ON VIRTUOUS LIVING ACCORDING TO LAKSHMI PURANA

Lakshmi Purana has two parts; the first part is the poor, low-caste woman Shriya’s story and the second, goddess Lakshmi’s (and her consort Jagannath’s). The first part contains an ethical code, and the second, a corrective to it. Like most bratas, this particular Lakshmi brata, called Manabasa Gurubara brata, with which Lakshmi Purana is associated, is woman-centric. This is a narrative based on a domestic conflict and the housewife is the heroine here. She is shown to be central to the family; she can break her family or bring it happiness and prosperity. Balarama composed Lakshmi Puran for the common people. Therefore he outlined, in their language, what was then believed to constitute virtuous living. Shunning the form of scholarly discourse for the purpose, he chose to simply list what one must avoid doing and what one must do. These do’s and don’ts relate to what would please goddess Lakshmi, but most of these are really general, therefore are statements about living in accordance with dharma. The directive that a woman must have a head bath on Thursdays is clearly Lakshmi-oriented, for Odias, Thursday being the day dedicated to the goddess. But “Obey your parents-in-law” is not associated with any particular goddess or god; so it is not intended to be followed only on some given day. The directives are indirect; the form is not “do this” or “do not do that”, but “whoever does this pleases the goddess” or “whoever does that displeases the goddess”. Nothing is imposed; the agency of the person is never taken away. He or she has to make the choice and act, and then face the consequences of his or her action. Incidentally indirect directive is the form often used to describe the moral code in brata kathas, mahatyamas, and the like.

Characterizing virtuous living is in terms of dont’s and do’s should not be dismissed as simplistic. At the level of day-to-day life, it really boils down to what kind of life one must live. Some of these directives may relate to the more superficial aspects of life. Prohibition against taking bitter things like neem on Thursdays and the one against telling lies while participating a meeting of any council belong to two different levels. It would appear that the first is rather superficial. The householder who practises dharma has worldly aspirations: happiness and prosperity of self and his or her family. Interestingly, Shriya prays to goddess Lakshmi to grant wealth and prosperity to her and her family, and immortality (as against, say, moksha) to her, all of which are worldly.

The moral code in Lakshkmi Puran, following which one lives a virtuous life, is about what the woman, especially the married woman, must do and must not do on Thursdays, amavasyas and sankrantis, and what both men and women must not do on any day. The code specifies the don’ts a good deal more than the do’s - this is the only way of spelling out the code since the list of the constraints would always be shorter than that of the recommendations. For instance if someone has to stipulate about food to be taken on a particular day, it would be obviously more economical to say what foods to avoid than what to eat. So the food-related directive has to take essentially the following form: “eat everything except these.” And so must such others.

The directives are about physical and mental well being: about food and food related pollution, cleanliness, family duties, and respect for culture and tradition. On Thursdays women must not take non-vegetarian food, meat cooked in bottle gourd, things roasted in fire, and left-over or burnt food. They must not fry raw rice to make lia ("a kind of puffed rice"). They must not beat children. Now, children have to be disciplined, raw rice has to be fried, and left-over and burnt food cannot always be thrown away, but such things must be done on other days. One - man or woman - must not eat rice with curd at night, and on Thursday, amavasya and sankranti nights one must not have food at all. One must not eat facing the south or the west, nor must one eat sitting on the floor without something to sit on. This emphasis on food is due to the traditional belief that it is associated with states of mind; thus certain foods are believed to cause undesirable inclinations and passions. Incidentally, some vegetables and green leaves were believed to be like non-vegetarian food in this respect. Today we do not live by the belief systems from which these derive, and we have no understanding of them. And generally speaking, whatever of the past is unintelligible today is considered superstition today. This of course is not to say that the old belief systems were “true” or “correct” in some realistic sense. After all, belief systems are only belief systems.

Not washing one’s face in the morning, not washing one’s face after eating food, not having a head bath on Thursday for a woman, having food without washing one’s feet, and applying oil to the body after bath are among the forbidden. These obviously relate to personal hygiene. Not combing and tying hair in the evening is forbidden too, but surely not for reasons of cleanliness; it probably derives from the now forgotten but then prevalent belief system. Sleeping on a crumpled bed, making a clumsy bed to sleep on and sleeping naked are among the forbidden, and these have to do with routine-life aesthetics and decency that have their roots in the tradition. Sexual discipline is an important part of the code; sex is forbidden on Thurdays, amabasyas and sankrantis, and the days the woman's body is said to be unclean, and then sex is forbidden outside of the wedlock. Women must treat the guest with respect and must light the sacred lamp in the evening, etc.; in short, they must respect tradition. And a woman who wants to live a virtuous life must not be quarrelsome, lazy, unpleasant and bold.

