Mahabharata · The Horse-Sacrifice, the Anugita, the Reviving of Parikshit, and the Mongoose

About 176 min read · 29,910 words

Yudhishthira had offered water on the bank of the Ganga for Bhishma, and as he climbed back up his feet gave way, his eyes flooded, and he dropped to the ground at the water’s edge like an elephant taken by a hunter’s arrow. At a sign from Krishna, Bhimasena bent and caught him. “This must not be,” was all Krishna, grinder of enemy hosts, said. The Pandavas gathered around him in a ring, and the king kept drawing long, ragged breaths. Dhritarashtra, himself broken by grief for his hundred sons and yet looking on with the eye of wisdom, spoke. “Rise, best of the Kurus. Turn your mind to your duty now. You have won this Earth by the law of the Kshatriya; enjoy her now with your brothers and your friends. I see no cause for your grief. It is Gandhari and I who should weep, having lost a hundred sons like riches found in a dream, not you.” And with that he opened his own remorse as well, that Vidura had warned him long ago and that he, in his folly, had sided with Duryodhana, and that this ocean of sorrow was the fruit of it.

Krishna and Vyasa console him, and Yudhishthira begs to go to the forest

Dhritarashtra’s words steadied Yudhishthira a little. Then Kesava spoke. “A man who grieves without measure for his forefathers only troubles them. So put off your grief and hold a sacrifice; give the priests their dakshina, the fee of the rite; gratify the gods with soma, the sacred drink, and the fathers with their food and water; feed your guests, and give to the poor and the suffering as much as they wish. It does not become a man of your understanding to sit like this and weep. What was to be known, you have known; what was to be done, you have done. You heard the law of the Kshatriya from Bhishma, from Krishna Dvaipayana, from Narada and Vidura. The brave who fell in battle do not have to return from heaven. Let the grief go; what was to happen has happened.”

Yudhishthira answered him. “Govinda, I know well how you love me. If you would give me leave with a glad heart, I would spend my life as an ascetic in the forest. I find no peace anywhere, having killed my grandfather, and having killed Karna, that best of men who never once turned his back on the field. Do something, so that I am freed of this terrible sin and my mind is made clean.”

Hearing Pritha’s son speak so, Vyasa comforted him and said, “My child, your mind is not yet calm, and so you have fallen again into a childish daze. Why should we keep scattering our words to the wind? You know the law of the Kshatriya, who lives by war. A king who has done his rightful work should not sink into grief. You have listened, closely, to the whole doctrine of release, and I have cleared away, again and again, the doubts your own longing bred. You know every rite of expiation; why then do you drown in sorrow like an ignorant man? This is not worthy of you.”

Vyasa went on. “Yudhishthira, your understanding, I think, is still not full. No one does anything by his own strength alone; it is God who sets a man to good work or bad. Where then is the room for regret? You count yourself a doer of sin. Then hear how sin is washed away: by tapas, austerity; by yajna, the fire-rite; and by gifts. Even the gods conquered the danavas by holding sacrifices. So make ready for the Rajasuya and the Ashvamedha, the horse-sacrifice; as Rama the son of Dasharatha did, and as your own ancestor, the mighty Bharata, son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, did, hold the Ashvamedha by the rule, with its full dakshina.”

Yudhishthira bowed his head and laid out his difficulty. “The horse-sacrifice does purify kings, that is beyond doubt. But there is one thing in my mind that you should hear. After this slaughter of my own kindred, I cannot give away even a small gift; I have no wealth to give. And I cannot beg it from these princes whose wounds are still fresh, who are still bent under their sorrow. Having laid the Earth waste with my own hand, how am I to levy dues for a sacrifice? Through Duryodhana’s fault the kings of the Earth are destroyed, and that reckless man’s own treasury is empty. In this rite the dakshina is the Earth herself, that is the first rule. I do not care for any substitute for it either. In this, it is you who must counsel me.”

Dvaipayana thought for a moment and said, “This empty treasury will fill again. In the mountain Himavat, the Himalayas, lies the gold that the brahmanas left behind at the sacrifice of the high-souled Marutta.” Yudhishthira asked, “How was so much gold gathered at Marutta’s sacrifice? When did he reign?” And so Vyasa told him the tale of Marutta, who came of the line of Karandhama.

A key to reading this (the idea): In the Ashvamedha, the horse-sacrifice, a king lets a horse loose for a year; wherever it wanders is counted the conqueror’s land, and anyone who stops it invites war. It is a declaration of paramount rule. Here Yudhishthira’s reluctance is moral: he cannot bear to squeeze the money for the rite out of the very Earth he won by bloodshed. Vyasa’s answer is practical: the wealth will come from old gold lying in the Himalayas, not from a tax on the living.

The tale of King Marutta, and the gold of the Himalayas

Vyasa gave the line. In the Krita age Manu was lord of the Earth; his son was Prasandhi, his son Kshupa, and Kshupa’s son was that king, Ikshvaku. Ikshvaku had a hundred sons, all deeply righteous, and the eldest of the line became the model of bowmen. Further down that line came a king known as Karandhama, whose story is strange: when hard fortune had drained his treasury, his horses, and his chariots, and enemies pressed him on every side, no one could kill him, because he stood firm in dharma. At the worst of his trouble he blew on his hand from his own mouth, and from that an army sprang up; with it he conquered the kings along his borders, and so was called Karandhama.

Karandhama’s son was Avikshit, the equal of Indra in dharma, in fire, and in valor, with the strength of ten thousand elephants. Avikshit’s son was Marutta, greater than his father in every virtue, like a second form of Vishnu. The Earth was drawn to him, and he always claimed to stand level with the king of the gods. Indra would challenge him for it, yet Shakra could never prevail over that pure and perfect king.

Indra could not stomach it. He called his own priest Vrihaspati and said, “If you would do me a kindness, do not act as priest for Marutta. I am lord of the three worlds, Marutta only of the Earth. How can you conduct the rites of a mortal king?” Vrihaspati thought for a moment and replied, “Let fire give up its heat, let the Earth change her nature, let the sun cease to give light, I will never swerve from my truth. Being the priest of the king of the gods, I will not now conduct the rites of any mortal.” And Indra’s envy was eased.

A sub-tale: Vrihaspati and Samvarta were both sons of Angira, rival brothers under the same vows. Vrihaspati harried his younger brother Samvarta again and again, until Samvarta gave up everything, took the sky itself for his clothing, and wandered the Earth like a madman. Vrihaspati became the priest of the king of the gods, and Samvarta waited in Varanasi in the guise of a lunatic for the sight of Maheshvara. This rivalry of the two brothers became the very seed of Marutta’s sacrifice.

When Vrihaspati refused to conduct Marutta’s rites, Marutta turned back in shame and met Narada on the road. Narada sent him to Samvarta, and warned him to lay a corpse at the gate of Varanasi; whoever turned his face away at the sight of it would be Samvarta. So it happened. Samvarta doused Marutta with mud, ash, and spittle and tormented him sorely, but Marutta kept following him with folded hands. At last, in the shade of a banyan, Samvarta stopped.

Samvarta first tested Marutta’s sincerity, then set his terms. “I will certainly complete your sacrifice, but Vrihaspati and Indra will be angry with me and will try to harm you. Give me your word that you will stand firm; otherwise, in my wrath, I will burn you and your whole line to ash.” Marutta gave an unshakable pledge that he would never abandon Samvarta. Samvarta sent him to the peak of Munjavan in the Himalayas, where Mahadeva, lord of Uma, keeps his austerities with his ganas, and where mines of gold that shine like the rays of the sun are guarded all around by the servants of Kubera. By pleasing Mahadeva, Marutta won that gold and made the sacrifice ready with unearthly splendor; the smiths forged countless vessels of gold.

Hearing of Marutta’s swelling wealth, Vrihaspati grew sick with envy. Indra soothed him and sent Agni as a messenger, that Marutta might take Vrihaspati as his priest and win immortality. Marutta refused. Samvarta warned Agni, “Do not come again bringing Vrihaspati, or I will burn you with my angry glare.” Agni fled, trembling like a leaf of the peepul.

Then Agni told Indra the tale of Chyavana: how, at the sacrifice of Sharyati, when Indra forbade the Ashvins their share of the soma and hurled his thunderbolt at Chyavana, that brahmana by the power of his tapas seized Indra’s arm, thunderbolt and all, and shaped a fearsome asura named Mada, one of whose jaws was on the Earth and the other in the sky. Seeing him, a frightened Indra folded his hands and took refuge with the sage. “The strength of brahmanas is greater than the Kshatriyas’,” said Agni. “I will not set myself against Samvarta.”

Indra at last sent Dhritarashtra, king of the gandharvas, with a threat: Marutta must accept Vrihaspati or suffer the thunderbolt. Marutta answered that betraying a friend is a sin equal to the killing of a brahmana, and that he would keep Samvarta as his priest. When Indra’s roar and the crack of his bolt filled the sky, Marutta was afraid, but Samvarta by his mantras gave him fearlessness. Then Samvarta told Marutta to ask a boon, and Marutta asked that Indra himself and all the gods come to the sacrifice and take each his own share and his offering of soma. By the power of his mantras Samvarta summoned Indra in the flesh; Indra came with his horses, drank the soma, and said, well pleased, “I am content with you; my anger is gone.” Indra himself ordered the gods to raise the assembly-pavilion and its stairs, made a place for the dance of the apsaras, and set the shares of the rite. Samvarta blazed at the altar like a second fire. At the end of it Marutta heaped gold in place after place and gave the brahmanas boundless wealth, shone like Kubera, filled his treasury, and ruled the Earth to the sea.

“That gold,” Vyasa said to Yudhishthira, “is now yours to gather, and with it, worshipping the gods by the rule, you must hold this sacrifice.” Hearing it, Yudhishthira brightened and began to take counsel with his ministers again and again.

The gist: After the war Yudhishthira is sunk in grief and self-reproach and wants to leave the kingdom for the forest. Dhritarashtra, Krishna, and Vyasa turn him toward duty and counsel the Ashvamedha. Vyasa solves the money problem with the tale of Marutta: the gold from Samvarta’s sacrifice lies waiting in the Himalayas, drawing no blood from the people. The moral tension holds: it is the victor who is troubled by the price of his own victory.

Krishna’s Anugita: the enemies within

After Vyasa, Vasudeva turned to Yudhishthira, dim as a clouded sun, low as a fire smothered in smoke, and consoled him. “All crookedness of heart leads to ruin, and all straightness leads to Brahman. If that is the whole aim of wisdom, what can this trouble of the mind accomplish? Your work is not yet finished, nor are your enemies conquered, because the enemies still hidden in your own flesh you do not recognize.”

Then Krishna told the war of Indra and Vritra: how Vritra, one by one, enveloped Earth, water, light, wind, and sky, and stripped away their qualities, smell, taste, form, touch, and sound, and how each time Indra struck him with the thunderbolt; how in the end Vritra entered Indra’s own body and cast him into delusion; and how, steadied by Vasishtha, Indra killed Vritra with an unseen bolt inside his own body. The lesson was that the true war is within.

Krishna went on. “Illnesses are of two kinds, of the body and of the mind, and each is bred by the working of the other. Cold, heat, and wind, the three humors, are the flaws of the body; their even balance is health. In the same way sattva, rajas, and tamas are the qualities of the self; their even balance is the health of the mind. Happiness is conquered by sorrow, and sorrow by happiness. But you will not call to mind your happiness, nor your sorrow; so what is it, apart from this delusion of grief, that you wish to remember?”

Krishna named the sorrows Yudhishthira must not relive now: the sight of Krishna, Draupadi, in the assembly hall in a single cloth, in her time of impurity; the exile and the deerskins; the peril of Jatasura, the fight with Chitrasena, the outrage of the king of Sindhu; Kichaka’s kick at Draupadi; the field of battle against Drona and Bhishma. “Now the war has come,” said Krishna, “that every man must fight alone, against his own mind. This war needs no arrows, no friend, no servant. Lose it, and you fall to the lowest wretchedness; know it, and success follows.”

“Release is not won by giving up outward things, kingdom and the rest,” Krishna said. “It is won by giving up the attachment that flatters the body. Death is a word of two syllables, and the eternal, Brahman, is a word of three. The sense of ‘this is mine’ is death itself, and the absence of that sense is the eternal. These two, Brahman and death, wage war in the self of every creature, unseen. If a man wins the whole Earth and is not attached to it, what harm can the world do him; and one who lives on roots and fruit in the forest but still hungers for pleasures walks about with death in his mouth.”

A sub-tale: Krishna recited the Kamagita, the song in which Desire itself speaks: “No one destroys me without the right means. One who tries to kill me by chanting, I settle inside him as pride; one who kills me by sacrifice and gift, I appear in his mind as the most virtuous of creatures and dupe him; one who kills me by the Vedas and their branches, I become the very soul of dharma in unmoving things; one who kills me by tapas, I put on the guise of tapas itself. I am imperishable; no one can kill me.” And so, said Krishna, turn your own desire the other way, toward dharma.

“Therefore hold the Ashvamedha with its dakshina, and other vast sacrifices,” Krishna said. “Do not grieve again over friends fallen on the field; the slain will not be seen alive again.” By these words, and by the comfort of Vishvavasu, Dvaipayana, Narada, Krishna, Devasthana, Bhima, Nakula, Draupadi, Sahadeva, Arjuna, and other brahmanas, Yudhishthira came out of his grief. Performing the last rites for the dead, honoring brahmanas and gods, he took the sea-girdled Earth under his hand.

Yudhishthira spoke his wish to go to the Himalayas and hold the sacrifice, and asked the holy ones for their protection. Vyasa, Narada, and Devasthana directed Yudhishthira, Krishna, and Arjuna to go to the Himalayas, and then vanished from the very hall. Having performed the funeral rites of Bhishma, Karna, and the other Kaurava heroes, and given boundless gifts to brahmanas, the Pandavas entered Hastinapura with Dhritarashtra at their head, and Yudhishthira, comforting his blind but wise uncle, began to rule the Earth with his brothers.

The gist: This opening stretch of Krishna’s Anugita turns Yudhishthira’s outward grief into an inner war: the real enemies are desire and anger, the real battlefield the mind. The parables of Indra and Vritra and of the Kamagita say exactly this. But notice: this teaching of detachment finally sends Yudhishthira back toward action, toward the sacrifice, and away from fleeing the world.

Arjuna’s request, and the perfected brahmana in Krishna’s tale

With the kingdom settled, Vasudeva and Dhananjaya passed their days happily in the lovely hall at Indraprastha, remembering the war and the years before it. One day Krishna spoke of his wish to return to Dwarka, and Arjuna, heavy-hearted, said, “So be it.” Then Arjuna made a request. “Mighty-armed one, at the time of the war you showed me your universal form and told me the highest truths, and from my restless mind they have all slipped away. You will go soon to Dwarka; tell them to me again.”

Krishna embraced him and said, “I told you the secrets that are eternal, and set out dharma in its true form. It grieves me to learn that in your folly you did not take it in. All of that I do not now recall in detail. I gave that teaching on the supreme Brahman while fixed in yoga; it is not possible for me to repeat it word for word. But on this same subject I will tell you an old history.”

Krishna told it: out of heaven, out of the world of Brahma, a brahmana of matchless splendor once came to him. The tale that brahmana carried was a dialogue between Kashyapa and a perfected brahmana. That perfected one knew the truth of how creatures come and go, of pleasure and pain, of birth and death, of merit and sin; he lived as one already freed, moved with the unseen Siddhas, and was as unattached everywhere as the wind. Kashyapa served him in the spirit of a pupil and won his favor.

The perfected one said, “By their various deeds and by merit men reach different states and dwellings in heaven. But nowhere is there the highest happiness, nowhere a lasting home; even from the high worlds one falls again and again. I too, caught in desire and anger, went through many wretched states, was born and died over and over, sucked the breasts of many mothers, saw pleasures and pains without number. At last, overcome by sorrow, I took refuge in the formless, and by peace of self won the success that you see. Now I need not return to this world of mortals.”

Kashyapa asked, “How does one body dissolve, and how is another gained? How is the living self freed from these grievous rebirths? Where do the deeds of a bodiless self remain?” And the freed sage answered each question. He told how, when the deeds that measure a lifespan wear out, a man’s judgment is turned upside down and he begins to act against his own life; how irregular and harmful food inflames the humors; how heat, roused by wind, chokes the breath; and how in great pain the living self leaves the body, a pain like the pain of entering and leaving the womb. Parted from the body, the self is wrapped in its own merits and sins, and the wise, with the eye of meditation, see it come and go in the dark like a firefly.

“The living self has three regions,” the sage said. “This world of deeds; the heavens above; and the hells below. Doers of evil are cooked head downward; that is a terrible sorrow, hard to escape. Doers of good go to the worlds of the stars, the moon, and the sun, but the moment their merit is spent they fall again; and even in heaven there is discontent at the sight of one still brighter.”

A key to reading this (the idea): Jiva is the conscious self bound in a body. Prakriti, or Pradhana, is the root cause-principle from which the whole material world is made. Kshara is the perishable, the seen world; akshara is the imperishable, the self, Brahman. This part of the Anugita binds the process of death, rebirth, and entry into the womb to the language of the body, and says that even heaven is not the final aim; the final aim is dissolution in Brahman.

The sage then described the self’s entry into the womb: deeds are never destroyed, and give their fruit body after body. Seed joined with blood forms the “field” in the womb, and the self, by its own subtlety and unmanifest nature, though it takes a body, clings to nothing; and for this it is called the eternal Brahman. As molten iron takes the shape of the mold, as fire heats the iron, as a lamp reveals everything in a room, so the self with the mind pervades every limb of the embryo and gives it motion. And he counted the good deeds by which the self is made happy in its rebirths: gift, tapas, chastity, self-restraint, calm, mercy to all creatures, turning from cruelty and from the wealth of others, service to mother and father, honor to gods and guests and gurus, and the mastery of the senses; from these springs the dharma that protects all creatures.

Showing the path of yoga, the sage said, “Draw the senses back from their objects and fix the mind in the self. As the tender reed is drawn from the munja grass, so the yogi draws the self from the body and beholds it; the body is the munja, the self the reed. One who thus sees the self in yoga becomes lord of the three worlds, takes on bodies at will, turns aside old age and death, neither grieves nor rejoices; no weapon pierces him, and death is not in him.” Having said this, the brahmana vanished on the spot.

Krishna said to Arjuna, “This was the teaching, Partha, that you heard on the chariot. It is hard for one whose mind is soiled, or whose self is not pure. It is a great secret even among the gods, and no one but you was fit to hear it. Whoever keeps this dharma, even a woman, a vaishya, a shudra, reaches the highest end; how much more a brahmana or a Kshatriya. One who practices it steadily for six months, in him yoga is perfected.”

