A manuscript of Sarala Mahabharata
has a slightly different story of King Gandharasena but the difference is both quite
interesting and significant. This story is about his greed and punishment.
Pleased with Gandharasena, goddess Ganga had given him divine dice
sticks and dice cubes and told him to return those to her on the completion of
three years. For three years Gandharasena won all games of dice he played and
amassed a lot of wealth and great reputation as a dice player. He had been a
loser before he received the goddess’s boon and in just three years his fortune
had changed so dramatically. Greed possessed him. He did not return those
divine objects to the goddess.
Four more years passed. He must have been increasingly troubled by the
fear of goddess’s wrath, if not by the voice of his conscience. Seven years
over, one day he decided to return them to Ganga. The goddess was much
displeased with him. She didn’t have the sticks and cubes when she needed them
and had received scolding from her lord, Bhagawan Shiva. She cursed
Gandharasena: jaare gandharasena pathara
ghare bansa maru tohari (go Gandharasena, may your vansa – family - die in a house of stone). Her curse was very harsh and very unjust. Why
did she curse his brothers and relatives for his karma? If we know Sarala’s
Ganga – impulsive, wild and impetuous - this would not surprise us.
The rest of the story is the same as in the published version, edited by
Artaballava Mohanty. In this version, the three couplets telling the story
above are mentioned in a foot note. The cursed king got the boon from the
goddess that her grace in empowering him in the game of dice would remain in
his family in some form – the man’s greed was not confined to the present; it extended
to the future. We know the rest of story of Gandharasena – the story of his
bones that became sticks and cubes to play dice with.
Those sticks were never used by Sakuni to acquire wealth for himself,
either before that fateful game of dice in the Kaurava court or after. That day
he was playing on behalf of Duryodhana and for Duryodhana, but he alone knew
that he was playing against Duryodhana and for revenge. It may not be accidental
that all the wealth that Duryodhana gained that day, he lost on that very day
itself! Did the poet want to tell his audience across centuries that the other
side of the boon of the goddess was her curse, that the fruits of excessive greed
could never be sweet?
Gandharasena did not forget that curse. As we know, he told his son
about it. He knew that the curse of the goddess would materialize someday. How
it was going to happen he did not of course know; the goddess, if even she herself
did, hadn’t told him. That it would materialize through his grandchild and that
along with his kin, he would die of starvation, he didn’t know. But even so,
why did he think in terms of revenge when he knew that he was carrying the
curse of the goddess? It didn’t occur to him that for what had happened to him
and his kin, Duryodhana was a mere instrument in the hands of Destiny. It
didn’t occur to him that he himself was responsible for their suffering. That
realization might have calmed him and he wouldn’t have bound his son to do what
he knew was very sinful. Why else did he ask him not to live after getting the
Kauravas killed?
All the same. We should not perhaps judge him harshly. The pangs of
starvation, the pain of seeing his dear ones die of hunger and the associated indignity
and humiliation surely made him forget that all that was the fruit of his
karma. He was an ordinary person; was no Bhishma or Drona. In Sarala Mahabharata, Bhishma knew that he
had wronged Amba. She wanted to take revenge; unknown to her, he wanted to
cooperate with her in that regard. Drona accepted Dhristadyumna as his pupil
and taught him well, without discriminating between him and his other pupils,
despite knowing that he was born to kill him.
17.5. 2017
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