The most important part of the code concerns the way the woman must relate to her husband. For her nothing is more important than serving her husband. No matter what religious acts she does – go on pilgrimage, observe bratas, perform tapas, worship gods and goddesses - she acquires no religious merit if her husband is displeased with her. Her husband’s joys and sorrows must be hers, and she must always obey her husband, and be pleasing in her dealings with him, and never get irritated with him.

What is interesting is that in the second part of the tale, which is Lakshmi’s story, the goddess violates the very same moral code. In terms of the prevalent social norms, she was guilty of polluting herself and entering the sacred space of the kitchen and cooking for her family and thereby polluting the family. She asked for a divorce when her spouse wanted her to leave home, arguably it is an act of unacceptable boldness on her part in terms of the norm. A woman must not be sahasi ("bold"), says Lakshmi Puran. She was guilty of cursing her husband and ensuring that her husband and her elder brother-in-law suffered hunger for twelve long years. She did not hesitate to resort to manipulations to achieve her objective. Granted that she had been grievously wronged by her husband, but avenging herself the way she did is not in conformity with the moral code. When her husband requested her to return home, she put a condition for that: she must not be constrained from going wherever she liked. A virtuous wife would not go this far.

But there is not even mild censor of Lakshmi in the story. No one charges her of being a disobedient wife or of violating the code. And it is not the message of the story that she, being a goddess, was not bound by the code which is for the humans. The exchange between Lakshmi and Jagannath about her dismissal from the Great Temple is in human terms. When Lakshmi wanted divorce, her spouse refused because it would bring disrepute to his family. This is human social discourse, as is her laying down conditions before her husband to return home. The message of the story is not also that the powerful are above the code.

Lakshmi’s story is about something else. It questions the code on two specific points: caste-based pollution and the place of the woman in the household. It rejects caste-based pollution. It rejects the norm that specifies the duties and the responsibilities of the woman, but not her rights. It is as though she enjoys all her rights by just being married. From the perspective of this remarkable tale the marginalization of the woman in the society is a mere reflection of her marginalization in her own home. Lakshmi’s protest adds a corrective to the moral code by emphasizing the duties of the family to the woman: she must be given her own space, and her identity and individuality have to be recognized and respected by the family. The story legitimizes resistance by the wife against her maltreatment in the family; in a way it does more – it elevates the wife’s protest to the level of almost a moral duty. This is nothing short of a revolutionary idea when viewed in the context of the ethical thoughts and practices in the sixteenth century Odisha.

ON TWO LAKSHMI-CENTRED DISCOURSES IN ODIA

There are quite a few tales and practices in Odia associated with goddess Lakshmi. Here we deal with two of these: one, Lakshmi Puran, a tale that celebrates the greatness, power and glory of the goddess, and the other, our narration, in the lack of any authentic, published narration, of the Hera Panchami ritual, which is part of the Rath Yatra rituals. Of the Lakshmi tales and practices prevalent in Odisha, these seem to be the only ones directly connected with Jagannath worship at present.