The gist: Arjuna has forgotten the heart of the Gita; Krishna cannot repeat it word for word, so he gives it back as the Anugita, the dialogue of a perfected brahmana and Kashyapa. It maps the process of death and rebirth, the imperishable binding of the self by its deeds, and the yoga of drawing the self out of the body to behold it. Against the direct vision of the universal form in the original Gita, this is an indirect teaching set inside a scriptural tale; that is the difference between the two.

The brahmana and his wife: the sacrifice inside the body

Inside that same tale of the perfected brahmana, Krishna told one more dialogue, between a wise brahmana and his wife. The wife reproached him. “A husband who has given up all works, who is dry and unfeeling toward me, taking shelter with him, to what world will I go? They say a wife reaches the state her husband reaches; then what will become of me?”

The calm-souled brahmana smiled and said, “Good lady, your words do not anger me. Works that show, that lean on other things, that take a gross form, are done by men set on works; and the ignorant only pile up delusion from those same works. I have seen inside the body that place of the self where Brahman stands beyond all pairs of opposites, where soma is with fire, and the wind moves bearing all creatures.”

Then he opened the figure of the sacrifice within the body: a fire called Vaishvanara burns in the body with seven flames; the nostrils, the tongue, the eyes, the skin, the ears, the mind, and the understanding are its seven tongues; smell, form, taste, touch, sound, thought, and knowing are its seven fuels; and the one who smells, the one who eats, the one who sees, the one who touches, the one who hears, the one who thinks, and the one who understands are its seven hotris, the priests who pour the offering. Earth, wind, sky, water, and fire, mind and understanding, these are the seven wombs from which everything springs.

The wife raised questions: whether speech came first or the mind, since speech comes out only when the mind has thought; and why, in deep sleep, when it is cut off from the mind, the breath still does not take in the objects of the senses. The brahmana answered that the down-breath brings the vital breath under its power and makes it like itself, and so, when the mind fails in sleep, the breath is not lost; the mind depends on the breath, the breath not on the mind.

Then he told the quarrel of speech and mind: the two went to the primal self and asked, “Which of us is greater?” The answer came, “The mind is greater.” Then speech said to the mind, “I hand you the fruit of all your desires.” The brahmana then explained the various forms of the rite, of ten priests, of seven, of five, of four, in which the senses are the priests, the objects are the offering, and the mind the ladle; and what remains is pure, the highest knowledge.

A sub-tale: The mind and the senses quarreled too. The mind said, “Without me the nose does not smell, the tongue does not taste, the eye does not catch a form; without me the senses are like a dead fire, like an empty house.” The senses answered, “That would be true only if you could enjoy without us and without our objects. So go on, catch a form with the nose, take a taste with the eye, take a smell with the ear. You cannot; without us you have no perception and no pleasure.” The vital breaths likewise each claimed to be the greatest, showed it by fading one by one, and at last Brahma said, “None of you is the greatest; each is chief in his own field. Live as friends, holding one another up, at peace.”

Next the brahmana described the trackless forest of Brahman that he had entered: whose gadflies and gnats are our resolves, whose cold and heat are joy and sorrow, whose darkness is heedlessness, whose serpents are greed and disease, and whose robbers are desire and anger. In that forest are seven trees, seven fruits, seven guests, seven hermitages, seven yogas, and seven initiations. There the understanding is the tree, release the fruit, calm the shade, knowledge the resthouse, contentment the water, and the knower of the field, the self that knows the body, is the sun.

He told one more dialogue, of an adhvaryu, a priest of the rite, and a yati, a renunciant. Seeing the beast sprinkled with water in the sacrifice, the yati said, “This is the killing of a living thing.” The adhvaryu answered, “This goat will not perish; its earthy part will return to earth, its watery part to water, its eyes to the sun, its ears to the directions, and its breath to the sky; by the word of scripture no fault touches me.” The yati replied, “If the goat is helped so much, then this sacrifice was for the goat’s sake; what do you gain? Go and get the leave of its brother, its father, its mother, and its friend. This goat is wholly at another’s mercy. Non-injury is the highest god; that is the teaching of the great.” The adhvaryu turned it back: “You too enjoy the smell of earth, drink the taste of water, see the form of fire; by your own view there is life in all these, so you are not free of injury either; there is injury even in moving about.” The yati explained the difference between the imperishable and the perishable, and said that one who is beyond them, equal to all, free of possessiveness, master of himself, has no fear from anyone. At last the adhvaryu accepted the yati’s view and, freed of delusion, completed the sacrifice.

The gist: The brahmana and wife dialogue turns the body itself into a sacrificial hall: the senses are the priests, the objects the offering, the self the fire. The quarrels of mind and senses and of the breaths teach that no single one is supreme; interdependence is life. In the adhvaryu and yati dialogue the tension between sacrificial killing and non-injury is laid open and not smoothed over; both sides are given in full.

The reviving of Parikshit: Uttara’s womb

After the teaching, events gather speed again. The time came for the delivery of Uttara, Abhimanyu’s widow. When Ashvatthama, Drona’s son, attacked the sleeping camp, he had loosed the Brahmashira weapon to end the line of the Pandavas, and by its power Uttara’s child was born as if dead. The infant lay without a stir; no breath, no beat. A cry of grief broke through the inner rooms. Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra, and Uttara ran to Krishna, weeping.

Uttara clasped Krishna’s feet and said, “You vowed that the seed of this line would be kept safe. If there is any truth in what I have spoken, in how I have lived, in my faithfulness to my husband, let this dead child live.” Krishna went to the still infant and said, “I have never spoken untruth in my life, never turned my back in battle; by the power of that truth, and by the power of my unshaken devotion to Brahman and to the brahmanas, let this dead child live. By the truth of the dharma I have held against adharma, let him rise.”

As Krishna spoke these words, the fire of Ashvatthama’s weapon died down and the still infant began, slowly, to move. First a trembling breath, then a quiver of the limbs, and then the child cried out to announce that he lived. The wail of the inner rooms turned to a shout of joy. Krishna said, “Because he is born in this danger, this peril, he will be called Parikshit.” And that Parikshit became the one shoot that would carry the line of the Pandavas forward.

A key to reading this (lineage): Parikshit is the son of Abhimanyu and Uttara, and the grandson of Arjuna. Abhimanyu had already fallen in the war, and all the sons of the Pandavas had been killed in Ashvatthama’s night attack; so this child in the womb was the only heir of the whole Kuru-Pandava line. His not surviving would have meant the end of the line. The name Parikshit means “one born in peril.” This same Parikshit will be the father of Janamejaya, at whose snake-sacrifice this entire Mahabharata is being told.

The gist: For the Pandavas standing at the edge of extinction, Uttara’s stillborn child was the last hope. Krishna revives him by the power of his own truth-speaking and of never fleeing battle, the very qualities Yudhishthira was repenting of just a few lines earlier. Here the protecting power of Krishna’s truth and the destroying power of his same skill in war are set face to face, and the tale does not hide it.

The initiation of the Ashvamedha, and the journey of the sacrificial horse

Having brought Marutta’s gold from the Himalayas, Yudhishthira took the initiation of the Ashvamedha by the rule. Vyasa took charge of the sacrifice, and Krishna helped in every arrangement. On the full moon of Chaitra a white horse with black ears, marked with all the auspicious signs of the scriptures, was consecrated and let loose. Its guarding was given to Arjuna, for among the Pandavas he alone could follow the horse into whatever land it entered and fight the kings who tried to stop it. Yudhishthira told Arjuna to spare the kings as far as he could, only to summon them to the sacrifice; but if any stopped the horse, to defeat them.

Arjuna, bearer of the Gandiva, followed the freely wandering horse. It moved from the north through many lands, and wherever kings stopped it, Arjuna fought. The kings of Trigarta, Pragjyotisha, Sindhu, and many more came out to stop the horse. Arjuna beat them back, but remembering Yudhishthira’s word he spared them where he could and invited them to the sacrifice. In some places the fighting was so fierce that Arjuna himself was knocked senseless, yet in the end the horse pressed on unhindered.

On this journey the horse reached Manipura, where Babhruvahana ruled, the son of Chitrangada and Arjuna’s own son.

A key to reading this (the idea): The Ashvamedha horse is let loose for a year; a warrior or general follows it. Whatever kingdom the horse enters unopposed accepts the overlordship of the one holding the sacrifice; whoever ties the horse must fight. Arjuna’s conquest here is for the completion of the rite and the acceptance of paramount rule, which is why Yudhishthira’s order is “kill as little as you can.”

Arjuna’s battle with Babhruvahana, the father’s death and revival

When the sacrificial horse reached the gate of Manipura, Babhruvahana heard that his father Arjuna was himself its guardian. Filled with a son’s love and with courtesy, he put brahmanas at his head and came out beyond the city to welcome his father, with the arghya and with rich gifts. But this gentle welcome did not please Arjuna. In the name of the Kshatriya law he rebuked his son. “This conduct is not a Kshatriya’s. I have come to your gate under arms, guarding the sacrificial horse, and you come to greet me with an offering, your head bowed like a woman’s? If you were a warrior you would take up weapons and fight me.”

Babhruvahana was stung by the scorn, but at that very moment Arjuna’s other wife, the naga princess Ulupi, rose up through the split earth and urged her stepson to war, saying that a father’s Kshatriya word is honored only by fighting. Then Babhruvahana took up his weapons, and a terrible battle broke out between father and son. The two were equal bowmen; the sky darkened with the rain of their arrows.

At the height of it, a keen arrow of Babhruvahana’s pierced Arjuna’s vitals, and Arjuna, bearer of the Gandiva, fell from his chariot and lay still on the ground. Seeing his father dead, Babhruvahana too fell in a faint of grief. Chitrangada came running and, finding her husband dead on the field, began to wail; she cursed Ulupi for the sorcery by which she had made a son kill his father, and made ready to die herself.

Then Ulupi sent for the divine gem from her naga world, the sanjivana gem that can bring even the dead to life. She opened the truth: this killing was in fact the expiation of an old sin of Arjuna’s. In the war Arjuna had killed Bhishma by a trick, putting Shikhandi in front; for this the Vasus had laid a curse-like sentence on Arjuna, that he must suffer death at the hands of his own son. Knowing this, Ulupi had driven Babhruvahana to war, so that Arjuna’s debt would be cleared and he could be brought back to life by the sanjivana gem. Babhruvahana laid the gem on Arjuna’s chest, and Arjuna returned to his senses and sat up, as if waking from deep sleep.

Alive again, Arjuna embraced his son, praised his fighting, and rested a while in Manipura. Babhruvahana set the sacrificial horse free, and gave his word to take part in the Ashvamedha.

A sub-tale: This debt of Bhishma’s death ties the tale back into the past. In the great war Arjuna had loosed his arrows at Bhishma from behind Shikhandi, who was born of a woman’s body, because Bhishma had vowed never to raise a weapon against Shikhandi. That victory was won more by stratagem than by valor. The Vasus, whose portion Bhishma was, sentenced Arjuna for it to fall at the hands of his own son. So Babhruvahana’s arrow became the reckoning for Arjuna’s own breaking of the rule; the tale does not hide this uncomfortable link.

The gist: Following the sacrificial horse, Arjuna arrives at the gate of his own son Babhruvahana and, in Kshatriya pride, challenges him to fight. The son kills the father, and then the naga princess Ulupi’s sanjivana gem brings Arjuna back. The revival also clears the debt for Arjuna’s trickery in killing Bhishma, where the victor must pay the price of his own wrong with his own blood.

The completion of the sacrifice, and the mongoose that is half gold

When the year was full, the sacrificial horse returned to Hastinapura with Arjuna. Kings who had been conquered and invited gathered from far away. Yudhishthira had a vast sacrificial pavilion raised, altars of gold made, and under Vyasa’s direction the Ashvamedha was performed. The horse was offered in the fire by the rule. Yudhishthira gave three times the dakshina, gave the Earth to the brahmanas (who, through Vyasa, gave it back and received boundless gold in return), and distributed mountains of grain, cloth, and gold among all classes and all who asked. No one was left poor, hungry, or unsatisfied. All marveled at so splendid a sacrifice, and Yudhishthira’s own heart filled with contentment.

In that very hour of joy, a strange thing happened. A mongoose came to the sacrificial ground, half of its body shining gold and half of it ordinary. In front of everyone it rolled on the ground of the altar, then spoke in a human voice. “Kings, even this vast Ashvamedha does not equal the seer of barley meal that a poor brahmana gave away at Kurukshetra.” At this the whole assembly was struck dumb.

When the brahmanas asked, the mongoose told its tale. At Kurukshetra a poor brahmana lived by the unchha vow, gleaning the scattered grains of the fields, together with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law. A terrible famine fell; for days they got nothing. With great effort they came by a little barley, which they ground and made into four portions of sattu, powdered barley. Just as they sat to eat, a hungry guest came to the door. The brahmana gave the guest his own share; the guest’s hunger was not stilled, so the wife gave hers, then the son gave his, and at last the daughter-in-law gave hers as well. The four filled the guest with no thought for their own lives, and that same night they died of hunger. The guest had been Dharma himself, come in that form, and he carried the family bodily to heaven.

“At that same time,” the mongoose said, “I was in a burrow near the brahmana’s hut. When I rolled on the ground where the sattu had scattered, the part of my body that touched that ground, hallowed by the gift, turned to gold. Since then I have wandered the sacrifices of the whole Earth, hoping that on some sacrificial ground the rest of my body too might turn to gold. But today, even after rolling on the altar of this great Ashvamedha, my other half has not changed. And so I say that even this vast sacrifice could not match the poor man’s gift of a seer of barley meal.” Having said it, the mongoose vanished, and left the assembly in silence.

A sub-tale: That family of the unchha vow at Kurukshetra gave away four portions of sattu, the only food they had in the whole famine, to a single guest and then starved to death. The measure of a gift is the depth of the sacrifice behind it, and sheer amount counts for little: the emperor’s mountain of gold weighs lighter than the poor man’s seer of barley meal because that meal was given at the cost of their very lives.

The gist: All the grandeur of the Ashvamedha, Marutta’s gold, the gift of the Earth, the threefold dakshina, and in that very hour a half-gold mongoose comes and weighs the emperor’s pride. By its measure the royal sacrifice falls short of a poor man’s gift of barley. The parva closes on a silent question in the place where a shout of victory might stand: is the true sacrifice on the altar outside or in the surrender within? That question echoes through the whole parva, from Krishna’s Anugita to this mongoose.

Grief at Dwarka: the deaths of Vasudeva’s kin and of Abhimanyu

The great war of Kurukshetra was over. Krishna, taking his leave of Arjuna, set out for Dwarka on his chariot with Satyaki, the Yadava hero Yuyudhana, beside him. There the festival on Mount Raivataka was under way, and the city was decked with lamps and garlands. Bowing to his father and mother, seated among the Vrishni heroes, Krishna began, at his father Vasudeva’s asking, to recount the tale of the great war.

Vasudeva said, “My son, we have heard of that war from the mouths of many. But you saw it with your own eyes. Tell us, how did that war unfold, how Bhishma, Karna, Kripa, Drona, Shalya, and the other great warriors closed on one side, and the Pandavas on the other.” Then Krishna, before his mother too, told all of it in order.

Krishna told how for ten days Bhishma was the general and how, with Shikhandi as his screen, Arjuna laid him on a bed of arrows; how then for five days Drona led and fell at the hands of Dhrishtadyumna; how Karna was killed the very next day by Partha; how Yudhishthira killed Shalya in half a day; how Sahadeva killed Shakuni; and how at the end Bhimasena killed Duryodhana with the mace, after he rose from the water of the Dvaipayana lake. In eighteen days all that slaughter was finished. Only the five Pandavas, Krishna himself, Yuyudhana, and on the other side Ashvatthama, Kripa, and Kritavarma survived. Hearing it, all the Vrishnis filled with grief, sorrow, and pain.

But Krishna had knowingly kept one thing back, the death of Abhimanyu. He did not want his father Vasudeva to be broken by grief on hearing of the death of his daughter’s son. But Subhadra noticed that her brother had not spoken of her own son’s death. She said, “Krishna, tell me too of my son’s death,” and fell fainting to the ground. Seeing his daughter fall, Vasudeva too lost his senses to grief.

When he came round, Vasudeva said to Krishna, “Lotus-eyed one, you are known over the Earth as a speaker of truth. Why then have you not told me today of my grandson’s death? How was he killed? Was he killed fleeing, showing his back? Did his face dim in battle? He would challenge even the likes of Bhishma and Karna. Surely Drona, Karna, Kripa and the rest did not kill him by some trick?”

Krishna, more stricken than his father, said, “His face did not dim in battle. He did not show his back. Having killed thousands of kings, he was at last surrounded alone, under Drona’s lead, worn down by the Kaurava heroes, and in the end he fell at the hands of Duhshasana’s son. Had he been fought one at a time, in single combat, even Indra with the thunderbolt could not have killed him. When the Samshaptakas drew Arjuna away, Abhimanyu was surrounded alone. Beyond doubt he has gone to heaven. Great-minded one, put off this grief.”

Then Krishna told how Subhadra had gone to Kunti, to Draupadi, and above all to the pregnant Uttara, Abhimanyu’s wife, the daughter of Virata, and lamented; and how Kunti had consoled her, that it was the work of time, that a man is mortal, and that a portion of Abhimanyu was growing in Uttara’s womb. Hearing this, Vasudeva put off his grief, performed the formal rites for Abhimanyu, fed sixty hundred thousand brahmanas, and gave gold, cows, beds, and cloth in gift.

A key to reading this (lineage): Abhimanyu was the son of Arjuna and Subhadra. Subhadra was Krishna’s sister, so Abhimanyu was Krishna’s nephew and Vasudeva’s daughter’s son. Abhimanyu’s wife Uttara was the daughter of Virata, king of the Matsyas. The child in Uttara’s womb was the one who would come to be called Parikshit.

The gist: Back in Dwarka after the great war, Krishna gives his father Vasudeva the full account of the battle, but first hides Abhimanyu’s death so as not to break his old father’s heart. At Subhadra’s prompting the truth comes out, and amid the grief Abhimanyu’s funeral rites are done. The one hope of the Pandavas, bound in Uttara’s womb, is now the center of the story that follows.

Vyasa’s command and the making ready of the Ashvamedha

In Hastinapura too the Pandavas found no peace without Abhimanyu. Uttara lay for days in grief for her husband, giving up food and water, and all feared that the child in her womb might be lost. Then, knowing the state of things by his divine sight, the sage Vyasa came. He said to Kunti and Uttara, “Put off this grief. Glorious one, by the strength of Vasudeva and by my word, you will have a son of great splendor, who will rule this Earth after the Pandavas.”

Then, looking at Arjuna, in the hearing of Yudhishthira, Vyasa said, “Bharata, your grandson will be a great-souled king. He will rule righteously over the whole sea-girdled Earth. So put off this grief. What the Vrishni hero said before will come to pass.” At these words of his grandsire, Arjuna put off his grief and was glad.

