fifty-six days of life remain to him, and that the gods and the Vasus are waiting, unseen, for the moment the sun turns to its northern course. That count is the time the king has. All knowledge, Krishna says, will die with Bhishma, which is why everyone has gathered to hear him speak on duty; and the boon that follows, freedom from pain, hunger and thirst with memory and understanding unclouded, is what makes the speaking possible.

The gist: At the bed of arrows on the bank of the Oghavati, Krishna asks after Bhishma’s pain and tells him he alone can lift Yudhishthira’s grief. Bhishma answers with praise, and then with a refusal: the arrows burn like poison, his words are slurred, and no one should lecture in front of the creator of the universe. Krishna gives him a boon that takes away pain, hunger and thirst, clears his mind and opens his sight. The sun goes down, the sages promise to return the next day, and Krishna and the Pandavas ride back to the city under a rising moon.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Shanti Parva, Rajadharmanushasana sub-parva, Sections 1 to 52. The Sanskrit e-text, the Gita Press Hindi edition, and Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s complete English translation were used to verify names, sequence, and principal events. Where the recensions differ, this English retelling follows Ganguli, and the Hindi edition follows Gita Press.