Lakshmi Puran is a narrative in the form of brata katha and its authorship is attributed to the sixteenth century poet, Balarama Dasa. As a brata katha (a tale associated with the observance of a ritual fasting, mostly by women, it is recited during the worship of the goddess or god associated with that ritual) it invites attention in many ways. It is the only brata katha that drags Jagannath Himself into its ambit, which makes it as much a Lakshmi tale as a Jagannath katha. It is immaterial that Jagannath is shown in some poor light, but it still remains Jagannath katha. The other tales, very few indeed, that do bring in Jagannath are not brata kathas in the sense that they are not connected with any religious ritual. Lakshmi Puran is certainly not the best but is unquestionably the most popular composition of Balarama Dasa, and I suspect, its popularity is significantly due to its being a Jagannath katha. Containing around five hundred fifty couplets, it is somewhat longer than a typical brata katha and unlike typical brata kathas, it deals with not merely how a ritual has to be performed, and what benefits accrue to the one who performs the ritual and the hardships that await the one who does not do so; it is also concerned with the characterization of a virtuous life. Intended seemingly for the educationally limited, largely female audience, it does not philosophize on ethical living, but lists what all please the goddess Lakshmi and what do not, thus, what a virtuous person must do and what she or he must not. The code of conduct articulated here is for the most part, if not entirely, woman-centric, the reason being that the woman is projected here as the one who sustains a family. Thus when Lakshmi leaves, her consort Jagannath’s family collapses and His brother and He suffer hunger and thirst for twelve years, and when she returns to Him, normalcy returns to His household. The husband suffering hunger in his wife’s leaving him seems to be an ancient idea. In one version of the goddess Annapurna story, Shiva told Parvati that he had no need for a woman at home; she was hurt and left home. The hungry Shiva then begged from door to door for food, but no one could give him as much food as he needed, so he remained hungry. He could have his fill only when Parvati in the form of Annapurna gave him food. Shiva acknowledged her greatness and her indispensability in his life and implored her to return home. She did so. The story of Lakshmi Puran is very similar. Incidentally, Balarama Dasa is not the first Odia poet who wrote out an ethical code in terms of don’ts and do’s. About four decades ago, Sarala Dasa, celebrated as the aadi kavi of Odia literature, had given a similar, although not as detailed, code in his less known and minor work, Lakshmi Narayena Bachanika. In Lakshmi Puran, Lakshmi is portrayed as the goddess who, when not cooking for her family, visits her devotee’s houses to accept their worship. In this story, her most sincere devotee turns out to be low in social status, poor and a woman. This is also more or less Sarala Dasa’s idea of her devotees too, as his short, prose piece, Nityani Gurubara Katha shows. In the same piece, Sarala conceptualizes the goddess as the provider of food to all of the living, whether human or worm. Lakshmi Puran expresses the same view of the goddess.

What, then, are new in Balarama Dasa’s narrative? They are the following: (a) the caste factor is brought into the narrative, (b) the woman’s asking for her own space in the family is strongly supported and the denial of the same to her is rejected as totally wrong, and (c) an account is offered for a certain unique practice in Jagannath worship, namely that considerations of caste, or things similar must not matter in the least at the time of the partaking of the food cooked by Lakshmi and offered to Jagannath (called “Mahaprasad”, “great prasad”)). Nothing ritualistically prevents one from taking mahaprasad from another’s leaf, and there is no pollution associated at all with the left-over mahaprasad.

Balarama Dasa’s Lakshmi goes to the house of a low caste woman to receive worship, which her family considers unacceptable, and at His brother’s instance, her husband, Jagannath asks her to leave the temple. Hurt and humiliated, she leaves the temple, but pronounces a curse on the brothers, namely that for twelve years they would suffer hunger and thirst and their agony would end only when they take food cooked by her, whom they have called low caste. This is what eventually happens. Lakshmi does not go back to her father; she keeps her father’s family out of it all. She knew that after some three or four days Jagannath would arrive at her father’s house to take her back, and her father would readily and happily oblige. Her curse would never materialize. She had to work for it, and she got help from others: vetals and gods and goddesses – Saraswati, Agni, Pawana, etc. – and other celestials. She persuaded them that if Jagannath and Balabhadra did not suffer, men would treat their women as disposable. The brothers undergo hunger and thirst and humiliation. They realize that Lakshmi’s curse had materialized. In the guise of brahmins they beg for food, and are sometimes given food too, but they cannot eat it because something or the other happens, like the wind blowing away the food. So people conclude that they are rejected by Lakshmi and drive them away fearing that associating with them would displease the goddess and bring them misery. Finally, they reach Lakshmi’s palace, not knowing it was hers, and beg food, and are told by her attendants that it was the house of a low caste woman. To cut a long story short, they finally convey to her that they are totally famished and have no compunctions about accepting cooked food from her. She serves them not only the food they like, but also in the manner in which items are served to them in the temple. The brothers realize that it has to be the food cooked by Lakshmi. Directed to do so by His brother Balaram, Jagannath requests her to return to the temple, now that her curse has materialized and her greatness established. She seeks assurance from her lord on two counts before she returns to the temple: she would not be constrained from visiting her devotees, and mahaprasad must be partaken of in the way mentioned above. He gives her His word and she happily returns to the temple.