Then Vyasa urged the just king Yudhishthira to hold the Ashvamedha, and saying this vanished on the spot. For that sacrifice great wealth was needed, and Vyasa had said that the buried wealth of King Marutta, the son of Avikshit, lay in the ground toward the Himalayas. Yudhishthira took counsel with his brothers. Bhimasena, folding his hands, said that if Mahadeva, lord of the mountain, and his ganas and the kinnaras were pleased, that wealth would be won with ease, for it was fierce kinnaras who were guarding the hoard.

On the day and star of Dhruva the army set out. Crossing many lakes, rivers, forests, and groves on the way, the Pandavas reached the mountain country where the wealth was buried. The priest Dhaumya worshipped Mahadeva, his ganas, Kubera, and Manibhadra by the rule, cooked the charu, and gave offerings even to the creatures of the night. Then Yudhishthira had the place dug open. Vessels of many kinds, ewers, cauldrons, pitchers, and fine bowls came forth.

A key to reading this (numbers, a modern equivalent): To carry that wealth it took sixty thousand camels, one hundred and twenty thousand horses, one hundred thousand elephants, as many chariots and carts, and countless mules and men. Each camel was loaded with sixteen thousand coins, each chariot with eight thousand, and each elephant with twenty-four thousand. Picture a treasury so heavy that a whole army was spent merely in carrying it. Each day only a single goyuta, about six kilometers, could be covered.

After a month’s march that vast army, worn down by the weight of the wealth, returned to Hastinapura. Meanwhile Krishna too, at the just king’s invitation and knowing the time of the sacrifice, returned to Hastinapura from Dwarka, with Balarama at their head, and with Satyaki, Pradyumna, Samba, Gada, Kritavarma, and other Vrishni heroes, and with Subhadra. And here, in these very days, the time of Uttara’s delivery arrived.

The gist: Vyasa assures Uttara and Arjuna that a splendid king-grandson will be born, and orders Yudhishthira to hold the Ashvamedha. For the sacrifice, Marutta’s buried hoard is dug out after the worship of Mahadeva. Krishna too returns from Dwarka, and at just this moment Uttara’s delivery arrives.

Parikshit’s stillbirth and revival by Krishna

The prince came out of Uttara’s womb, but still and lifeless. Struck by Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon, which he had loosed to destroy the very seed of the Pandava line, he was born without life. The citizens first raised a lion’s roar at his birth, but when they learned the infant was lifeless, the clamor stilled and grief settled over them.

Krishna, his mind troubled, went quickly with Yuyudhana into the inner rooms. There he saw his aunt Kunti coming toward him, calling on him again and again and weeping. Behind her Draupadi, Subhadra, and the women of the Pandava house were lamenting piteously.

Kunti said to Krishna in a voice choked with tears, “Vasudeva, this child of your sister’s son has come from the womb killed by Ashvatthama’s weapon. Kesava, bring him to life. You yourself vowed, when Ashvatthama turned a blade of grass into the Brahma weapon, that even if this child were born dead, you would revive him. In this child are bound the lives of the Pandavas and mine. On him depend the offerings for Pandu, for my father-in-law, and for Abhimanyu. Make your words true.” Saying this, Kunti and the other women, arms raised, fell to the ground, and all cried again and again, “Alas, the son of Vasudeva’s nephew is born dead.” Then Krishna raised Kunti gently from the ground and consoled her.

Then Subhadra broke out, “Lotus-eyed one, look at Arjuna’s grandson. The blade of grass that Drona’s son raised for the destruction of Bhimasena has fallen on Uttara, on Arjuna, and on me. That blade is lodged in my heart even now. The Pandavas will think Ashvatthama has cheated them. Krishna, in your anger you yourself said to the son of Drona, ‘Vile brahmana, I will make your desire fail; I will revive the son of the son of Kiritin (Arjuna).’ Make those words true now. If this child does not live, I will give up my life. If you wish, you could revive the dead of all three worlds; what then is one child?”

“So be it,” was all Krishna said, filled with the deepest grief, but he said it in a voice so high that every creature in the inner rooms was gladdened, as though cool water had been sprinkled on one troubled by the heat. Then he went into the birth-chamber where the child had been born. It was made ready with white garlands, jars filled with water, coals of tinduka wood soaked in ghee, mustard seeds, gleaming weapons, and fires set all around. Everything that drives off rakshasas was placed there by the rule. Seeing it, Krishna said, “Good, good.”

Then Uttara, covering herself, began to lament in a piteous voice. “Janardana, Abhimanyu and I are both killed together. Revive this child, whom Drona’s son’s weapon has burned. If he does not live, I will give up my life. Alas, with the death of this heir of Abhimanyu all my hopes are gone. I had vowed to follow Abhimanyu the moment he fell, but out of the greed for life, cruelly, I could not keep that vow. What will Arjuna’s son say now?”

Then helpless Uttara fell again in a faint, her body bared, to the ground. Kunti and all the Bharata women wept aloud. That palace of the Pandavas became a house of grief. When she came round, Uttara took the child in her lap and said, “You are the son of one who knew every dharma. Do you feel no sin, that you do not bow to the best of the Vrishnis? Rise, child, and see your great-grandmother, worn with grief. Rise, and see the face of this lord of the worlds, who has restless eyes like your father’s.”

Then, hearing all their heart-rending laments, Krishna touched water and drew the force of the Brahma weapon into himself. Then, in the hearing of the whole world, he spoke words of truth. “Uttara, I never speak untruth. I will revive this child before all creatures. If I have never spoken untruth, even in jest, by that truth let this child live. If I have never turned my back in battle, by that truth let him live. As dharma is dear to me and brahmanas dearer, by that truth let him live. As there has never been a rift between me and my friend Vijaya (Arjuna), by that truth let him live. As Kansa and Keshi were killed by my hand righteously, by that truth let this child live today.” As he spoke these words, the child came to life and slowly began to stir.

When Krishna drew away the Brahma weapon, the birth-chamber lit up with the child’s own splendor. The rakshasas that had come there had to leave the room, and many were destroyed. A voice rang in the sky, “Good, Kesava, good.” The Brahma weapon returned to the grandsire, Brahma. The women filled with joy, like drowning people who reach the shore on finding a boat.

Krishna gave the child precious gems in gift, and the other Vrishni heroes did the same. Then Krishna, firm in truth, named the child. “Because this son of Abhimanyu is born at a time when this line had nearly wasted away, his name will be Parikshit.” And the child began to grow and to gladden everyone.

A sub-tale: There is a moral knot hidden in this revival. Krishna brings the child to life by his truth-act, the satyakriya, using no medicine and no device, declaring that he never turned his back in battle and never fell out with his friend Arjuna. Yet the Mahabharata keeps reminding us that many of Krishna’s own war-deeds broke the rules, the screen of Shikhandi against Bhishma, the half-truth of “Ashvatthama is dead” before Drona, the killing of an unarmed Karna. The tale does not hide the contradiction. Ulupi will soon raise the same point about the curse laid on Arjuna. Here the truth-act bears fruit because it rises from the deep layer of Krishna’s being that lies beyond worldly rule-breaking, not because his every deed was spotless.

The gist: Struck by Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon, Uttara’s child is stillborn. At the laments of Kunti, Subhadra, and Uttara, Krishna keeps his old vow, draws away the Brahma weapon, revives the child by his truth-act, and names him Parikshit, “born in a line nearly wasted away.” This boy is the father of Janamejaya and the line to which this whole story is told.

The vow of the sacrifice and the loosing of the horse

When Parikshit was a month old, the Pandavas returned to Hastinapura with the vast wealth. The city was decked with garlands, banners, and flags. Bowing to Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti, and Vidura, the Pandavas heard the wondrous tale of their father’s stillbirth and his revival by Krishna, and all worshipped Krishna.

A few days later Vyasa came again. Yudhishthira asked his leave for the Ashvamedha. Vyasa said, “I give my leave, king. The Ashvamedha destroys all sins. Hold it by the rule, with lavish gifts.” Then Yudhishthira begged Krishna to take the initiation himself and hold the sacrifice: “You are the sacrifice, you are dharma, you are Prajapati.” But Krishna said, “Bharata, in this line it is you alone who shine today by your dharma, before whom all others have grown dim. You are the king, you are the eldest. With my full leave, worship the gods yourself. Set us to whatever task you wish. Bhima, Arjuna, and the two sons of Madri will serve at your sacrifice with you.”

Vyasa said the initiation would be on the full moon of Chaitra. He ordered that all the needed implements, the sphya, the kurcha, and the rest, be made of gold, and that a fine horse with the marks named in the scriptures be chosen to wander freely over the whole Earth to the sea. Yudhishthira asked who would guard the horse. Vyasa answered that the one born after Bhima, best of bowmen, Jishnu (Arjuna), in whom are all the divine weapons, the slayer of the Nivatakavachas, would follow the horse.

Yudhishthira said to Arjuna, “Hero, only you can guard this horse. Avoid battle with the kings who come before you as far as you can. Invite them all to this sacrifice of mine. Go forward, but form ties of friendship with them.” Then Bhima and Nakula were given the charge of guarding the city, and Sahadeva the charge of receiving the guests.

After the initiation, Yudhishthira, a gold chain at his throat, a robe of black antelope skin, a staff in his hand, and red silk, shone on the sacrificial ground like a second Prajapati. The horse was loosed, and Arjuna, on a chariot drawn by white horses, drawing again and again on the string of the Gandiva, wearing a guard of lizard-skin, followed it with a glad heart. All Hastinapura, down to its children, poured out to see him. A pupil of Yajnavalkya, many brahmanas, and Kshatriyas went with him.

That horse began to wander freely over the Earth the Pandavas had already won, turning from the north toward the east. On its path Arjuna fought fierce battles with many kings, with those Kshatriyas who had lost their own in Kurukshetra, and with Kiratas, Yavanas, and many mleccha peoples too.

A key to reading this (the idea): The Ashvamedha is a rite that declares a king’s rule. A chosen horse is let loose for a year; whatever kingdom it enters, that king must either stop it and fight or accept the overlordship of the one holding the sacrifice and take an invitation to it. The horse’s guardian follows it. At the year’s end the horse is brought back and offered in the sacrifice. It is a declaration of paramount rule. Here Yudhishthira’s order is special: Arjuna is to defeat the kings, not kill them, and to make them friends and bring them to the sacrifice.

The gist: After Vyasa’s leave and Krishna’s humble refusal (that the one holding the sacrifice must be Yudhishthira himself), the horse is loosed. Arjuna becomes its guardian, under the hard condition that he not kill the rival kings, only defeat them and invite them. The horse begins to wander the Earth, and many battles begin.

Arjuna’s battles behind the horse: Trigarta, Vajradatta, and the Saindhavas

The first fight was with the sons and grandsons of the Trigartas, the same Trigartas with whom the Pandavas had an old enmity. They surrounded the horse. Arjuna held them off with soft words, remembering Yudhishthira’s order, but they would not listen. Then Arjuna defeated Suryavarma, the Trigarta king. His younger brother Ketuvarma was killed. Then the young Dhritavarma loosed arrows with such quickness of hand that Arjuna himself was inwardly pleased at his skill, and once an arrow of his pierced Arjuna’s hand and the Gandiva slipped from the loosened grip and fell. Dhritavarma laughed. In anger Arjuna wiped the blood, took up the bow, and struck down eighteen Trigarta heroes. Then the Trigartas said, “We are your servants, we bow to you.” Arjuna gave them their lives and his overlordship.

Then the horse reached Pragjyotisha, the kingdom of Bhagadatta, where King Vajradatta, Bhagadatta’s son, seized it. Arjuna dazed him with the Gandiva. Then Vajradatta put on armor, mounted his rutting elephant, and challenged Arjuna out of youth and folly. The fight lasted three days. On the fourth day Vajradatta laughed and said, “Wait, Arjuna! My old father Bhagadatta, who was a friend of your father’s, you killed in his old age. Now fight me, a boy.” At last Arjuna struck the elephant with an arrow like the thunderbolt, and it fell like a mountain peak. Then Arjuna said to the king, “Do not fear. Yudhishthira has ordered that I not kill the rival kings, only disable them. Rise, return to your city, and come to the sacrifice on the full moon of Chaitra.” Vajradatta said, “So be it,” and accepted.

Then came the fight with the Saindhavas, the hundreds of Kshatriyas left of the line of Jayadratha, king of Sindhu. Remembering the killing of Jayadratha, they fell on Arjuna, ringing him in like a cage with a thousand chariots and ten thousand horse. In the rain of arrows Arjuna became like the sun hidden by cloud, and for a moment he fainted and the Gandiva slipped from his hand. Ill omens came in the sky, Rahu seized the sun and the moon at once, meteors fell, and flesh and blood rained from the clouds. Then, by the silent prayers of the gods, the seven seers, and the brahmarshis, Arjuna’s fire blazed up again. He stood as unmoving as a mountain and rained arrows and tore the Saindhavas apart.

To the Saindhavas who kept returning to fight, Arjuna spoke soft words. “Whoever of you says ‘I am defeated, I am yours,’ him I will spare.” But remembering the killing of Jayadratha, they hurled their spears and lances again. Then angry Arjuna cut off many heads. At that moment their queen, Duhshala, Dhritarashtra’s daughter, came to Arjuna with her grandson in her arms and began to wail. Arjuna threw down his bow, welcomed his sister, and asked what he could do for her.

Duhshala said the boy was her son’s son (the son of Surath). And Surath? “The moment he heard of your coming, remembering the killing of his father Jayadratha at your hands, he fell in grief and gave up his life.” Hearing it, Arjuna’s face bent toward the ground. Duhshala said, “Brother, have mercy on this child, forgetting Duryodhana and the wicked Jayadratha. He bows to you and asks for peace.” Remembering Gandhari and Dhritarashtra, Arjuna, grieving, cursed the way of the Kshatriya. “Shame on that base, greedy, arrogant Duryodhana, through whom I have sent all my own kin to the world of death.” Then he consoled his sister, embraced her, and sent her away in peace. Duhshala stopped her warriors from fighting.

The gist: Behind the horse Arjuna fights the Trigartas, Vajradatta of Pragjyotisha, and the Saindhavas, winning each time and yet, by Yudhishthira’s order, sparing them. In the fight with the Saindhavas he meets his own sister Duhshala, whose son Surath has died of grief at the mere news of Arjuna’s coming. Here the tale of war fills with grief at the very futility of war, and Arjuna himself curses the Kshatriya law.

Manipura: the battle of father and son with Babhruvahana

Wandering on, the horse reached Manipura, whose king Babhruvahana was the son of Arjuna and Chitrangada. Hearing that his father had come, he came out humbly to welcome him, putting brahmanas and gifts of wealth at his head. But this did not please Arjuna, who remembered the Kshatriya law. In anger he said, “This conduct does not become you. You have fallen from the Kshatriya law. I have come into your kingdom guarding Yudhishthira’s sacrificial horse; why then do you not fight me? Shame on you, fool, receiving me in peace while I have come for war. Had I come with my weapons laid down, then this welcome would be right.”

Hearing this, the naga princess Ulupi, Arjuna’s wife and Babhruvahana’s stepmother, could not bear it and rose up through the split earth. She saw her son standing dejected, head bowed. Ulupi said, “Know that I am your mother Ulupi, daughter of the naga king. Obey me, son, and you will win great merit. Fight your father, this best of the Kurus, this hero unconquered in battle; then he will be pleased with you.” So the stepmother goaded the son against the father, and Babhruvahana resolved on war.

In golden armor and a gleaming helmet, raising a golden lion banner, he came before his father, had the horse seized, and challenged him. A matchless battle broke out, as of gods and asuras, and each was glad to find the other a match. Then Babhruvahana, laughing, drove a keen arrow into Arjuna’s chest, and it pierced to the vitals; Arjuna, bearer of the Gandiva, fell in a faint to the ground. Seeing his father fall, Babhruvahana too, worn by battle and grief, lost his senses and fell.

Chitrangada came running to the field and found her husband dead. She turned on Ulupi. “Through you our ever-victorious husband is killed by the hand of my boy son. If Arjuna has wronged you, forgive it, and revive this hero. If you do not, I will give up my life before you.” Saying this she sat down in praya, fasting to death, her husband’s feet in her lap. Babhruvahana, coming to himself, lamented that he had killed his own father, cried out for expiation, and vowed to dry up his body on the field if his father did not rise.

Then Ulupi called to mind the gem that revives the dead, the great refuge of the nagas. It came, and lifting it she said, “Rise, son. You have not defeated Jishnu; he is unconquered even by the gods with Indra. It was I who wove this illusion, for the good of your glorious father. Lay this divine gem on your father’s chest, and you will see the son of Pandu alive.” Babhruvahana laid the gem on Arjuna’s chest, and Arjuna rose as if from deep sleep. Flowers rained from the sky and voices cried, “Good, good.” Then Ulupi told the secret: in the war Arjuna had killed Bhishma by the way of adharma, using the screen of Shikhandi, and the Vasus had cursed him to fall at his own son’s hand; this whole event was her plan to free him of that curse. Arjuna, pleased, told Babhruvahana to come with his mothers to the Ashvamedha on the full moon of Chaitra, and went on behind the horse.

A sub-tale: Ulupi’s revelation is the height of the Mahabharata’s moral complexity. The killing of Bhishma, called the key to victory, is here openly named a killing done by adharma, and the Vasus themselves curse it. Arjuna’s dying at the hands of his own son and being revived is a hidden rite of expiation. This is the same Arjuna by whose truth of “never a rift with my friend” Krishna revived Parikshit. The tale praises his moral strength and admits the sin of his war-deed at once. Both truths stand together.

The gist: Following the horse, Arjuna reaches his own son Babhruvahana at Manipura and, in Kshatriya pride, challenges him. Ulupi goads the son, who strikes his father down; the naga gem revives Arjuna. The revival also clears the debt for Arjuna’s trickery in killing Bhishma, where the victor pays the price of his own wrong with his own blood.

The rest of the conquest, the great sacrifice, and the mongoose that is half gold

After this the horse reached Magadha (Rajagriha), where Arjuna fought Meghasandhi, the son of Sahadeva; then Chedi (Sharabha, son of Shishupala), Kashi, Anga, Kosala, the Kiratas, the Tanganas, Dasharna (King Chitrangada), the Nishada king (son of Ekalavya), the Dravidas, the Andhras, the Mahishmakas, and many other lands. Everywhere the same way: Arjuna did not kill the rival kings, only defeated them and called them to the sacrifice. At Dwarka the young Yadavas tried their strength on the horse, but Ugrasena and Vasudeva stopped them and honored Arjuna. At the last, in Gandhara (the son of Shakuni), there was a fierce battle, in which Arjuna cut off the king’s helmet, but at the coming of his mother and old ministers spared his life, remembering Gandhari and Dhritarashtra.