The matter resolved now, one would feel tempted to ask the following question since the context is so clearly the Puri temple: as her brothers were suffering, where was Subhadra? And where was Sudarshan? Were they silent witnesses? Lakshmi Puran does not even mention them. But let us not ask such logical questions. Which puran, which brata katha and works such as these does not contain inconsistencies? Besides, let us suspend our entirely logical skepticism for the moment and submit to the force of narrative imagination.

This Lakshmi and Jagannath story has attracted the attention of the people for centuries, for different reasons, and interestingly, has not been a closed story. Lakshmi Puran has a closure of course but not the Lakshmi and Jagannath story. Probably nobody ever claimed to write a modified version of Lakshmi Puran; it is only to be expected because it had become almost a sacred text. Now, as for the story under reference, at least once has a creative film maker modified it. And the novelist Surendra Mohanty sees a new meaning in the “Adhara Pana” ritual performed on the rathas of the Deities the day before the twelve day long Ratha Yatra comes to its end. On each ratha, the Deity is offered a pana, a sweet drink, in a big and tall earthen pot that is filled to the brim. Immediately after the ritual offering, the pot is broken on the ratha itself, and the pana, the mahaprasad, flows out. It is believed to be intended for the gods and the goddesses and the spirits who attended on the Deities during their Rath Yatra, and also for the unredeemed existences hovering around. But inspired by Lakshmi Puan, Mohanty finds a new meaning in this ritual. In his classic Neela Saila, he says that Jagannath’s twelve year long thirst was finally quenched with this pana, prepared by Lakshmi. This is a very imaginative perspective on the Adhara Pana ritual. Recently a film has been made on the story – “Jai Jagannath”- that gives a significant twist to the ending. At the goddess’s moment of triumph Narada appears, and with that Narada-like mischievous smile, the celebrated sage extols the glory of Jagannath’s lila. A surprised Lakshmi asks Narada whether all that had happened was in the knowledge of Jagannath and whether He was a party to His own suffering. She should have expected Narada’s answer! She understood that the drama had been enacted for the elimination of the caste-based prejudices and if suffering was necessary for the purpose, then Jagannath Himself was willing to undergo it. Lakshmi does not feel let down, knowing that there is no victory for her. And of course there is that other perspective, so clearly articulated in the following couplet of Srimad Bhagabata, composed by the sixteenth century Odia poet, Jagannath Dasa: kari karauthai muhi / mo binu ana gati nahi. In some rough rendering into English, it would read like this: I am the doer and I am the causer of all things / There is no alternative to Me. Now, does the twist to the story rob it of the empowerment of the woman aspect? Really not, since whatever Lakshmi wanted she gets; it is just that no individual stands empowered. From one point of view, this question of empowerment becomes hardly meaningful now, because all those who had felt they were agents of what had happened, including Lakshmi and Balaram, now realize the truth that there was a Causer really, and they were His agent-instruments: agents in appearance and instruments in reality.

We now turn to the Hera Panchami ritual. If we give it the form of a narrative, it would essentially, although, may be, somewhat crudely, look like the following: Jagannath goes with brother Balaram and sister Subhadra (and Sudarshan) for Rath Yatra and leaves Lakshmi behind. He seems to have left for the Yatra festival in a hurry, without having made proper arrangements for her. So the provider of resources to every living thing has to depend on what the pilgrims give her as offering. Lakshmi feels humiliated. Two days before the Snan Yatra (bathing ceremony) Lakshmi is separated from Jagannath, and on the day of Snan Yatra the Deities fall sick. During their sickness and recovery, Lakshmi is not with her consort. The Deities are taken care of by a category of servitors, known as the daita, who are considered to be His traditional and very dear worshippers. No one but them have access to the Deities during those fifteen days. And the day after they recover, their Rath Yatra starts. They go to a small temple, called Gundicha Mandir, some three kilometers away from the Great Temple (Bada Deula). There they stay for a week and then start their journey back to the Great Temple. During their return journey they stay in their rathas for about four days.