Then the horse turned toward Hastinapura, and Arjuna with it. Yudhishthira, watching for the twelfth of the bright half of Magha, ordered Bhima to choose a fit site for the sacrifice and have it built. Bhima raised hundreds of gold-decked halls, high broad roads, golden arches, and dwellings for kings and brahmanas. Kings came from all over the Earth with jewels, servants, horses, and weapons.

Krishna told Yudhishthira that Arjuna was returning worn thin from many battles, and had sent word that at the time of the arghya-offering there should be no slaughter such as had happened at the Rajasuya, no killing of the people through the mutual enmity of kings. Yudhishthira asked why Arjuna always meets hardship and toil, what mark there was in his body for it. Krishna thought long and said his cheekbones are a little too high, and for this he must always be on the road. Hearing it, Draupadi looked at Krishna with anger and a sidelong glance, for she could not bear a fault named in Arjuna, and Krishna welcomed this sign of her love for his friend.

Then Arjuna’s messenger came. The next day Arjuna arrived, and with Yudhishthira, Krishna, and Dhritarashtra at their head all came out to receive him. Arjuna touched the feet of his elders, embraced Krishna, and rested. Babhruvahana too came with his mothers Chitrangada and Ulupi, bowed to all the elders, and was welcomed and given gifts.

On the third day Vyasa began the sacrifice. Because of the gold it needed, it was called the Bahusuvarnaka, the rite of much gold, and Yudhishthira was to give threefold dakshina to gain the merit of three Ashvamedhas and be freed of the sin of killing kin. Sacrificial posts were set up, and three hundred beasts were tied, along with the fine horse. By the rule the other beasts were cooked, and then the Earth-wandering horse was offered. Draupadi, endowed with mantra, substance, and faith, was seated beside the divided beast. Yudhishthira and his brothers breathed in the sin-destroying smoke of the marrow, and sixteen priests offered the rest in the fire.

When the sacrifice was done, Yudhishthira gave the brahmanas a thousand crore gold nishkas and gave the whole Earth to Vyasa. Vyasa accepted it and returned it, asking for its price in gold, since brahmanas want wealth and not the Earth.

Yudhishthira had given the Earth Arjuna won to the priests and wished to go to the forest, but Krishna and Vyasa counseled him, and he gave threefold the prescribed dakshina in gold. After the avabhritha bath, cleansed of his sins, he shone among his brothers. He sent Babhruvahana off with boundless wealth, set Duhshala’s infant grandson in his ancestral kingdom, and honored the kings with jewels and gifts.

Now Janamejaya asked whether any wonder had happened at his forefathers’ sacrifice. Vaishampayana said: when all the brahmanas, kin, friends, and the poor, blind, and helpless had been satisfied, when the great gifts were being talked of and flowers rained on Yudhishthira’s head, a blue-eyed mongoose, one side of its body of gold, came there and spoke in a voice as deep as thunder.

“Kings, this great sacrifice is not equal even to a prastha of powdered barley given away by a generous brahmana of Kurukshetra who kept the unchha vow.” Amazed, the brahmanas asked who he was, and why he decried this sacrifice done wholly by the rule. The mongoose smiled and told his tale. At Kurukshetra a brahmana lived by the unchha vow with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law, gleaning the scattered grains of the fields and eating once, in the sixth division of the day. In a terrible famine, after long hunger, they came by a prastha of barley, ground it into sattu, and divided it into four shares, each a kudava. Just as they sat to eat, a guest came.

They gave the guest the arghya, a seat of kusha grass, and the brahmana’s own share; his hunger was not stilled. Then the wife gave her share, then the son, and then the daughter-in-law, each with words of dharma, until all four shares were the guest’s and the family kept nothing.

Then the guest was pleased, for he was the god Dharma himself. He praised their pure gift, said that one who conquers hunger conquers heaven, told how King Rantideva won heaven by giving a little water with faith, and declared that the fruit of this one prastha of barley meal was greater than that of many Rajasuya and Ashvamedha sacrifices. And the family went to heaven together.

“When they had gone,” the mongoose said, “I came out of my burrow. From the smell of that sattu, the mud of the water given to the guest, the touch of the fallen divine flowers, and that brahmana’s tapas, half my body turned to gold. To make the other half gold I wander from sacrifice to sacrifice. Here, at this great Ashvamedha, my other half did not change, and so I say this sacrifice is not equal to that one prastha of barley meal.” Saying this, the mongoose vanished.

Vaishampayana said to Janamejaya, “King, do not hold the sacrifice alone to be supreme. Crores of seers have gone to heaven by their tapas alone. Non-injury, contentment, good conduct, plainness, tapas, self-restraint, truth, and gift, each of these is the equal of the sacrifice.”

A key to reading this (the idea): The unchha vow means living only by gleaning the scattered, abandoned grains of fields and markets, hoarding nothing and begging nothing. Prastha and kudava are old measures of grain (a kudava is a quarter of a prastha). The mongoose’s tale is set at the very peak of a vast, gold-laden sacrifice like the Ashvamedha, so that amid the dazzle of splendor this truth may sting: the measure of merit is the sacrifice and the faith behind a gift, far more than its amount.

The gist: Arjuna wins the remaining lands, the gold-laden Ashvamedha is completed with threefold dakshina, and Yudhishthira is held cleansed of the sin of killing kin. But at the very hour of victory a half-gold mongoose comes and makes the whole great sacrifice smaller than a poor unchha-vow brahmana’s gift of a handful of barley meal, given in famine, self-starving, with his whole family. The parva’s high note is the greatness of tapas and faith over sacrificial splendor.

Krishna returns to Dwarka, and the lights of the Raivataka festival

Utanka had received his boon. Having told that old tale of the earrings in full, Vaishampayana went on. The mighty Govinda, having given Utanka his boon, took Satyaki with him and set out for Dwarka on his chariot of swift horses. Crossing lakes, rivers, forests, and hills, he came at last to the lovely city of Dwaravati.

When the lotus-eyed Hari arrived, the festival of Raivataka had already begun. Mount Raivataka, decked with hoards of jewels and gems, shone with great splendor. Adorned with garlands of gold and clusters of flowers, filled with great trees like the wish-granting trees of Indra’s Nandana grove, set with golden pillars ablaze with lamps, the mountain glowed with beauty day and night. Near its caves and waterfalls there was so much light that it was bright as day. Flags fluttered on every side, and the little bells tied to them rang without cease. The whole mountain rang with the sweet songs of men and women. In the shops and pavilions all kinds of food and delights were set out, and the sound of the veena, the flute, and the mridanga was heard everywhere. Gifts were given without pause to the sorrowful, the blind, and the helpless.

At Krishna’s coming the lord of mountains seemed to become the very abode of Indra. Honored by his kin, Krishna entered a fair mansion, and Satyaki, glad at heart, went to his own place. The heroes of the Bhoja, Vrishni, and Andhaka lines came forward to welcome him, as the gods advance to receive Indra of a hundred sacrifices. Krishna returned their honor and asked after the welfare of each. Then, with a glad heart, he bowed to his father and mother, who held him to their hearts and comforted him with love. Washing his feet, easing his weariness, seated there among the Vrishnis, he began, at his father Vasudeva’s asking, to recount the chief events of the great war.

A key to reading this (the place, Dwarka and Raivataka): This is the city of the Yadava line, on the shore of the sea, in the region of present-day Gujarat. Raivataka is its festival hill, where the yearly fair is held. After his long absence at Kurukshetra, Krishna is here returning to his own home.

Vasudeva said, “Scion of the Vrishnis, I have heard again and again of that wondrous war, but you saw it with your own eyes. Sinless one, tell me in full: on one side those great-souled Pandavas, and on the other Bhishma, Karna, Kripa, Drona, Shalya, and countless Kshatriyas of many lands in many kinds of dress, how did that war unfold?”

The gist: After a long absence Krishna returns to Dwarka, where the Raivataka festival is under way. His father Vasudeva wishes to hear the full account of the great war.

A brief reckoning of eighteen days: the war from Krishna’s mouth

Krishna told, before his mother too, how the Kaurava heroes fell in order on the field. He said, “The deeds of those great-souled Kshatriyas were so many that they could not be counted in a hundred years. I will tell only the chief events; listen.

“Bhishma of the Kuru line became the general of the eleven akshauhinis of the Kaurava army, like Indra of the army of the gods. And the wise Shikhandi, guarded by Arjuna, became the leader of the seven akshauhinis of the Pandavas. Under these leaders, for ten days a war was fought so terrible that it would make the hair stand on end. Then, with Arjuna’s support, Shikhandi, fighting bravely with countless arrows, felled Bhishma, son of the Ganga. Lying on his bed of arrows, Bhishma waited like an ascetic until the sun left its southern course and turned north; only then did that hero give up his breath.

A key to reading this (numbers, a modern equivalent): One akshauhini is 21,870 chariots, as many elephants, 65,610 horsemen, and 109,350 foot soldiers, a whole vast army. The Kauravas had eleven, the Pandavas seven; in today’s terms this is the clash of several full army corps.

“After Bhishma, Drona, master of every weapon, became the general, like Shukra, the guru of the lord of the daityas. Proud ever of his skill in war, Drona fought with the remaining nine akshauhinis of the Kaurava army, guarded by Kripa, Kritavarma, and the rest. Against him the Pandavas set Dhrishtadyumna as their leader, whom Bhima shielded as a friend shields Varuna. Remembering the insult to his father Drupada, and eager to measure his strength against Drona, Dhrishtadyumna showed great valor. In the struggle between Drona and the son of Prishata the kings of many lands were nearly finished. For five days this terrible war raged, and at the end weary Drona was killed by the hand of Dhrishtadyumna.

“Then Karna became the general, with five akshauhinis of the Kaurava army; the Pandavas had three left. After the slaughter of countless heroes, Karna, guarded by Arjuna, came to battle. The son of a suta, though a fierce warrior, closing with Partha, met on the very next day the end that an insect meets in a blazing fire. At Karna’s fall the Kauravas lost heart and all their strength, and gathered with three akshauhinis around Shalya, king of the Madras. Having lost many chariot-warriors, elephants, and horsemen, the remnant of the Pandava army, only one akshauhini, stood behind Yudhishthira in dejection. In that war King Yudhishthira did the hardest deeds and killed Shalya, king of the Madras, before half the day was gone.

“At Shalya’s fall the boundlessly valiant Sahadeva killed Shakuni, the very Shakuni who had raised this strife between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. At Shakuni’s death, the son of Dhritarashtra, his army broken and his heart with it, took his mace and fled the field. Then the mighty Bhimasena, filled with rage, chased him and found him hidden in the water of the Dvaipayana lake. With the remnant of the army the Pandavas ringed the lake and joyfully challenged the hidden Duryodhana; their bitter words pierced the water like arrows. Then he rose from the lake, mace in hand, and came before them for battle, and in that great war, before many kings, Bhimasena showed his great valor and struck down the son of Dhritarashtra.

“After that, at night, the son of Drona (Ashvatthama), who could not bear his father’s death, destroyed the sleeping remnant of the Pandava army. Their sons were killed, their forces killed; only the five Pandavas, I, and Yuyudhana (Satyaki) survived, and on the Kaurava side Kripa, the Bhoja hero Kritavarma, and the son of Drona, these three, remained unslain. Yuyutsu, the son of Dhritarashtra, having taken the Pandava side, escaped the slaughter. With Duryodhana killed along with all his followers and allies, Vidura and Sanjaya have come to King Yudhishthira. Lord, so for eighteen days this war was fought, and the many kings of the Earth who were killed in it went to heaven.” Hearing this fearful account, the Vrishnis filled with grief, sorrow, and pain.

The gist: Krishna tells the eighteen days of war in order, general after general (the end of Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Shalya), Duryodhana’s hiding in the lake and his death at Bhima’s hand, and Ashvatthama’s night-slaughter of the sleeping army. Only a handful of warriors survive.

The grief that Krishna hid, and the lament of Subhadra

Krishna told his father the whole war, but knowingly left out one thing, the death of Abhimanyu. His wish was that his father not have to hear what would grieve him most. The wise Krishna did not want his father Vasudeva to be broken by the dreadful news of his daughter’s son’s death.

But his sister Subhadra guessed that her son’s death had not been told. She said to her brother, “Krishna, tell of my son’s death too,” and with that fell fainting to the ground. Seeing his daughter fall, Vasudeva too lost his senses to grief. When he came round, grieving for his grandson, Vasudeva said to Krishna, “Lotus-eyed one, you are known on Earth as a speaker of truth. Why then, destroyer of foes, do you not tell me of my grandson’s death today? Tell me in full: how was your sister’s son, whose eyes were like your own, killed by the enemy? That my heart does not break into a hundred pieces with grief tells me a man does not die before his time.

“When he fell, what did he say to his mother? What did my restless-eyed darling say for me? Was he killed fleeing, showing his back? Did his face dim in battle? Surely Drona, Karna, Kripa and the rest did not kill that boy by some trick? Tell me this. My daughter’s son always challenged the likes of Bhishma and Karna in battle.”

To his father lamenting so, Govinda, more stricken than he, replied, “Fighting at the head of the battle, his face did not dim. He did not show his back even in the fiercest fight. Having killed hundreds and thousands of kings, he came to peril at the hands of Drona and Karna, and at last was killed by the son of Duhshasana. Lord, had he been fought one at a time, without pause, even Indra with the thunderbolt could not have killed him in battle. When the Samshaptakas challenged his father Arjuna and drew him far from the main army, then the enraged Kaurava heroes, under Drona’s lead, ringed Abhimanyu in. Father, having killed countless enemies, he fell at last at the hands of Duhshasana’s son. Beyond doubt he has gone to heaven. Put off this grief. Those of pure understanding are not stained by any misfortune. He who held back heroes like Drona and Karna, why should he not go to heaven? Do not be ruled by anger and grief.

“When he fell, my sister Subhadra, torn with grief, seeing Kunti, wailed like a female osprey. Meeting Draupadi, distraught, she asked, ‘Honored one, where are all our sons? I wish to see them.’ And seeing Uttara she said, ‘Daughter, where has your husband gone? When he returns, tell me at once. Daughter of Virata, the moment he heard my voice he would come out of his chamber without losing a breath. Why does your husband not come out today? Alas, Abhimanyu, your great chariot-warrior uncles are all well. When you came dressed for battle they would bless you. Why do you not answer me today, who weep so bitterly?’

“Hearing the lament of this daughter of the Vrishnis, grieving Pritha said gently, ‘Subhadra, though guarded by Vasudeva, Satyaki, and his own father, your young son was killed. This slaughter came by the power of time. Daughter of the Yadus, your son was mortal. Do not grieve. Your son, unconquered in war, has surely reached the highest end. You are born in the high line of great-souled Kshatriyas. Lotus-eyed one, do not grieve. Look at Uttara, who is with child. This blessed girl will soon bear the son of that hero.’

“So Kunti consoled her, and having put off her grief, with the leave of Yudhishthira, Bhima, and the twins (like the two Yamas), she arranged the funeral rites of Abhimanyu and gave the brahmanas many gifts and cows. Then, somewhat consoled, Kunti said to the daughter of Virata, ‘Faultless girl, do not grieve. For your husband’s sake, protect the child in your womb.’ It was with Kunti’s leave that I brought Subhadra here. Father, so your grandson met his death. Put off your burning grief.”

The gist: Krishna hides Abhimanyu’s death from his father, but Subhadra guesses it. The truthful Krishna must at last tell that Abhimanyu was surrounded by trickery and killed. Kunti consoles Subhadra, and the child in Uttara’s womb is the only hope.

Vyasa’s prophecy and the buried wealth of Marutta

Hearing his son’s words, Vasudeva of the Shura line put off his grief and performed the fine funeral rites of Abhimanyu. He fed sixty hundred thousand brahmanas well and gave much cloth, gold, cows, and beds. Baladeva, Satyaki, and Satyaka too performed Abhimanyu’s rites, yet, torn with grief, could find no peace. The same was the state of the Pandavas at Hastinapura.

Uttara, daughter of Virata, in grief for her husband’s death, gave up food and water for many days. All her kin feared that the child in her womb might be lost. Then, knowing the state of things by his divine sight, Vyasa came. He said to the large-eyed Pritha and to Uttara, “Put off this grief. Glorious one, by the strength of Vasudeva and by my word, you will have a son of great energy. He will rule the Earth after the Pandavas have gone.”

Then, looking at Arjuna, in the hearing of Yudhishthira, he said, “Bharata, this grandson will be a great-souled king. He will rule the whole sea-girt Earth righteously. So put off your grief. This is true. What the Vrishni hero (Krishna) said before will surely come to pass. Abhimanyu, won by his own deeds, has gone to the worlds of the gods; grief for him is not fitting.” At his grandsire’s counsel Arjuna put off his grief and was glad. And, O king, your father grew in that womb like the moon of the bright fortnight.

Then Vyasa urged the just king to hold the Ashvamedha, and saying this vanished on the spot. Hearing his words, Yudhishthira set his mind on bringing the wealth for the sacrifice.

Janamejaya asked, “Hearing Vyasa’s words about the Ashvamedha, what did Yudhishthira do? How did he succeed in gaining the wealth of King Marutta, buried in the earth?”

A sub-tale: King Marutta, son of Avikshit, was an ancient and immensely rich emperor who had held a great sacrifice, and whose vast hoard of gold lay buried in the ground of the Himalayan region, guarded by fearsome kinnaras and yakshas. After the war the treasury was empty; Vyasa pointed the Pandavas toward this hoard so that the cost of the Ashvamedha could be met.

Vaishampayana said, “Hearing Vyasa’s words, Yudhishthira called Arjuna, Bhima, and the two sons of Madri and said, ‘Heroes, you have heard what Krishna said out of friendship and desire for the good of the Kurus. You have heard what the great ascetic Vyasa said, and what Bhishma and Govinda said. I wish to act by those words, for the words of the knowers of Brahman surely bring good fruit. The Earth is emptied of wealth; and so Vyasa told us of Marutta’s buried treasure. Bhima, what is your thought on how it may be brought to the capital?’

“Bhimasena folded his hands and said, ‘What you say I accept. If the treasure laid by the son of Avikshit falls to us, this sacrifice will be easily done. Bowing our heads to the great-souled Girisha (Shiva) and worshipping him, we will bring that wealth. Pleasing that lord of gods, marked with the bull, by word, thought, and deed, we will surely gain it. Even the fierce kinnaras who guard that hoard will hand it over, if Mahadeva is pleased.’

“Yudhishthira was pleased, and Arjuna and the rest said, ‘So be it.’ Then on the day and star of Dhruva the Pandavas ordered their army to march. Having brahmanas speak auspicious words, worshipping Maheshvara by the rule, offering cakes of sweetmeat, milk-rice, and meat, they set out with glad hearts. Taking leave of the grief-worn Dhritarashtra, of Gandhari and Kunti, and keeping Yuyutsu in the capital, they went on their way.”