Lakshmi is confused and worried; she does not understand why she was left behind. As Rukmini, she had married Him only three days (on ekadasi) before the Snan (“bathing”) Yatra (on purnima). A day after the wedding, the daitas take charge, and she could no more be with her lord. She now apprehends that her spouse may not be interested in her, and had gone out for others’ company. And He has taken His sister with Him; the sister and not the wife, then, is His preferred companion. She feels a sense of jealousy too. She consults the other goddesses who are in the temple and receives their sympathy and support. Goddess Bimala, a form of Shakti, advises her to go to Him. She must carry with her a charm in the form of powder and use it on her consort so that He returns to her. Thus on the fifth day of the nine-day Rath Yatra festival, in the late hours of the night, Lakshmi sets out in regal style to meet her consort. She takes the same road on which the rathas had rolled just three days ago: Bada Danda (“Grand Road”), the main road of the town. She comes to the hall of the Gundicha temple and from there sees Jagannath at a little distance, in the sanctum sanctorum. At that time, the ritual of food offering was taking place. Now as soon as the eyes of Lakshmi and Jagannath meet, and before she is able to have an eye-fill of her lord, the doors of the sanctum sanctorum close. Lakshmi feels the doors have banged on her; she feels utterly unwelcome. And her humiliation has taken place in the presence of outsiders - thousands of devotees witnessing the ritual of food offering. In frustration, embarrassment, anger and humiliation, she leaves the hall, and as she returns to the temple, the angry goddess breaks a piece of Jagannath’s ratha. She returns to the temple like an ordinary woman, without her regal style, and does not take the Grand Road, but a by lane of the locality called “Hera Gohiri Sahi”. As a woman who has felt unwanted by her spouse, she has fallen in her own self-esteem; so she could no more feel at ease with the regal style.

Now, as for the closing of the doors of the sanctum sanctorum, the ritual of food offering reaches a stage when those doors must close for some particular puja to be performed indoors, out of the view of everyone unconnected in ritual terms with that stage of the offering. Thus there was nothing unusual about it. It was just that the goddess arrived when the offering had reached that stage. She should have known it all, but in her specific situation, she thought, quite understandably, that the closing of the door indicated her lord’s unhappiness at her presence in the Gundicha temple. The tatwiks may say what they want; say, for example, that Bhagawan was in the company of those who are the dearest to Him, namely, His bhaktas, and at such times nothing else matters to either Bhagawan or the bhaktas. But at the laukik (mundane) level, the wife feels neglected and humiliated at her spouse’s indifference. And those who would see both Lakshmi Puran and this narrative together would find in the former the story of empowerment of woman, and in the latter, a reflection of the social reality in which the sensitivities of the woman are generally not taken note of by her man.

The Hera Panchami narrative is not the end of the Lakshmi- Jagannath story; it is continued in the ritual called Niladri Bije (roughly, “return to the temple”). Part of it constitutes the ritual in which Lakshmi avenges herself during her lord’s return to the temple at the end of Rath Yatra. After Sudarshan, Balaram and Subhadra enter the sanctum sanctorum, Lakshmi closes the doors of the temple on Jagannath. Twice: first the doors of the Lion’s Gate, which is the first and the main entrance to the temple, and then the doors to the inner hall, known as “Jaya Bijaya dwara”. Skipping many details of this fascinating engagement, we would only say here that after much argument between Lakshmi and Jagannath, much persuasion, much appeal to the goddess to see reason and much pleading by her lord, Lakshmi relents and allows Him to enter, and she is happy as Jagannath feeds her delicious sweets at that moment of reconciliation. As far as we know, the Hera Panchami part of the conflict has not attracted as much attention of the poets and story tellers as the one concerning Lakshmi’s closing of the entry doors to her spouse. “Lakshmi Narayana Kali” (quarrel between Lakshmi and Narayan) is a popular narrative. Lakshmi is not a powerless goddess, but as wife she is, in relation to her husband, power being a context-dependent relation, and resistance by the powerless against the powerful and the victory of the former over the latter is a theme that has inspired the imagination of the poets ever since, at least, the bhakti period in our literatures.

THE END OF ASWASTHAMA'S STORY

In Vyasa Mahabharata, Aswasthama, guru Drona’s son, was cursed by Krishna to undergo a terrible fate: for three thousand years, with a gaping wound on his head, from which would continuously ooze blood and pus, he was to roam around alone in the forests, shunned by humans and shunning human company. Unable, on the advice of sage Vyasa, to withdraw (unlike his adversary Arjuna, who withdrew his narayana astra, another divine weapon as destructive as brahmastra), his brahmastra, that unfailingly hits the target and also causes great devastation in its trail, Aswasthama could only change its target. His original targets were the Pandava brothers and Krishna himself, and now the substitute target was the unborn son of Abhimanyu in the womb of his widow, Uttara. With the destruction of this yet to be born, the lineage of the Kurus would have come to an end, but Krishna intervened, and the child born dead was brought back to life, but that is another story.

Aswasthama had to surrender his “crown", which was not something ordinary; it was a part of his head, and it protected him from disease, hunger and thirst. When it was torn off his head, it not merely left a gaping, festering wound, but also destroyed a very powerful protective shield. He was reduced to an ordinary mortal. He had to undergo Krishna’s curse in this condition. This is in brief the last part of Aswathama’s story.

Aswasthama was granted the boon of immortality. He was condemned to undergo three thousand years of disgrace, humiliation, and pain, and the boon turned into a curse. Although, we, ordinary mortals would never know what three thousand years would mean to one whose existence spans eternity, we can well imagine what three thousand years of agony does to the sufferer. How much relief would one in pain get from the knowledge that one day the pain would come to an end, even though that day would take three thousand years to come?

In the eighteenth century Odia poet Krushna Singha’s version of Vyasa Mahabharata, all was not lost for Aswasthama. Krishna had put a limit to his terrible curse. This was what gave the condemned man hope. The curse had calmed him. Before he left on his three thousand year journey in wilderness, he prayed to sage Vyasa to allow him to return to his ashram on the completion of those years.

Sarala’s story is different. Aswasthama was a great warrior, and was one of the greatest archers of his times and like Bhishma, Drona, Arjuna and Karna he had divine weapons in his armoury too. But Duryodhana did not think highly of him, and made no secret of his opinion of him either. For Duryodhana, one who sought immortality was afraid of death, and one who was afraid of death was a disgrace to the community of warriors. In his army was Bhishma, who would die only when he chose to die. He could not be killed. But Bhishma’s case was different from Aswasthama’s. Bhishma never sought this privilege. In Sarala Mahabharata, what his mother, Ganga, said when she left him moments after his birth turned out to have this effect, unintended by Ganga herself. Details are out of place here.

After his father’s decapitation in the battlefield, Aswasthama tried to destroy the Pandavas but did not succeed, on account of Krishna. Duryodhana refused to make him the commander-in-chief of the Kaurava army. But he had no motivation to fight in the war any more. He performed the last rites of his father, and resolved to go on pilgrimage. Lest he felt tempted to rejoin the war, he decided to give away his weapons to someone worthy. Informed of this by Sahadeva, Krishna in the guise of a wise brahmin received his weapons from him. When Sakuni told Aswasthama that Krishna had cheated him, he was not upset at all. By making a ritual gift to Krishna himself, he told Sakuni, he would acquire great religious merit. Besides, Krishna, in his Parashuram avatar had given him all those weapons and now took them away in a different incarnation - what was his, went back to him. Therefore, he told Sakuni, he had nothing to regret about.

Aswasthama entered the batlefield after he heard that Duryodhana was lying mortally wounded. He was terribly upset, and he requested Duryodhana again to make him his commander-in-chief to enable him to avenge his father’s killing. Duryodhana agreed. In the darkness of the night he went to the Pandava camp and killed Dhristadyumna, who had committed the mean act of killing his grief-stricken, unarmed father. He also killed the five sons of Draupadi during their sleep, mistaking them to be the Pandavas. Duryodhana rebuked him when he saw those heads the following morning, regretted having made him commander-in-chief, and dismissed him from his presence. Rejected for ever by his friend and his king, Aswasthama left in disgrace.

The Pandavas were in Dwarika when this happened. Draupadi was inconsolable. She wanted revenge. She asked Krishna to kill Aswasthama. Krishna did not kill Aswasthama but dispossessed him of his weapons. Ignoring details, he cheated Aswasthama again in the guise of a brahmin. He advised him to leave his weapons under water, and at night he stole them and brought them to Draupadi’s presence to pacify her. The following morning Aswasthama heard what had happened from his maternal uncle, Kripacharya, the family preceptor of the Kurus, who, like Aswasthama had survived the Kurukshetra war. This time Aswasthama’s reaction was very different. He lost his cool, and did what he should never have done.