The gist: Vyasa foretells that Uttara’s son (Parikshit) will rule the Earth after the Pandavas, and urges the Ashvamedha. For the cost of the sacrifice the Pandavas worship Shiva and set out toward the Himalayas to take Marutta’s buried hoard.

The worship of Shiva and the digging of the hoard

The glad-hearted Pandavas set out with their soldiers and beasts. The rumble of their chariot-wheels filled the whole Earth. Praised by bards, sutas, and heralds, they seemed like the Adityas adorned with their own rays. Yudhishthira, a white umbrella held over his head, shone like the full moon. Crossing many lakes, rivers, forests, and groves, they reached the mountain country and made camp on the level, auspicious ground where the wealth was buried. Putting the priest Agnivesya at their head, they laid out a camp of six roads and nine divisions. A separate camp was made for the rutting elephants.

By the counsel of the brahmanas, on that same auspicious day and star, Yudhishthira had an offering made to the three-eyed Mahadeva. The priest Dhaumya offered ghee to the fire with mantras, cooked the charu, offered sweetmeats, milk-rice, and meat to the god, and gave due offerings to Mahadeva’s ganas, to Kubera, Manibhadra, and the other yakshas. The king gave the brahmanas thousands of cows. With the fragrance of incense and flowers that holy place became most lovely.

Having worshipped Rudra and all the ganas, with Vyasa at his head, the king went to the place where the treasure was buried. Worshipping again the lord of wealth (Kubera), the fine gems named Shankha and Nidhi, and the yakshas, and receiving the brahmanas’ blessings, the king had the ground dug open. Then vessels of many kinds, ewers, cauldrons, pitchers, vardhamanakas, and countless fine bowls, came forth. The wealth was kept safe in great baskets and carried on men’s shoulders in wooden balances slung with panniers.

A key to reading this (numbers, a modern equivalent): To carry the wealth, sixty thousand camels, one hundred and twenty thousand horses, one hundred thousand elephants, as many chariots, carts, and she-elephants were gathered. Each camel bore sixteen thousand coins, each chariot eight thousand, each elephant twenty-four thousand. The numbers themselves tell the measureless vastness of that hoard, as if the gold of a whole empire.

Having loaded so much wealth, worshipping Mahadeva again, taking Vyasa’s leave, and putting the priest Dhaumya at their head, the sons of Pandu set out for Hastinapura. Making small journeys of a single gavyuti (about four miles) a day, that vast army, bent under its load, returned to the capital with the wealth, gladdening the hearts of all the Kurus.

The gist: The Pandavas, having duly worshipped Shiva, Kubera, and the yakshas, dig out Marutta’s hoard, gold so vast that a long line of camels, elephants, and horses is needed to carry it. Making slow journeys, they return to Hastinapura.

The birth of Parikshit: the dead infant, and Kunti’s cry

Meanwhile, before returning to Dwarka, at the just king’s request Krishna came back to Hastinapura with the Vrishnis, for the time of the Ashvamedha had come. Knowing the time of the sacrifice, with Pradyumna, Yuyudhana, Charudeshna, Samba, Gada, Kritavarma, Sarana, Nishatha, and Unmukha, and Baladeva at their head, and with Subhadra, they came to see Draupadi, Uttara, and Pritha, and to console the Kshatriya women robbed of their protectors. Dhritarashtra and Vidura welcomed them with honor.

In those very days, while the Vrishni heroes stayed in the Kuru city, O Janamejaya, your father was born. King Parikshit, struck by Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon, lay still and lifeless the moment he came from the womb; there was no life in him. His birth gave the citizens joy, then plunged them into grief. The lion’s roar of the prince’s birth rang in all directions, but when it was known that the infant was lifeless, that clamor stilled.

His mind and senses troubled, Krishna went quickly with Yuyudhana into the inner rooms of the palace. He saw his aunt Kunti coming toward him, weeping and calling on him again and again; behind her Draupadi, Subhadra, and the women of the Pandava kin, lamenting piteously. Kunti said in a choked voice, “Vasudeva, mighty-armed one, Devaki won the place of the highest of mothers by bearing you. You are our refuge, our pride. This line rests on you alone. Yadava, this child of your sister’s son has come from the womb killed by Ashvatthama. Kesava, revive him.

“Joy of the Yadus, you made a vow at that very time, when Ashvatthama turned a blade of grass into the Brahma weapon; your words were these, ‘If this child is born dead, I will revive him.’ That child, my son, is born dead. See him. Madhava, it is you who must save Uttara, Subhadra, Draupadi, me, the son of Dharma, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva, all of us. In this child are bound the lives of the Pandavas and mine. On him depend the offerings for Pandu, for my father-in-law, and for Abhimanyu.

“Uttara ever repeats the words Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son, spoke to this daughter of Virata: ‘Good lady, your son will go to my uncles; living among the Vrishnis and Andhakas, he will learn the science of arms, wondrous weapons, and the whole of statecraft.’ Madhusudana, with bowed heads we pray, make those words of Abhimanyu true.” Saying this, large-eyed Pritha, with the other women, raised her arms and fell to the ground, and all, their eyes blurred with tears, cried again and again, “Alas, the son of Vasudeva’s nephew is born dead.” Then Janardana took Kunti by the hand and gently raised her from the ground and consoled her.

A key to reading this (lineage): Parikshit is the son of Abhimanyu and Uttara, grandson of Arjuna, and grandson of Subhadra. At the end of the war Ashvatthama loosed the Brahma weapon at the child in Uttara’s womb to root out the seed of the Pandava line. This child is the sole heir of the Pandava line, and it is the occasion of the whole hearing of the Mahabharata: he is the father of Janamejaya.

The gist: Uttara’s son is born dead, struck by Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon. Kunti reminds Krishna of his old vow that he would revive this child, because the lives of the whole line rest on him.

The lament of Subhadra and Uttara, and Krishna’s “So be it”

When Kunti rose, Subhadra, seeing her brother, wept aloud. “Lotus-eyed one, look at the grandson of the wise Arjuna. The Kuru line has grown thin, and the child born is weak and dead. The blade of grass Drona’s son raised for the destruction of Bhimasena has fallen on Uttara, on Arjuna, and on me. That blade is lodged in my heart even now, for I cannot see this child beside my son Abhimanyu.

“What will the just king Yudhishthira say? What will Bhima, Arjuna, and the two sons of Madri say? Hearing that Abhimanyu’s son was born and died at once, they will think themselves cheated by Ashvatthama. Krishna, when Drona’s son wished to destroy even the wombs of the Pandava women, you yourself said in anger, ‘Base brahmana, I will make your desire fail; I will revive the son of Arjuna’s son.’ Knowing your words and your power, I would please you. Revive this son of Abhimanyu. If your former vow is not fulfilled, know, Vrishni, that I will give up my life. If, while you live, near you, this son of Abhimanyu does not live, of what use are you to me? As a sister, or as a mother bereft of her son, have mercy on Uttara and on me.”

At the words of his sister and the other women, Krishna, filled with the deepest grief, answered, “So be it!” And these words were so clear and so high that all in the inner rooms were gladdened, as though cool water had been sprinkled on one troubled by heat.

Then Krishna went quickly into the birth-chamber where your father was born. That room was hallowed with white garlands, with jars of water set all around, with coals of tinduku wood soaked in ghee, with mustard, with gleaming weapons, and with fires burning on every side. Many old, experienced women were in service, skilled physicians stood by, and all the things that keep off rakshasas were set in place by the rule. Seeing it, Hrishikesha was pleased and said, “Good, good.”

Then Draupadi went quickly to Uttara and said, “Bhadre, your father-in-law, Madhusudana, that unconquered ancient sage, is coming here.” Holding back her tears, covering herself as was fit, Uttara awaited Krishna as the gods await him. But seeing Govinda come, the helpless girl, distraught with grief, began to lament. “Lotus-eyed one, see us both without children. Janardana, Abhimanyu and I are both killed alike. Madhusudana, with bowed head I please you. Revive this child of mine, burned by the weapon of Drona’s son. If, at that time, Yudhishthira, Bhimasena, or you had said, ‘Let that blade destroy this senseless mother,’ then, lord, I alone would have perished and this calamity would not have come. Alas, what did Drona’s son gain by destroying the child in the womb? That very mother now bows to please you. Govinda, if this child does not live, I will surely give up my life. Kesava, the hope I nursed, of bowing to you with a child in my lap, is destroyed.”

The gist: Subhadra and Uttara in turn fall at Krishna’s feet and beg him to revive the child, each threatening to give up her life. Krishna says “So be it” and enters the well-appointed birth-chamber.

Krishna’s word of truth, and the revival of the infant

Lamenting in her longing for the child, Uttara fell to the ground almost out of her mind. Seeing the childless princess lying with her body bared, Kunti and all the Bharata women wept aloud. With the echo of their laments the palace of the Pandavas became a house of grief. Coming to herself, Uttara took the child in her lap and said, “You are the son of one who knew every dharma. Do you feel no sin, that you do not bow to this best of the Vrishnis? Child, go to your father and say these my words: for creatures it is hard to die before their time, for having lost both husband and now son, I still live.

“Rise, child, and see your grief-worn great-grandmother, drowned in an ocean of sorrow. See the princess of Panchala (Draupadi), and the helpless princess of the Satvatas (Subhadra). See me, struck with grief like a doe pierced by a hunter’s arrow. Rise, child, and see the face of this lord of the worlds, who is like your restless-eyed father.”

The women lifted Uttara, who had fallen to the ground, and set her up. Steadying herself, folding her hands, that daughter of the Matsya king touched her head to the earth and saluted Kesava. Hearing her heart-rending lament, that hero of the Dasharha line, of imperishable fame, touched water and drew the force of the Brahma weapon into himself. Then, in the hearing of the whole universe, the pure-souled Krishna spoke these words.

“Uttara, I never speak untruth; my words will prove true. Before all creatures I will revive this child. I have never spoken untruth, even in jest; I have never turned my back in battle; by the power of that truth let this child live! As dharma is dear to me, as brahmanas are especially dear to me, by the power of that truth let this stillborn son of Abhimanyu live! As there has never been a rift between me and my friend Vijaya (Arjuna), by that truth let this dead child live! As truth and dharma are ever set firm in me, by that let him live! As I killed Kansa and Keshi righteously, by that truth let this child live today!”

As Krishna spoke these words, O best of the Bharatas, the child came to life and slowly began to stir.

When Krishna drew away the Brahma weapon, the birth-chamber lit up with your father’s splendor. The rakshasas that had come there left the room, and many were destroyed. A voice rang in the sky, “Good, Kesava, good,” and the blazing Brahma weapon returned to the grandsire Brahma. Your father received life and began to move by his own fire and strength. The Bharata women filled with joy. At Govinda’s order the brahmanas spoke words of blessing. Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra, and Uttara were all as glad as drowning people who reach the shore on finding a boat.

Uttara, rising in due time, glad at heart, took the child in her arms and saluted Krishna, joy of the Yadus, with honor. Delighted, Krishna gave the child precious gems, and the other Vrishni heroes did the same. Then Janardana, firm in truth, named your father: “Since this son of Abhimanyu is born at a time when this line had nearly wasted away, his name will be Parikshit.” Then the child began to grow and to gladden everyone.

A key to reading this (the truth-act, satyakriya): Krishna brings the child to life by the oath of the truths of his own life, the satyakriya, with no mantra and no medicine. Note that he makes claims like “I never turned my back in battle” and “I killed Kansa and Keshi righteously”; this ties forward to Ulupi’s charge in the Babhruvahana episode that the killing of Bhishma was not wholly by dharma. The Mahabharata here does not simplify its moral lines.

When your father was a month old, the Pandavas returned to the capital with the vast wealth. Knowing the Pandavas near, the Vrishni heroes came out of the city. The citizens decked Hastinapura with garlands and banners and flags. Vidura had the gods worshipped in the temples. Bards and heralds, with lovely women, graced the quiet places of the city. All the officers proclaimed that, to mark the winning of that boundless jeweled wealth, there was festival that day through the whole realm.

The gist: Krishna touches water, draws back the Brahma weapon, and by the oath of his own true deeds revives the dead child. The rakshasas flee, a voice sounds in the sky. Born when the line had nearly wasted away, the child is named Parikshit. The Pandavas too return with the wealth.

The welcome of the Pandavas, Vyasa’s leave, and the loosing of the horse

The Pandavas, having met the Vrishnis by the rule, entered Hastinapura with the wealth at their head. The rumble of the chariots filled Earth and sky. Touching first the feet of Dhritarashtra, then bowing to Gandhari, Kunti, and Vidura, and meeting Yuyutsu, they heard the news of your father’s wondrous birth and Krishna’s feat; and all worshipped Krishna, joy of Devaki.

A few days later Vyasa came. The Kurus worshipped him by the rule. Yudhishthira said, “Revered one, with your grace the wealth has come; I wish to use it in the Ashvamedha. I ask your leave. We are all under you and under Krishna.”

Vyasa said, “I give my leave, king. The Ashvamedha washes away all sins. Worshipping the gods with this sacrifice, you will surely be cleansed of every sin.” Then Yudhishthira gave his mind to the making ready of the sacrifice and said to Krishna, “Best of men, all the enjoyments we have had, we have had by your power. You won the whole Earth. So you take the initiation; you are our highest guru and lord. If you hold the sacrifice, I will be cleansed of every sin. You are the sacrifice, you are the imperishable, you are dharma, you are Prajapati, you are the goal of all creatures.”

Krishna said, “Mighty-armed one, such words become you. But among the Kuru heroes it is you alone who shine today, by your dharma; all others have grown dim before you. You are our king and our eldest. With my full leave, worship the gods at the sacrifice yourself. Set us to whatever task you wish; I take an oath of truth that I will do all of it. Bhimasena, Arjuna, and the two sons of Madri will all serve at your sacrifice.”

Yudhishthira bowed to Vyasa and said, “Initiate me when the right hour comes. This sacrifice depends wholly on you.” Vyasa said, “I, Paila, and Yajnavalkya will do all the rites in their time. Your initiation will be on the full moon of Chaitra. Let sutas and brahmanas skilled in horses examine and choose a fit horse. Let it be loosed by the rule, that it may wander over the whole sea-girdled Earth, spreading your fierce fame.”

A sub-tale: The way of the Ashvamedha: a chosen sacrificial horse is let loose. Wherever it wanders, that land is counted subject to the king who holds the sacrifice. Whoever stops or seizes the horse gives challenge; the horse’s guardian fights him. After a year, when the horse returns, it is offered and the great sacrifice is held. Here the guardian is Arjuna himself.

Yudhishthira asked who would guard the horse. Vyasa said, “The one born after Bhimasena, best of bowmen, whose name is Jishnu, who is most steadfast and able to overcome every opposition, he will guard this horse. The slayer of the Nivatakavachas, who has all the divine weapons, is able to conquer the whole Earth; he will follow the horse. Let Bhimasena and Nakula guard the realm, and let the wise Sahadeva tend the invited guests.”

Yudhishthira said to Arjuna, “Hero, guard this horse; you alone are able. Try to avoid battle with the kings who come against you, as far as you can. Invite them all to this sacrifice. Go, but strive to form ties of friendship with them.” Saying this, Yudhishthira gave Bhima and Nakula the guarding of the city, and, with Dhritarashtra’s leave, set Sahadeva to the service of the guests.

The gist: Yudhishthira begs Krishna to take the initiation, but Krishna says that as eldest and king it must be Yudhishthira who holds the sacrifice. Vyasa fixes the full moon of Chaitra, and the horse is loosed, its guarding falling to Arjuna, under the hard order to spare the rival kings, only defeating them and inviting them.

The start of Arjuna’s journey: Trigarta and Pragjyotisha

When the hour of initiation came, the priests initiated Yudhishthira by the rule. A gold chain at his throat, a black antelope skin his upper cloth, a staff in his hand, and red silk, the just king shone on the sacrificial ground like a second Prajapati. Arjuna, of the white horses, made ready, at Yudhishthira’s order, to follow the black-antelope-colored horse. Drawing again and again on the string of the Gandiva, wearing a guard of lizard-skin, glad at heart, Arjuna followed the horse.

All Hastinapura, down to its children, poured out to see Arjuna. The crowd was so thick that the press of bodies seemed to breed fire. People said, “There goes the son of Kunti, and there the shining horse. The mighty-armed one, with his best of bows, follows the horse.” The citizens blessed him, “Fortune be with you! Go and return in safety, Bharata. May every peril be far from your path.” A pupil of Yajnavalkya, skilled in all the rites of sacrifice, went with Arjuna for his auspicious rites. Many brahmanas learned in the Vedas, and Kshatriyas too, at Yudhishthira’s order, followed that hero.

The horse began to wander freely over the Earth the Pandavas had already won, turning from the north toward the east, crushing many kingdoms. Arjuna of the white horses followed slowly behind. Those Kshatriyas whose kin had been killed at Kurukshetra, countless kings, closed with Arjuna. Kiratas, Yavanas, and various mleccha peoples, defeated before, fought again. I will tell only of the chief and fiercest battles.

The first battle was with the Trigartas, who had drawn the Pandavas’ enmity before. Learning that the sacrificial horse had come into their realm, these heroes put on armor, ringed Arjuna, and sought to seize the horse. Arjuna held them off first with soft words: “Stop, unrighteous ones; life is a gift, do not throw it away,” for Yudhishthira had ordered that he not kill the Kshatriyas whose kin were slain at Kurukshetra. But the Trigartas paid no heed and rained arrows.

Then Arjuna defeated their king Suryavarma with countless arrows and laughed at him in scorn. Suryavarma pierced Arjuna with hundreds of straight arrows; Arjuna cut them all. His younger brother Ketuvarma fought for his brother; Vibhatsu killed him with keen arrows. At Ketuvarma’s fall the great chariot-warrior Dhritavarma came forward raining arrows. At that youth’s quickness of hand Arjuna was pleased; he could not see when the young man drew and fitted his arrows, only the rain of shafts in the sky. Arjuna praised his valor within and did not wish to take his life.

But Dhritavarma drove a keen arrow into Arjuna’s hand, and the Gandiva slipped from the half-fainting Arjuna’s grip and fell to the ground. Dhritavarma laughed aloud. Then, filled with anger, Arjuna wiped the blood from his hand, took up the bow, and rained arrows. Seeing Arjuna, like Yama at the end of an age, close on Dhritavarma, the Trigarta heroes rushed to save him. Angrier still, Arjuna struck down eighteen of their chief heroes with iron shafts like Indra’s bolts. The Trigartas fled. At last they said, “We are your servants, we bow to you; command us, Partha.” Arjuna said, “Save your lives, and accept my overlordship.”