It did not matter to him that he did not have any weapon. He uprooted a kainsika grass (a kind of grass that grows in water), made a bow and an arrow from it, and sanctified them with the enabling mantra, thereby transforming them into a proper bow and arrow. He invoked the mantra for brahmastra and shot the arrow instructing it to destroy the Pandavas, and Krishna, along with his seven generations too, in case he intervened on their behalf. Which is of course what Krishna did. In Dwaraka, the Pandavas, his guests, were under his protection. When all his efforts to counter brahmastra failed, he used narayana astra against it. The destructive power of these two weapons was so great that Brahma himself, who was the god of creation and also the creator of brahmastra, had to intervene without the knowledge of Aswasthama. Krishna must have known, because in Sarala Mahabharata there was nothing that he did not know. Brahma pacified the weapon of Vishnu, but his own weapon wanted a sacrifice – someone like a Pandava. So Brahma directed it to the womb of Uttara.

And with this, the narrative changed its direction. Aswasthama was simply pushed out of the centre stage to some quiet edge. He would not emerge from there for a long time. Now the focus was on the dead child, and Krishna was the supreme actor on the stage. He gave life to the child, and a touch of grandeur to the story of a kind that only he could. After the birth of her son Uttara died. The mother had done her job. She had given a son to continue the line of the Kurus and a successor to the throne of Hastinapura. The story did not need her anymore.

Then came the time when Krishna and his brother Balarama left the mortal world. Dhritarastra, Gandhari, and Kunti had retired to the forest, and had perished in a forest fire. Bidura had died. Yudhisthira experienced a deep sense of emptiness after the departure of Krishna, and he and his brothers soon decided it was time for them to go for vanaprastha. Yudhisthira handed over the kingdom to his grandson Parikshita and with Draupadi, the brothers left for the forest never to return.

In the last phase of their pilgrimage they went to the ashram of Parashuram in Prag tirtha (Prayag), where they met Aswasthama and Kripacharya. In just thirteen couplets of meditative grace the poet Sarala describes their meeting in that serene and sublime environment. These few verses provide one of the very few eloquent articulations of peace, calm and hope in this long narrative of intolerance, hatred, revenge, and destruction. The meeting of the Pandavas with Aswasthama was as elevating as blissful. This was no reconciliation; there was no place for it since all enmity and hostility of a lifetime had disappeared. They met as friends and well-wishers. Yudhisthira paid due respects to Aswasthama and Kripacharya, and in an expression of spiritual surrender, he prostrated before Parashuram – duti brahma (“second Brahma”) as Aswasthama described him to Yudhisthira. As Parashuram told them about the events of satya yuga (“the aeon of Truth”), Aswasthama spoke about the Mahabharata war and the glory and the greatness of the Pandavas. They all took their ritual bath in the sacred waters of the rivers, and had darshan of Bhagavan Madhava. Aswasthama most affectionately invited Yudhisthira to stay with them. They were on their way to the seat of goddess Hingula, he told Aswasthama, as the Pandavas resumed his journey. They would return to the ashram on their way back, and would join him, he told Aswasthama. They never came back; their path led them to the Himalayas.

This is how the immortal Aswasthama’s story ended in Sarala Mahabharata. It is through some kind of ending that the immortals can leave a story, and that, not merely because a story must have an end. Perhaps Aswasthama continued to stay in that ashram; perhaps he went elsewhere. In that deathless existence of his, what did he seek and what did he get? One does not know. Nobody ever told that story. There are no stories of immortals; only the mortals have stories.

In his retelling, Sarala saved Aswasthama from an utterly humiliating and miserable existence for three thousand years and his audience from yet another degrading experience: of confronting the endless howls of a man in terrible agony, not only disturbing the profound calm of the forests but also paralysing their sensibilities from fear. One such event was enough, both for those who were present in the battlefield of Kurukshetra, when it happened, and for those who centuries later listened to it as the poet retold the story: Dussasana’s screams and screeches, and Bhima’s bays as he severed his hands and dug a hole in his chest. But more than Aswasthama and his audience, Sarala saved Krishna. Some punishments, no matter in whose name, that of justice or whatever else, are a crime against humanity. And no punishment could be harsher and crueller than the one that was meted out to Aswasthama in the canonical text. Krishna was The Supreme Being’s avatara on earth, and Sarala was his devotee, and he saved him from the indignity and the disgrace of pronouncing that demeaning curse.