After this the horse reached Pragjyotisha. Vajradatta, son of Bhagadatta, came out to stop it. He struck and seized the horse and turned back. Arjuna drew the Gandiva and rushed on him. Troubled by the arrows, the son of Bhagadatta let go the horse and fled, then put on armor, mounted his fine elephant, took a white umbrella and yak-tail fan, and in the folly of youth came back to challenge Arjuna. He drove his mountain-like elephant, dripping with rut, at Arjuna.

Arjuna, on foot, took on the prince mounted on the elephant. Vajradatta rained broad, fire-like arrows; Arjuna cut them into two and three pieces. Then with gold-winged arrows he pierced Vajradatta, who fell to the ground but kept his senses. For three days the battle raged, as of Indra and Vritra.

On the fourth day Vajradatta laughed aloud and said, “Wait, Arjuna! You will not live. Killing you, I will offer tarpana to my father. My old father Bhagadatta, who was a friend of your father’s, you killed in his old age when he was weak. Now fight me, a boy!” Saying this, he drove his elephant at Arjuna. Arjuna stood fearless on the strength of the Gandiva. Remembering the old family enmity and the obstacle to his work, he filled with anger. With his rain of arrows he stopped the elephant’s charge, and it was pierced like a porcupine with quills. At last Arjuna pierced the elephant’s vitals with a fire-like arrow, and it fell like a mountain peak split by the thunderbolt.

To Vajradatta, fallen with his elephant, Arjuna said, “Do not fear. Yudhishthira has ordered me not to kill the kings who fight me, only to disable them and invite them to the sacrifice. Rise; return to your city without fear. Come to Yudhishthira’s sacrifice on the full moon of Chaitra.” Vajradatta said, “So be it.”

The gist: Arjuna wanders behind the horse. The Trigartas (Suryavarma, Ketuvarma, Dhritavarma) and Vajradatta of Pragjyotisha stop it. Vajradatta openly repeats the charge that Arjuna killed his old father Bhagadatta in the weakness of age. Arjuna defeats them all, but by Yudhishthira’s order kills none.

In the land of Sindhu, Duhshala, and mercy to the son of Surath

Then the horse reached the land of Sindhu, where the hundreds of Saindhavas left after Jayadratha’s death lived. Learning of the coming of Arjuna, of the white horses, they, who bore enmity toward Partha, the younger brother of Bhimasena, seized the horse without fear. With a thousand chariots and ten thousand horses they ringed Arjuna, who stood on foot, like a cage, and, remembering the killing of Jayadratha at Kurukshetra, rained heavy arrows.

In that cloud of arrows Arjuna became like the sun hidden by cloud. The three worlds cried “alas,” the sun’s light dimmed, a fierce wind blew, Rahu seized the sun and moon at once, meteors fell, and Kailasa trembled. In that Brahma-weapon-like rain Arjuna fainted; the Gandiva and his glove slipped from his hands. Then the gods, the seers, and the seven sages began their silent prayers for Arjuna’s victory. By those divine acts Arjuna’s fire blazed up again; he stood as unmoving as a mountain. He drew his divine bow, and with a mighty twang rained arrows like Indra. The Saindhava heroes vanished like trees hidden under locusts, and, terrified by the twang of the Gandiva, fled wailing. Arjuna, wheeling among them like a wheel of fire, pierced them.

Still the Saindhavas gathered and returned to fight, raining arrows. Arjuna, laughing, spoke soft words to those who stood in the jaws of death. “Fight with all your might, try to conquer me. A great peril awaits you ahead.” But remembering his elder brother’s words, he thought within himself, “Yudhishthira said that the Kshatriyas who fight are not to be killed, only defeated. Let me not make his words false.” So he said, “I speak for your good; standing before you, I do not wish to kill you. Whoever says he is defeated and mine, him I will spare.”

But they would not agree. Then Arjuna cut off many heads and stunned many with his arrows. Their beasts were worn out. Just then, seeing them dispirited, Queen Duhshala, daughter of Dhritarashtra, came to Arjuna with her grandson in her arms. That boy was the son of Surath, son of Jayadratha. The queen came weeping. Arjuna threw down his bow, welcomed his sister, and asked what she wished. Duhshala said, “Bharata, this is your nephew’s son; he bows to you.” Arjuna asked, “And where is your son Surath?”

Duhshala said, “In grief for the killing of his father Jayadratha, he was already burning. The moment he heard of your coming, in deep sorrow, he fell and gave up his life. Seeing him lie dead, I have taken his infant son and come to your shelter.” Saying this she wept, and Arjuna stood with his face bent to the ground.

Duhshala said, “Kuru, have mercy on this child, forgetting Duryodhana and the wicked Jayadratha. As Parikshit was born of Abhimanyu, so is this my grandson born of Surath. He is the son of your wicked enemy, mighty-armed one, but a child who knows nothing. Do not be angry. Forgetting his blamable, cruel grandfather, be gracious to him.” Remembering Gandhari and Dhritarashtra, Arjuna, grieving, censuring the way of the Kshatriya, said, “Shame on that base, greedy, proud Duryodhana, through whom I have sent all my own kin to the world of death.” Then he consoled his sister, embraced her, and sent her away in peace. Duhshala kept all her warriors from the fight and turned back.

The gist: In the land of Sindhu the Saindhavas, bearing the enmity of Jayadratha’s killing, ring Arjuna in and even knock him senseless; ill omens fill nature. Arjuna recovers and drives them off. His own sister Duhshala comes to his shelter with her infant grandson (her son Surath has died of grief). Grieving over the bitterness of the Kshatriya law, Arjuna is merciful.

Manipura: the father-son battle with Babhruvahana

Wandering on, the horse reached Manipura. Its king Babhruvahana, the son of Arjuna, hearing that his father had come, came out humbly to welcome him, putting brahmanas and gifts of wealth at his head. But Arjuna, remembering the Kshatriya law, would not accept this conduct. In anger he said, “This conduct does not become you. You have fallen from the Kshatriya law. I have come into your kingdom as the guardian of Yudhishthira’s sacrificial horse; why then do you not fight me? Shame on you, fool, receiving me in peace while I have come for war. Welcoming me so in peace, you behave like a woman. Had I come with my weapons laid down, then this conduct would have been right.”

Hearing his father’s words, the naga princess Ulupi, Arjuna’s wife and Babhruvahana’s stepmother, could not bear it and rose up through the split earth. She saw her son standing dejected, head bowed, rebuked again and again for war by his father. She said, “Know that I am your mother Ulupi, the naga princess. Obey me, son, and then you will win great merit. Fight your father, this best of the Kurus, this hero unconquered in battle; then he will be pleased with you.” So the stepmother goaded the son against the father, and at last Babhruvahana resolved on war.

Wearing golden armor and a gleaming helmet, raising a banner of a golden lion, mounted on a fine chariot yoked with horses swift as thought, he came before his father. He had the sacrificial horse seized and challenged him, and the horse’s guardian Arjuna was pleased. Standing on the ground, Arjuna held off his chariot-mounted son. The battle of father and son was matchless, as of gods and asuras; each was glad to find the other a match. Then Babhruvahana, laughing, drove a straight arrow into Arjuna’s shoulder, and it pierced through the body like a snake into its hole and sank into the earth. In the sharp pain Arjuna rested a few moments on his bow, as if lifeless; then, coming to himself, he praised his son. “Well done, well done, son of Chitrangada! Seeing this valor worthy of you, I am pleased. Now I loose my arrows at you; do not flee, stand firm.” Saying this, he rained arrows.

Babhruvahana cut all the arrows loosed from the Gandiva. Arjuna felled his golden banner and killed his horses; then the king came down from his chariot and fought on foot. Pleased with his son’s valor, Arjuna pressed him harder, and then, in a boy’s nature, Babhruvahana drove a keen arrow into his father’s chest. It pierced to the vitals, and Arjuna, joy of the Kurus, fell in a faint to the ground.

Seeing his father fall, the son of Chitrangada too, from the labor of battle and the grief of his father’s killing, lost his senses and fell on the field; Arjuna had already pierced him with arrows. Hearing that her husband was killed and her son had fallen, Chitrangada came burning with grief, trembling and weeping, to the field, and, mother of the king of Manipura, saw her dead husband.

A key to reading this (lineage): Two other wives of Arjuna are in this episode. Chitrangada is the daughter of Chitravahana, king of Manipura, mother of Babhruvahana. Ulupi is the daughter of the naga king Kauravya, Arjuna’s naga-world wife, here Babhruvahana’s stepmother and a guru-like figure to him. Babhruvahana is thus Arjuna’s own son, and this is a battle between father and son, which deepens the Mahabharata’s moral knot.

The gist: Arjuna calls his son Babhruvahana’s humble welcome cowardice and forces him to fight. His stepmother Ulupi goads him. In the fierce battle Babhruvahana strikes his father down, and falls senseless himself with grief.

Chitrangada’s lament, and Arjuna’s revival by the gem

Coming to herself, Chitrangada said to Ulupi, “See, Ulupi, our ever-victorious husband is killed on the field by my tender-aged son, through you. Do you know the dharma of a faithful wife? Through you your husband lies fallen. If Arjuna has done you any wrong, forgive it, and revive this hero. In all three worlds your virtues are famed; then why, having made your husband die by my son’s hand, do you not grieve? My grief is for my husband, who received this welcome from his own son, more than for my killed son.”

Then she went to her husband and said, “Rise, beloved. You are most dear to the Kuru king Yudhishthira. Here is your horse; I have set it free; you must follow it. You, who give life to others, why do you give up your own life today? Ulupi, see your husband lying on the ground. Why do you not grieve, you who by your words goaded my son to kill him? For men many wives are no fault; only women incur fault by taking more than one husband. So do not hold thoughts of revenge. This bond is made by the Ordainer himself, eternal and unshakable. If you do not revive my husband, killed by my son, before my eyes today, I too will give up my life. Robbed of both husband and son, I will sit here before you in praya, fasting to death.” Saying this, the fellow wife Chitrangada took her husband’s feet in her lap and sat down to fast.

Then King Babhruvahana came to himself. Seeing his mother in that state, he lamented, “What is more sorrowful than that my mother, raised in comfort, should lie on the bare ground beside her brave husband? Alas, I have killed this destroyer of all foes, best of those who bear weapons. It is clear that a man does not die before his time, or neither I nor my mother would still live after this sight. Brahmanas, see, my brave father lies on the hero’s bed, killed by his own son’s hand. What expiation is there for cruel me, a father-killer? Give me the two halves of my father’s head, that I may wander the Earth bearing them, for there is no greater expiation for the killing of a father.” Touching water, he vowed that if his father Jaya did not rise, he would dry up his body on that field, and, taking the vow of fasting to death, he fell silent.

When the king sat down with his mother to fast to death, Ulupi called to mind the gem that revives the dead, the great refuge of the nagas. The moment she thought of it, the gem came. Lifting it, Ulupi spoke words that gladdened all the warriors on the field. “Rise, son; do not grieve. You have not defeated Jishnu. This hero is unconquered by men, and even by the gods with Indra. It was I who wove this illusion, confusing your senses, for the good of your glorious father. To learn the valor of you, his son, this destroyer of foes came to fight you; for this I urged you to war. You have done no wrong, not the least. This is a great-souled sage, eternal and imperishable; even Indra cannot conquer him in battle. This divine gem revives the nagas again and again when they die. Lay it on your father’s chest; you will see the son of Pandu alive.”

The son lovingly laid the gem on Arjuna’s chest, and Jishnu came to life. Opening his red eyes, he rose as one waking from long sleep. Babhruvahana honored his father with reverence. Then Indra rained divine flowers; kettledrums sounded untouched, and a voice in the sky cried, “Good, good.” Rising, made whole, Arjuna embraced Babhruvahana and smelled his head. Then, seeing Chitrangada and Ulupi seated at a distance, worn with grief, he asked why there were signs of sorrow, wonder, and joy all at once, and why the two women had come to the field. Babhruvahana said, “Ask Ulupi.”

The gist: Chitrangada blames her fellow wife Ulupi for her husband’s death and sits down to fast to death. Babhruvahana too vows to fast to death for the sin of a father’s killing. Then Ulupi brings the sanjivana gem, revives Arjuna, and prepares to tell why she wove this whole illusion.

Ulupi reveals the secret: the curse and expiation for Bhishma’s fall

Arjuna asked Ulupi, “Naga maid, why did you come here, and why did the mother of the king of Manipura come? Do you bear friendly feeling toward this king? And do you wish me well too? I hope that neither I nor this Babhruvahana has done you some unknowing wrong. Did Chitrangada do you any harm?”

Ulupi smiled and said, “Neither you, nor Babhruvahana, nor his mother, who is ever as obedient to me as a servant, has wronged me. Listen: I have done all this for your good. Mighty-armed one, in the great war of the Mahabharata you killed Bhishma, son of Shantanu, by the way of adharma; you did not fell him yourself, he was engaged with Shikhandi, and using that screen you accomplished Bhishma’s death. Had you died without washing away that sin, you would surely have fallen into hell for it. Taking this defeat from your own son, you have washed that sin away.

“When Bhishma fell, the Vasus came to the bank of the Ganga and said that Bhishma was then engaged with another (Shikhandi) and had ceased from battle, and yet Arjuna killed him; for this fault they would curse Arjuna. Ganga too said, ‘So be it.’ Hearing this, I went to my father. My father pleased the Vasus again and again, and then they said that Arjuna has a glorious son who is king of Manipura; he will throw Arjuna to the ground on the field, and then Arjuna will be freed of the curse. A son is one’s own second self; and so you were defeated by him. Tell me, what fault is there in this of mine?” Arjuna was pleased and said, “Goddess, what you have done is most dear to us.”

Arjuna ordered Babhruvahana that Yudhishthira’s Ashvamedha would be on the full moon of Chaitra; he should come there with his mother and ministers. With tearful eyes Babhruvahana said he would surely come and take the charge of feeding the brahmanas, but begged that his father rest one night in his city with his two wives. Arjuna said his vow was that until the following of the horse was done he would not stay in any city; the horse wanders freely, and he must always follow it. “There is not even a moment’s place of rest for me.” Taking his leave of his son and both wives, he went on.

A key to reading this (the moral knot): Ulupi herself admits that Arjuna killed Bhishma “by the way of adharma,” using the screen of Shikhandi, while Bhishma had ceased from battle. The father-son battle and the revival are the expiation of that sin, arranged by the Vasus. The Mahabharata neither hides nor softens its heroes’ breaking of the rule; it weaves it into the machinery of the tale.

The gist: Ulupi reveals that this whole event was of her own making: the Vasus had cursed Arjuna for the adharma killing of Bhishma, and by falling to and being revived by his own son, Arjuna is freed of that curse. Because of his vow, Arjuna does not stay in the city and goes on.

Meghasandhi of Magadha, and the journey through the remaining lands

The horse, having wandered the whole sea-girdled Earth, now turned toward Hastinapura, and Arjuna with it. On the way it reached Rajagriha in Magadha. There Meghasandhi, son of the Magadha king Sahadeva (of Jarasandha’s line), a keeper of the Kshatriya law, came out to challenge Arjuna. To Arjuna, standing on foot, the mounted and armored Meghasandhi, with bow and shield, spoke in a boy’s raw voice. “This horse of yours, Bharata, seems to wander guarded only by women. I will take it; try to win it back. Though my forefathers taught you nothing, still I will offer you hospitality. Strike me, and I will strike you.”

Arjuna laughed and said, “It is the vow given to me by my elder brother to strike back at whoever stops me. This you know. Strike with all your might; I feel no anger.” The king of Magadha rained arrows like the thousand-eyed Indra. Arjuna cut them all, then loosed fire-mouthed snake-arrows at his banner, banner-staff, chariot, yoke, and horses, while sparing the king’s body and his charioteer. Meghasandhi, thinking this his own doing, pierced Arjuna, who shone like a palasha tree in spring. At last Arjuna killed his horses, cut off his charioteer’s head, cut his bow and shield, and felled his banner. When Meghasandhi ran up with a mace, Arjuna cut the mace to pieces.

Arjuna did not wish to kill an enemy stripped of chariot, bow, and mace. He consoled the dispirited keeper of the Kshatriya law. “Son, you have shown enough of the Kshatriya law. Now go. Young as you are, you have done great deeds. Yudhishthira has ordered that I not kill the rival kings; for this you live. Come to our sacrifice on the full moon of Chaitra.” Meghasandhi said, “So be it,” and honored the horse and Arjuna.

Then the horse went along the sea coast into Vanga, Pundra, and Kosala, where Arjuna conquered many mleccha armies. Turning south, it reached the fair city of the Chedis, where Sharabha, son of Shishupala, first fought and then honored him. Honored onward in Kashi, Anga, Kosala, among the Kiratas and the Tanganas, Arjuna went to Dasharna, where a fierce battle with the strong King Chitrangada was fought and he was brought to heel.

Then came a hair-raising battle with the Nishada king, son of Ekalavya; the unconquered Arjuna beat him. Moving toward the southern sea, there were battles with the Dravidas, the Andhras, the fierce Mahishakas, and the hill peoples of Kolva. Through Saurashtra, reaching Gokarna and Prabhasa, Arjuna came to Dwarka. The young Yadus laid hands on the horse, but King Ugrasena stopped them. Then Ugrasena, king of the Vrishnis and Andhakas, and Arjuna’s uncle Vasudeva came and honored Arjuna. With their leave he went on. The horse passed along the shore of the western sea to Panchanada (Punjab), then to the land of Gandhara. There the son of Shakuni, who kept his father’s old enmity against the Pandavas, closed with Arjuna.

The gist: On the return the boy-king Meghasandhi of Magadha challenges Arjuna and is defeated. Then through Vanga, Pundra, Kosala, Chedi, Kashi, Dasharna, the Nishadas, the Dravidas and Andhras, Saurashtra, and Dwarka the horse reaches Gandhara, where the son of Shakuni comes forward carrying the old enmity.

The battle of Gandhara, and the horse’s return to Hastinapura

The son of Shakuni came against the curly-haired Arjuna with a great army of elephants, horses, chariots, and banners. Unable to bear the death of their king Shakuni, the Gandhara heroes ringed Arjuna in. Arjuna spoke words of peace, but they would not listen. Then angry Arjuna, with razor-arrows from the Gandiva, cut off the heads of many Gandhara heroes. The frightened Gandharas left the horse and fled, but those who held their ground had their heads cut off as Arjuna named them.

Then the Gandhara king, Shakuni’s son, urged by the Kshatriya law, came forward. Arjuna said, “By Yudhishthira’s order I do not kill the kings who fight me. Stop; do not buy defeat.” But in his folly he did not listen and rained arrows. Arjuna cut off his helmet with a crescent arrow and carried it away, letting it fall at a distance, like Jayadratha’s severed head. Seeing this, the Gandhara heroes were amazed and understood that Arjuna had spared their king on purpose.

The king fled with his heroes like frightened deer. Many heads, many arms Arjuna cut, and in their fear they did not even know their limbs were gone. Then the mother of the Gandhara king came out of the city with the old ministers, bearing an arghya, and stopped her brave son from the fight. Arjuna honored her and was gracious to the Gandharas. Consoling Shakuni’s son, he said, “The enmity you showed is not dear to me. Sinless one, you are my brother. Remembering your mother Gandhari and Dhritarashtra, I have not killed you; and so you live. Many of your followers are surely dead, but let it not be so again. Give up enmity. Come to Yudhishthira’s sacrifice on the full moon of Chaitra.”

Saying this, Arjuna went on behind the horse, and it turned toward Hastinapura. Yudhishthira heard from his spies that the horse was returning and Arjuna was well; he rejoiced. Watching for the twelfth of the bright half of Magha and a favorable star, he called Bhima, Nakula, and Sahadeva and said, “Your younger brother returns with the horse. The time of the sacrifice has come; the Magha full moon is near. Let the brahmanas learned in the Vedas seek out the site.” Bhima, pleased, chose the site, measured out the pavilion, and raised hundreds of halls, high broad roads, level ground set with jewels, golden arches, and pillars. Separate dwellings were made for kings, women, and brahmanas. Then Bhima sent messengers to summon the great kings of the Earth.

The gist: In Gandhara, Shakuni’s son closes with Arjuna in the old enmity of Shakuni’s death; Arjuna spares him, calling him “brother” for the sake of Gandhari and Dhritarashtra. The horse returns toward Hastinapura, and Bhima builds the vast sacrificial pavilion.

Arjuna’s return, and a stinging remark of Krishna’s

Krishna came to the sacrifice with the Vrishnis, Balarama at their head. Bhima honored them all. Yudhishthira asked Krishna again and again about Arjuna, worn thin by so many battles. Krishna told him a trusted spy had come from Dwarka, who had seen Arjuna near and well; Arjuna’s message was that the coming kings should be given due honor, that the bloodshed at the arghya of the Rajasuya (the killing of Shishupala) should not be repeated, and that the king of Manipura, Babhruvahana, should be given special honor.

Yudhishthira asked, “Krishna, Vijaya has fought countless battles; why is he always denied ease and rest? What mark is there in his fine body for which he must always bear hardship? I see no ill sign in him.”

Krishna thought long and answered, “There is no fault in this hero except that his cheekbones are a little too high. For this he must always be on the road. I see no other cause.” Yudhishthira agreed. But Draupadi looked at Krishna with anger and a sidelong glance, for she could not bear a fault laid on Arjuna. And Krishna, slayer of Keshi, only welcomed this sign of Panchali’s love for his friend.

A sub-tale: At the Rajasuya, at the time of the foremost honor of the arghya, Shishupala had opposed Krishna, and Krishna had killed him, a bloodshed on the sacrificial ground. Arjuna’s message was meant to prevent a repeat of this, so that the Ashvamedha might be completed in peace.

Then Arjuna’s messenger came. At once the king’s eyes filled with tears of joy; the messenger was given rich gifts. The next day Arjuna arrived; the dust raised by the horse’s hooves shone like the dust of Uchchaihshravas. The citizens said, “Fortune, Partha, you have come safe from peril! Who but Arjuna could have driven a horse over the whole Earth, conquered all the kings, and returned? Even the old kings, Sagara and the rest, did not do this.” Arjuna entered the pavilion. With Yudhishthira, Krishna, and Dhritarashtra at their head, all came out to receive him. Arjuna touched the feet of his father Dhritarashtra and of Yudhishthira, honored Bhima and the others, embraced Krishna, and rested like one who has reached the shore after drowning.

Meanwhile Babhruvahana too came to the Kuru capital with his mothers Chitrangada and Ulupi. He bowed to all the elders, was honored, and went to the house of his great-grandmother Kunti, who welcomed him warmly. Chitrangada and Ulupi met Subhadra and the Kuru women by the rule; Kunti, Draupadi, and Subhadra gave them many jewels, and the two queens stayed there in affection. Babhruvahana bowed to Krishna as to Pradyumna; Krishna gave him a fine gold-inlaid chariot. Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, and the twins gave him precious gifts as well.

The gist: Arjuna returns safe and is welcomed with splendor. Krishna names the cause of Arjuna’s ever-toilsome life as his high cheekbones, a remark that stings Draupadi, and Krishna welcomes her loving anger. Babhruvahana comes with his mothers and meets everyone.

The Ashvamedha: the rite, the sacrifice, and the gift of the Earth

On the third day Vyasa said to Yudhishthira, “Begin the sacrifice today; the hour has come. For the great gold it needs, this will be called the Bahusuvarnaka, the rite of much gold. King, give three times the prescribed dakshina, so that, gaining the merit of three Ashvamedhas, you may be freed of the sin of killing kin.” At Vyasa’s word Yudhishthira took the initiation and began the great Ashvamedha.

The learned priests performed every act by the rule; nowhere was there the least departure. After the pravargya and abhishava, the soma juice was pressed and the savana rite performed. No one who came was seen sad, poor, hungry, or grieving; Bhima at the king’s order kept the food flowing. Sacrificial posts were set up, six of bilva, six of khadira, six of sarvavarnin, two of devadaru, and one of shleshmataka; and Bhima had golden posts made too, only for splendor. A gold-brick altar eighteen cubits high and of four sections was raised, and a three-cornered golden bird in the shape of Garuda was made. The priests handed the beasts and birds each to its own god and tied them to the posts. Three hundred beasts were tied, along with the fine horse. Narada, Tumburu, Vishvavasu, Chitrasena, and other gandharvas entertained the brahmanas with music and dance.

By the rule the other beasts were cooked, and then that horse which had wandered the whole Earth was offered. The horse was cut into parts, and Draupadi, endowed with mantra, substance, and devotion, was seated beside the divided beast. The brahmanas cooked the marrow of the horse, and Yudhishthira with his brothers breathed in the sin-destroying smoke. The remaining parts sixteen priests offered in the fire. When the sacrifice was done, Vyasa praised the king.

Then Yudhishthira gave the brahmanas a thousand crore gold nishkas, and gave the whole Earth to Vyasa. Vyasa accepted the Earth and gave it back: “King, I return this Earth to you; give its price in gold, for brahmanas want wealth, not the Earth.” Yudhishthira said to the brahmanas, “The prescribed dakshina of the Ashvamedha is the Earth; so I have given the Earth Arjuna won to the priests. I will go to the forest; divide the Earth into four parts among you.” The brothers and Draupadi said, “So be it.” In the sky a voice rang, “Good, good.”

Then Vyasa said again, “You gave me the Earth; I return it to you. Give these brahmanas gold, and let the Earth remain yours.” Krishna too said, “Do as Vyasa says.” Then Yudhishthira, glad, with his brothers, gave crores of gold coins, making the dakshina threefold. No other king will be able to hold such a sacrifice, the equal of Marutta’s. Vyasa divided the wealth into four parts and gave it to the priests. Having paid the price of the Earth and been cleansed of all sins, Yudhishthira rejoiced. All the gold ornaments of the pavilion, the arches, posts, and vessels, the brahmanas took at will; the rest the Kshatriyas, vaishyas, shudras, and mleccha peoples took. Vyasa gave his own great share to Kunti, who used it in works of merit. Giving the invited kings jewels, elephants, horses, gold, and servants, Yudhishthira shone like Vaishravana. He sent Babhruvahana off with boundless wealth, set Duhshala’s infant grandson in his ancestral kingdom, and, honoring Krishna, Balarama, and the Vrishni heroes, sent them off to Dwarka.

The gist: The Ashvamedha is completed by the rule, with the offering of the horse, Draupadi’s part in the rite, and the threefold dakshina. Yudhishthira gives the Earth to Vyasa, who returns it and takes the price in gold. The king is held cleansed of the sin of killing kin and gives boundless gifts to all.

The half-gold mongoose: and one handful of barley meal

Janamejaya said, “Tell me of any wonder that happened at the sacrifice of my forefathers.” Vaishampayana said, “At the end of that great Ashvamedha a most strange thing happened. When all the brahmanas, kin, and friends, and the poor, blind, and helpless, had been satisfied, when boundless gifts were talked of on every side, and flowers rained on Yudhishthira’s head, a blue-eyed mongoose, half of whose body was gold, came there and spoke in a grave, human voice as deep as thunder.

“‘Kings, this great sacrifice is not equal even to a prastha (a certain measure) of powdered barley given away by a generous brahmana of Kurukshetra who kept the unchha vow.’ Hearing this, all the brahmanas were amazed and asked the mongoose, ‘Who are you, whence have you come to this sacrifice, the refuge of the good? What is your strength, your knowledge, your refuge? How do you decry this sacrifice of ours, done wholly by the rule, where the worthy were worshipped, offerings were made with mantras, and gifts were given without pride? How can your words be true?’

“The mongoose smiled and said, ‘Brahmanas, my words are neither false nor spoken in pride. This sacrifice is not equal to that one prastha of powdered barley. Listen, I will tell the true event that I myself saw and lived, and by which half my body turned to gold.

“‘On that holy ground of Kurukshetra a brahmana lived by the unchha vow, with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law. He lived like a pigeon, gleaning the scattered and fallen grains of the fields. He ate only once, in the sixth division of the day; if he found nothing then, he fasted and ate at the sixth division the next day.

A key to reading this (the unchha vow): “Unchha” means gleaning the scattered, dropped grains of fields and threshing floors after the harvest. It is the poorest, most possessionless way of life, hoarding nothing, begging nothing, living only on what is left and fallen. The tale holds this destitute brahmana’s gift greater than the vast, Rajasuya-like Ashvamedha.

“‘Once a terrible famine fell in the land. That righteous man had nothing stored; the herbs dried up, the granaries of the realm went empty. The hour of food would come, but there was nothing to eat, and so it was day after day. All the family, worn with hunger, still passed the days somehow. In the noon of the month of Jyeshtha, when the sun was overhead, that brahmana, struggling with heat and hunger, gleaned grains. At last, after the sixth division, he came by a prastha of barley. It was ground into sattu. After their daily rites, chanting, and offering, those ascetics divided the little sattu among them into four equal parts, each part a kudava.

A key to reading this (the measures): Prastha and kudava are old measures of grain, four kudavas to a prastha. That is, the whole of a day’s labor brought only a single prastha of barley, which four people divided a kudava apiece, a measure that barely stills the hunger of one person for one meal.

“‘The four were pure of mind, masters of their senses, faithful, free of envy, anger, and pride. Just as they were about to sit and eat, a guest came to the door. Seeing him, they were all glad, welcomed him, and asked his welfare. Giving the arghya, water for the feet, and a seat of kusha grass, they said, “This pure sattu, earned by dharma, accept from us.” The guest took his kudava of sattu and ate it all, but his hunger was not stilled.

“‘Seeing this, the brahmana thought of what more to give him. Then the wife said, “Give my share to him, that he may go satisfied.” But the wife herself was worn with hunger, skin and bone, trembling with weakness. The brahmana said, “Good lady, even beasts and insects feed and keep their mates; do not say this. One who does not protect his wife earns ill fame here and hell hereafter.” The wife answered, “Our dharma and our wealth are one. Take my share and give it to the guest. You are old, wasted with hunger and fasting. When you can give your share, why should I not give mine?” The brahmana took his wife’s share and gave it to the guest, but even then his hunger was not stilled.’

A sub-tale: In the famine this destitute family, though starving to death, does not give up the law of hospitality: first the householder, then his wife, then the son, then the daughter-in-law, each in turn hands the guest his single mouthful. The guest was in truth Dharma himself, come to test them. This selfless gift of a kudava of sattu apiece carried the whole family bodily to heaven, and rolling in the dust of that place turned half the mongoose’s body to gold, while to make the other half gold it had to keep wandering in search of such another gift.

The mongoose said, “Until the guest was satisfied, the son and the daughter-in-law too gave up their shares. Then the guest, pleased, showed himself in his true form; by the merit of that gift the brahmana went with his family to heaven. On the ground where that sattu had scattered I rolled, and half my body turned to gold. Since then I wander from sacrifice to sacrifice in this hope, that I may see such another gift and my other half too may turn to gold. But such a gift I have not found again. And so, brahmanas, I say this vast Ashvamedha does not equal the gift of that one prastha of powdered barley.”

The gist: At the end of the sacrifice a half-gold mongoose declares that this vast Ashvamedha does not equal the handful of barley meal given by a poor unchha-vow brahmana of Kurukshetra, who in famine, self-starving, gave his family’s only food to a guest. The dust of that gift turned the mongoose half to gold; in search of the other half it wanders the sacrifices. The Mahabharata here sets selfless, silent sacrifice above royal show.

The king fallen on the bank of the Ganga

Having given water for Bhishma, Dhritarashtra turned back, and Yudhishthira, putting him at his head, climbed the bank of the Ganga. His eyes were full of tears and his mind empty. As he climbed he fell at the water’s edge, the way an elephant pierced by a hunter’s arrow falls. At a sign from Krishna, Bhima caught him. “Let this not be,” Krishna said, and that grinder of enemy armies steadied the king.

The Pandavas, seeing their eldest brother lying on the ground, drawing long breaths again and again, sank into grief. The four of them sat around him in a ring. Then Dhritarashtra, who had lost a hundred sons in a single war, said to Yudhishthira. “Rise, best of the Kurus. Turn now to your duties. You have won this Earth by the way of the Kshatriya. Enjoy her now with your brothers and friends. I see no cause for your grief. Having lost a hundred sons like riches found in a dream, it is Gandhari and I who should weep, not you.

“Vidura warned us, and we did not listen. He said the line would be destroyed through Duryodhana’s crimes; he said to cast off that evil-minded one, to keep Karna and Shakuni from him, and to anoint Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma. To that self-restrained Vidura’s sweet counsel we shut our ears in folly and followed Duryodhana. This is the fruit of it, that we have drowned in an ocean of grief. See your old father and mother in this sorry state, and put off your own grief.”

A key to reading this (where we stand in the lineage): The Ashvamedha Parva is the fourteenth of the last books of the Mahabharata. The eighteen-day war of Kurukshetra is over. The hundred Kaurava brothers are killed; the Pandavas are victors, but in Yudhishthira’s mind there is no victory, only guilt. It is Dhritarashtra himself, the blind king, father of the dead Duryodhana, who here consoles his grieving nephew, an irony worth noting.

The reproach of Krishna and Vyasa

Dhritarashtra’s words steadied Yudhishthira a little. Then Kesava said, “A man who grieves beyond measure for his forefathers grieves those very forefathers. So put off your grief and hold a sacrifice, give the priests their dakshina, gratify the gods with soma and the fathers with food and water. Those who were killed were killed by the ordinance of fate; you cannot bring them back. A man of your understanding should not walk the way of fools. Walk in the way of your forefathers and take up the burden of the empire.”

Yudhishthira answered, “Govinda, we know well your love for us. But there is no peace for us, having killed our grandfather and Karna, who never once fled the field. If you would give us leave with a glad heart to go to the hermitages of the ascetics in the forest, our one wish would be fulfilled. Do something by which this terrible sin is washed away and our mind is made clean.”

Seeing Pritha’s son speak so, Vyasa, who knew all the dharmas of life, consoled him and spoke hard words. “Child, your mind is not yet calm; and so you have fallen again into a childish daze. Why should we keep scattering our words to the wind? You know the dharma of the Kshatriya, who lives by war. A king who has done his rightful work should not sink into grief. You have heard the whole teaching of release, and I have cleared your doubts again and again. And still you have forgotten it all. This ignorance is not worthy of you.”

Vyasa went on, “Yudhishthira, your understanding is not yet enough. No one does any deed by his own strength alone; it is God who sets a man to good deeds or bad. Where then is the room for regret? You count yourself a doer of adharma. Then hear how sin is removed. Those who commit sin can always free themselves of it by tapas, sacrifice, and gift. Make ready for the Rajasuya, the Ashvamedha, the Sarvamedha, and the Naramedha. As Rama, son of Dasharatha, did, and as your ancestor Bharata, son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, did, so hold the Ashvamedha by the rule.”

A key to reading this (the horse-sacrifice): In the Ashvamedha a fine horse is let loose to wander freely for a year. Whatever kingdom it enters, that king must either let it pass (accepting subjection) or fight. A warrior follows the horse. At the year’s end the horse returns to the capital and is offered. It marks both the rank of paramount emperor and the cleansing of sin.

Here Yudhishthira’s reluctance does not disappear; it turns into an argument. “The Ashvamedha purifies kings, of that there is no doubt. But hear one thing. After such a slaughter of my own kin, I cannot give even a small gift; I have no wealth to give. Nor can I ask these princes for wealth, who lie wounded and sorrowing. Duryodhana laid the Earth waste for wealth, and the treasury of that evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra is empty. In such a state, how, overcome by grief, am I to levy dues for a sacrifice?”

Vyasa thought a while and said, “This empty treasury will fill. In the Himalayas lies the gold that the brahmanas left behind at the sacrifice of the high-souled Marutta. It was so much that they could not carry it away.” Yudhishthira heard the tale of that King Marutta, and then the Pandavas went to the Himalayas to bring that mass of gold, and returned to the capital under its weight.

A sub-tale: Marutta was an ancient king of the Karandhama line, whose wealth was beyond measure. On Mount Meru, north of the Himalayas, he had thousands of golden vessels forged and held a vast sacrifice on a huge golden peak. Samvarta, son of Angira, became his priest. So much gold was given away that the brahmanas took only what they could carry and left the rest behind. From that abandoned gold Yudhishthira’s Ashvamedha was now made possible. In the original, Marutta’s whole lineage is given at length; here only the thread that ties to Yudhishthira’s sacrifice is kept.

The gist: Even in victory Yudhishthira lies broken by guilt. Dhritarashtra, Krishna, and Vyasa all counsel him to put off grief and hold the Ashvamedha. Yudhishthira’s detachment does not fully lift; he yields only to the argument of the cleansing of sin. The wealth for the sacrifice comes from Marutta’s Himalayan gold.

The dead infant, and Krishna’s vow

Meanwhile Krishna, son of Vasudeva, returned to Hastinapura with the Vrishnis, for the time of the Ashvamedha had come. Balarama was at their head, and Subhadra came too. They came to see Draupadi, Uttara, and Kunti, and to console those Kshatriya women who had been robbed of many of their protectors.

In those very days, while the Vrishni heroes stayed in the Kuru city, Parikshit was born. But struck by Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon, the infant lay still and lifeless the moment he came from the womb; there was no life in him. By his birth he first gave the citizens joy, then plunged them into grief. The lion’s roar of the prince’s birth rang in all directions, but when it was known that the infant was dead, that clamor stilled and all sank into sorrow. His mind troubled, taking Yuyudhana with him, Krishna went at once into the inner rooms of the palace.

There he saw Kunti coming toward him, weeping and calling on him again and again; behind her Draupadi, Subhadra, and the women of the Pandava kin, lamenting piteously. Kunti said in a choked voice, “Vasudeva, Devaki won the glory of the highest of mothers by bearing you. You are our refuge, our pride. This line rests on you alone. This child of your sister’s son has come from the womb killed by Ashvatthama. Kesava, revive him. You made a vow at that very time, when Ashvatthama turned a blade of grass into the Brahma weapon; you said that if this child were born dead, you would revive him.

“In this child are bound the lives of the Pandavas and mine. On him depend the offerings for Pandu, for my father-in-law, and for Abhimanyu. He is that dear nephew who was your own equal. Uttara ever repeats the words Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son, spoke to this daughter of Virata, that your son will go to my uncles and learn the science of arms and statecraft among the Vrishnis and Andhakas. Madhusudana, with bowed head we pray, make those words true.” Saying this, large-eyed Pritha fell to the ground with the other women, and all, their faces wet with tears, cried again and again that the son of Abhimanyu was born dead. Then Janardana took Kunti by the hand and gently raised her from the ground and consoled her.

Then Subhadra, seeing her brother, wept aloud. “Lotus-eyed one, look at the grandson of the wise Arjuna. The Kuru line has grown thin, and the child born is weak and dead. The blade of grass Drona’s son raised for the destruction of Bhimasena has fallen on Uttara, on Arjuna, and on me. That weapon is lodged in my heart even now, for I cannot see this child beside his father. When Drona’s son wished to destroy even the embryos in the wombs of the Pandava women, you said in anger, base brahmana, I will make your desire fail, I will revive the son of Arjuna’s son. Reminding you of those words, with bowed head I would please you. If this son of Abhimanyu does not live while you live, what will remain between you and me? If you wish, revive the dead of all three worlds; what then is one child?”

Uttara too, the child in her lap, fell to the ground and lamented almost out of her mind. Coming to herself, she said to the child, “You are the son of a father who knew every dharma. Do you feel no sin, that you do not bow to this best of the Vrishnis? Child, go to your father and say that for creatures it is hard to die before their time, for having lost both husband and son I still live. Rise, and see the face of this lord of the worlds, who is like your restless-eyed father.”

Then that best of men, hearing their heart-rending laments, touched water and drew the force of Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon into himself. He spoke this word before the whole of creation. “Uttara, we never speak untruth. Our words will be true. We will revive this child before all creatures. We have never spoken untruth even in jest. We have never turned from battle. By that truth let this child live. As dharma is dear to us, as brahmanas are dear to us, by that truth let this dead-born son of Abhimanyu live. There has never been a rift between us and our friend Vijaya; by that truth let this child live. As Kansa and Keshi were killed by us righteously, by that truth let this child live today.”

With these words the child came to life and slowly began to stir. When the Brahma weapon was drawn away, the birth-chamber lit up with the child’s splendor. The rakshasas that had come there left the room, and many were destroyed. A voice rang in the sky, “Good, Kesava, good,” and the blazing Brahma weapon returned to the grandsire Brahma.

Filled with joy, Krishna gave the child many gems, and then named him. “Since this son of Abhimanyu is born at the time of this line’s near-wasting, his name will be Parikshit.” This is the king whose descendant Janamejaya is hearing this whole tale.

A key to reading this (lineage): Parikshit is the son of Abhimanyu and Uttara; Abhimanyu was the son of Arjuna and Subhadra, killed in the war. Ashvatthama, son of Drona, loosed the Brahma weapon at the end of the war on the child in Uttara’s womb to root out the Pandava line. Parikshit is the sole heir of the Pandava line; and it is at the snake-sacrifice of his son Janamejaya that Vaishampayana tells this whole Mahabharata. By the satyakriya, the accomplishing of the impossible on the strength of true speech, Krishna revives him.

The gist: Struck by Ashvatthama’s Brahma weapon, the stillborn Parikshit comes to life by Krishna’s truth-act. Note that Krishna offers as proof of his truth the killing of Kansa and Keshi and his never fleeing battle, though that same war held many breakings of the rule; the original does not hide this contradiction. Parikshit is the grandfather of the listener Janamejaya.

Following the horse, and the king of Manipura

The sacrificial horse was loosed, and Arjuna, following it, went fighting through many lands. Conquering the Trigartas, Pragjyotisha, Sindhu, Magadha, Chedi, Kashi, Anga, Kosala, and many mleccha armies, he pressed on. Then the horse reached Manipura, and the son of Pandu behind it.

Babhruvahana, king of Manipura, who was the son of Arjuna and Chitrangada, heard that his father had come into his kingdom. He came out humbly to welcome him, putting brahmanas and gifts of wealth at his head. But Arjuna, remembering the Kshatriya law, would not accept this conduct. In anger he said, “This conduct does not become you. You have fallen from the Kshatriya law. I have come into your kingdom as the guardian of Yudhishthira’s sacrificial horse; why then do you not fight me? Shame on you, fool, receiving me in peace while I have come for war. Welcoming me so, you behave like a woman. Had I come with my weapons laid down, then this conduct would have been right.”

Hearing his father’s words, Babhruvahana’s serpent-maiden mother Ulupi could not bear it and rose up through the split earth. She saw her son standing dejected, head bowed, rebuked again and again for war by his father. Ulupi spoke words fitting dharma and duty. “Know that I am your mother Ulupi, the serpent-maiden. Obey me, son, and then you will win great merit. Fight your father, this best of the Kurus, this hero unconquered in battle. Then he will be pleased with you.” So the stepmother goaded the son against the father.

Then the mighty Babhruvahana resolved on war. Wearing golden armor and a gleaming helmet, mounted on a chariot yoked with horses swift as thought, raising a banner of a golden lion, he came before his father. He had the sacrificial horse seized, and the horse’s guardian Arjuna was pleased. Standing on the ground, Arjuna held off his chariot-mounted son.

The battle of father and son was like the war of gods and asuras; each was glad to find a match. Babhruvahana, laughing, drove a straight arrow into Arjuna’s shoulder, and it pierced through the body like a snake into its hole and sank into the earth. In the sharp pain Arjuna rested a few moments on his bow, as if lifeless; then, coming to himself, he praised his son. “Well done, well done, son of Chitrangada! Seeing this valor worthy of you, I am pleased. Now I will loose my arrows at you; do not flee, stand firm.” Saying this, he rained arrows.

Babhruvahana cut all the arrows loosed from the Gandiva. Arjuna felled his golden banner and killed his horses; then the king came down from his chariot and fought on foot. Pleased with his son’s valor, Arjuna pressed him harder, and then, in a boy’s nature, Babhruvahana drove a keen arrow into his father’s chest. It pierced to the vitals, and Arjuna, joy of the Kurus, fell in a faint to the ground. Seeing his father fall, Babhruvahana too, from the labor of battle and the grief of his father’s killing, lost his senses and fell on the field. Hearing that her husband was killed and her son had fallen, Chitrangada came burning with grief, trembling, to the field, and, seeing her dead husband, fainted.

A key to reading this (lineage): Chitrangada, daughter of King Chitravahana of Manipura, is Babhruvahana’s mother; she became the mother of the heir of her father’s kingdom. Ulupi, daughter of the naga king Kauravya, is another wife of Arjuna’s, and here Babhruvahana’s stepmother. These three ties are the key to the fearful event that follows and to its secret.

Arjuna revived by the serpent-gem

Coming to herself, Chitrangada said to Ulupi, “See, Ulupi, our ever-victorious husband is killed on the field, through you, by my tender-aged son. Do you know the dharma of a faithful wife? Through you your husband lies fallen. If Arjuna has done you any wrong, forgive it, and revive this hero. In all three worlds your virtues are famed; then why, having made your husband die by my son, do you not grieve? My grief is for my husband, who received this welcome from his own son, more than for my killed son.”

Then she went to her husband and said, “Rise, beloved; you are most dear to the Kuru king. Here is your horse; I have set it free; you must follow it. You, who give life to others, why do you give up your own life today? Ulupi, see your husband lying on the ground. If you do not revive him before me today, I too will give up my life. Robbed of both husband and son, I will sit here before you in praya, fasting to death.” Saying this, taking her husband’s feet in her lap, the fellow wife Chitrangada sat down to fast.

Then King Babhruvahana came to himself and, seeing his mother in that state, lamented, “By my hand this destroyer of all foes, best of those who bear weapons, is killed on the field. It is clear that a man does not die before his time. Alas, this best of the Kurus, my father, knowing it, is killed at the hand of me, his son. Brahmanas, tell me, cruel father-killer, what expiation I must do. Give me the two halves of my father’s head, that I may wander bearing them; there is no other expiation for me.” Touching water, he vowed that if his father Jaya did not rise, he would dry up his body on the field.

When the king of Manipura sat down with his mother to fast to death, Ulupi called to mind the gem that revives the dead, the great refuge of the nagas. The moment she thought of it, the gem came. Lifting it, Ulupi spoke words that gladdened all on the field. “Rise, son; do not grieve. You have not defeated Jishnu. This hero is unconquered by men, and even by the gods with Indra. It was I who wove this illusion, confusing your senses, for the good of your glorious father. To learn the valor of you, his son, this destroyer of foes came to fight; for this I urged you to war. You have done no wrong. This is a great-souled sage, eternal and imperishable; even Indra cannot conquer him. I have brought this divine gem, which revives the nagas again and again when they die. Lay it on your father’s chest; you will see the son of Pandu alive.”

The son lovingly laid the gem on Arjuna’s chest, and Jishnu came to life. Opening his red eyes, he rose as one waking from long sleep. Babhruvahana honored his father with reverence. Then Indra rained divine flowers; kettledrums sounded untouched, and a voice cried, “Good, good.” Rising, whole, Arjuna embraced Babhruvahana and smelled his head. Then he asked why all the signs of sorrow, wonder, and joy were there together, and why the two women had come to the field.

Ulupi smiled and told it all. “I did all this for your good. In the great war of the Mahabharata you killed Bhishma, son of Shantanu, by the way of adharma; you did not fell him yourself, he was engaged with Shikhandi, and using that screen you accomplished Bhishma’s death. Had you died without washing away that sin, you would surely have fallen into hell. Taking this defeat from your own son, you have washed that sin away. When Bhishma fell, the Vasus came to the bank of the Ganga and said that he was then engaged with another and had ceased from battle, and yet Arjuna killed him; for this fault they would curse Arjuna. Ganga too said, ‘So be it.’ Hearing this, I went to my father, who pleased the Vasus again and again, and they said that Arjuna has a glorious son who is king of Manipura; he will throw Arjuna to the ground on the field, and then Arjuna will be freed. A son is one’s own second self; and so you were defeated by him. Tell me, what fault is there in this of mine?” Arjuna was pleased and said, “Goddess, what you have done is most dear to us.”

Arjuna ordered Babhruvahana that Yudhishthira’s Ashvamedha would be on the full moon of Chaitra, and to come there with his mother and ministers. With tearful eyes Babhruvahana said he would surely come and take the charge of feeding the brahmanas, but begged that his father rest one night in the city with his two wives. Arjuna said his vow was that until the following of the horse was done he would not stay in any city; the horse wanders freely, and he must always follow it. Taking his leave of his son and both wives, he went on.

A key to reading this (the moral knot): Ulupi herself admits that Arjuna killed Bhishma “by the way of adharma,” using the screen of Shikhandi while Bhishma had ceased from battle. The father-son battle and the revival are the expiation of that sin, arranged by the Vasus. The Mahabharata neither hides nor softens its heroes’ breaking of the rule; it weaves it into the machinery of the tale.

The gist: Following the horse, Arjuna fights his own son Babhruvahana and falls. Ulupi’s remembered serpent-gem revives him. Ulupi reveals that this whole event was arranged to free Arjuna from the curse of the Vasus, because Arjuna had killed Bhishma by adharma. All are invited to the Ashvamedha on the full moon of Chaitra.

The completion of the Ashvamedha

The horse, having wandered the whole sea-girdled Earth, at last turned toward Hastinapura, and Arjuna with it. On the way Arjuna had battles with Meghasandhi of Magadha (son of Sahadeva), Sharabha of Chedi (son of Shishupala), Chitrangada of Dasharna, and the Nishada king, son of Ekalavya. Yudhishthira’s order was that the kings who opposed him not be killed; so Arjuna defeated them and yet left them alive and told them to come to the sacrifice.

Hearing the news of Arjuna’s safe return, tears of joy came to Yudhishthira’s eyes. All the kings were honored; Babhruvahana too came and bowed to everyone, and gave the king a gold-inlaid chariot. Then Vyasa said to Yudhishthira, “Begin the sacrifice today. The time has come. See that no part is faulty. So much gold goes into it that it is called Bahusuvarnaka. Give three times the prescribed dakshina, so that you may gain the merit of three Ashvamedhas.” Yudhishthira took the initiation, and the great Ashvamedha began.

Everything on the sacrificial ground was made of gold. Sacrificial posts of bilva, khadira, sarvarnin, devadaru, and shleshmataka wood were set up; for splendor Bhima had still more posts raised. After the offering of the other beasts by the rule, the Earth-wandering horse was offered. Draupadi, endowed with mantra, substance, and faith, was seated beside the divided beast. Yudhishthira and his brothers breathed in the sin-destroying smoke of the cooked marrow by the rule, and sixteen priests offered the remaining parts in the fire.

At the end of the sacrifice Vyasa praised the king. Yudhishthira gave the brahmanas a thousand crore gold nishkas, and gave the whole Earth to Vyasa. Vyasa returned the Earth, saying brahmanas want wealth, not the Earth; give its price. Then Yudhishthira, with the consent of his brothers and Draupadi, declared that he would go to the forest and the brahmanas should divide the Earth among themselves. Krishna told the king to do as Vyasa said, and Yudhishthira gave three times the prescribed dakshina of the Ashvamedha in gold. Vyasa divided the wealth into four parts and gave it to the priests.

In the sky a voice rang, “Good, good.” The brahmanas took as much as they wished of the golden arches, posts, and vessels; the rest the Kshatriyas, vaishyas, shudras, and mlecchas took. Lakes of ghee-mud, mountains of grain, and rivers of six-flavored drink flowed. “Let pleasing things be given, let pleasing food be eaten,” was heard day and night. Cleansed of sin, assured of heaven, Yudhishthira shone among his brothers like the king of the gods.

A key to reading this (numbers, a modern equivalent): Numbers like “a thousand crore gold nishkas” and “threefold dakshina” are figures of overflow in the Mahabharata, not counted totals. Read them, in modern terms, as a poetic sign of “wealth beyond imagining,” just like the “lakes of ghee” and “mountains of grain.” It is this splendor of the sacrifice that sharpens the sting of the half-gold mongoose to come.

The half-gold mongoose

Into that great sacrifice came a strange creature, a mongoose, half its body of gold and half of it ordinary. In a human voice it told the brahmanas that this whole Ashvamedha was not equal even to the gift of a prastha (a certain measure) of barley meal. Amazed, the brahmanas said that it seemed to have a divine form and to be wise, and asked it to explain itself. Smiling, the mongoose said, “My words are neither false nor spoken in pride. Listen closely to what happened to me.

“At Kurukshetra, on that holy ground, a brahmana lived by the unchha vow, the vow of living by the grains scattered in the fields, the way of the pigeon. He ate once, in the sixth division of the day; if he found nothing then, he fasted that day and ate at the sixth division the next. He lived with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law, and practiced tapas.

“Once a terrible famine fell in the land. That brahmana had nothing stored; the herbs dried up, the whole realm went without grain. One day, in the month of Jyeshtha, the sun straight overhead, the brahmana, worn with hunger and heat, gleaned grains. After the sixth division he came by a prastha of barley. Those ascetics ground it into sattu, and after their daily rites and offering, divided it, and each one’s share was a kudava (a small measure). They were about to sit and eat when a guest came.

“Seeing the guest, they were glad, asked his welfare, gave the arghya and water for the feet, spread a seat of kusha grass, and said, ‘This is clean sattu, honestly earned; accept it.’ The brahmana guest ate his share, but his hunger was not stilled. Then the householder-brahmana’s wife said her share too should be given to him. The brahmana said, ‘How can I keep you hungry, worn thin to skin and bone? Even beasts feed their mates.’ But the wife insisted that a husband is a woman’s highest god; take my share. The husband gave her share to the guest, but the guest’s hunger was still not stilled.

“Then the son gave his share, saying the nourishing of a father is a son’s duty, and that the vital breath is the greatest god that dwells in the body. The father first refused, but at the son’s reasoning gave his share too to the guest; still the hunger was not stilled. Then the daughter-in-law offered hers and said that the father-in-law is the god even of her god, and that her body, her breath, and her dharma have one purpose, the service of elders. The father-in-law, seeing her dried by wind and sun and worn thin, refused, but at last gave her share too to the guest.

“Then the guest was pleased, for he was the god Dharma himself in human form. He said, ‘By this pure, honestly earned gift, given with faith, I am deeply satisfied. Flowers rain from the sky, gods, seers, and gandharvas praise you. Hunger robs a man of judgment and steadiness; one who conquers hunger conquers heaven. You held dharma above the love of a son and the love of a wife. To earn wealth is a small merit, to give to the worthy a greater, and to give with faith the highest. Go to heaven with your wife, son, and daughter-in-law.’ And they all went to heaven on a divine chariot.

“When they had gone, I came out of my burrow. From the smell of that sattu, the mud of the water given to the guest, the touch of the divine flowers that had rained down, and the tapas of that generous man, my head turned to gold. See, by the power of that gift, half my body is gold. To make the other half gold, I wander from sacrifice to sacrifice. Hearing of the fame of this Kuru king’s sacrifice I came with great hope, but here I did not turn to gold. And so I say that this sacrifice cannot match the gift of that one prastha of barley meal.” Saying this, the mongoose vanished from the sight of all, and the brahmanas returned each to his home.

A sub-tale: When Janamejaya asked, Vaishampayana opened the secret of that mongoose. In an age long past, Anger, taking the form of the god Dharma, spoiled the milk of the seer Jamadagni, to test how the seers of the Bhrigu line would behave. Jamadagni was not angered. Defeated, Anger appeared in the form of a brahmana woman, and the seer sent it to the fathers. By the curse of the fathers it became a mongoose, and the way to release was told to it: it must decry dharma. And so it went to sacrifices, calling the great sacrifices small. At Yudhishthira’s sacrifice, by decrying the son of Dharma (that is, Dharma itself), it was freed of the curse and vanished.

The gist: This last parva of the Mahabharata ends on the sharp irony of the half-gold mongoose, that the emperor’s vast Ashvamedha cannot match a poor brahmana family’s gift of a prastha of barley meal. A small gift of faith and sacrifice is greater than a vast rite of splendor. And so this parva, which was full of grief, war, and revival, ends by pointing to the greatness of inward faith over outward show.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dvaipayana Vyasa, Ashvamedhika Parva; Gita Press Gorakhpur tradition.