THE SECOND GAME OF DICE

After this the Pandavas went into exile – for thirteen long years. And it all happened like this:

The defeat in the game of dice had hurt Yudhisthira badly, and the pain had seeped into his being. In fact in terms of Sarala’s narrative, it was the defeat, more than even Draupadi’s humiliation,that seemed to have upset the eldest Pandava more deeply. From one point of view, it may not be surprising; those who always win cannot accommodate even an occasional defeat. His kshatriya ego responded to humiliation in the same way, whether it came from a game of dice, or from a battle. He told Krishna that he would play dice with Duryodhana again, and would go into the forest if he lost. The link between defeat in the game of dice and withdrawing into the forest had been forged in his mind before he rolled the dice for the second time in the Kaurava court. Dying would be far better, he told Krishna, than living with the burden of defeat. Krishna, the knower of the past, the present and the future, said nothing. In any case, Yudhisthira was not seeking his advice; he was only informing him about his feelings and decision.

Soon after this, one day Yudhisthira went to Hastinapura to pay his respects to his uncle Dhritarastra. He had no intention of using this occasion to play dice with Duryodhana. It was a routine visit. This time his brothers were with him. Yudhisthira must have been at ease; he would not have to answer a semi-accusing question like why his brothers had not come with him.

They were warmly welcomed in the Kaurava court. Duryodhana and Yudhisthira sat together - on the same seat. The atmosphere was relaxed, and there was geniality all around.

Sakuni then brought his dice. One does not know what his intentions were, and whether through the game of dice he was pursuing his hidden agenda, namely, the total destruction of the Kauravas. It is also possible that he genuinely thought that a game of dice would be in tune with the pleasant mood prevailing in the court. The brilliant story teller does not provide a clue to the hearer to resolve an ambiguity such as this; he leaves it to his imagination to work out his own conclusion. In any case, whatever Sakuni’s intentions, the very sight of dice whetted Yudhisthira’s desire to play. He asked his brother Sahadeva, another excellent player of dice, to draw the patterns for the game on the floor. As for the dice, the earlier experience had made him wise; he smiled at his uncle Sakuni, and told him that this time he was not going to play with his dice. Bring another set, he told him.

Suddenly, from nowhere, fell in their presence a wonderful pair of dice. Both Yudhisthira and Duryodhana were happy at this mysterious happening; this was the dice of dharma (the eternal sustaining principle, also righteousness at a more worldly level) , said Duryodhana, and asked cousin Sahadeva – not Sakuni, who had won the game for him last time - to throw it on both Yudhisthira’s and his behalf. When dharma was the instrument, why worry about who would throw the dice.

Only Sahadeva in that august assembly of distinguished people knew the secret of the mysterious dice. He knew it was the work of the gods, who wanted to relieve the goddess Earth of some burden of wickedness and sin epitomized by Kichaka and his brothers. For this to happen, the Pandavas had to undergo exile. And for that to happen, Yudhisthira had to lose the game of dice. Now when gods wish to use humans as instrument for their objectives, they control their thoughts and perceptions, and their sense of judgement. They sent Khala (Mischief) and Durbala (Weakness of Will), who controlled the mind of Duryodhana and Yudhisthira respectively, and entered the pieces of dice as well.

Duryodhana proposed the wager: the loser would be a non-entity in the kingdom; that is, he would disqualify himself from putting forward any claim to a share in the kingdom. Yudhisthira proposed that the loser would live the life of an exile in the forest for twelve years. Sakuni added that he must live incognito for a year after those twelve years in the forest, and if his identity was discovered during that thirteenth year, he would repeat the exile and the incognito living, and the same would happen again if his identity was revealed in the thirteenth year. This harsh condition surprised Yudhisthira and Duryodhana both; they did not utter a word – quite understandable considering the fact that the players had no idea that the game was going to be manipulated.

Sakuni was probably gambling in imposing the stricter condition. The chances of the loser being found out in the thirteenth year would be quite high, he must have reckoned. A whole army of spies would be after him. If Duryodhana lost, then the Kauravas’ endless years in exile would, in effect, amount to their destruction. However if Yudhisthira lost, then he would be the loser. On the other hand, if the loser- no matter who - did succeed in staying incognito in the thirteenth year, then inevitably there would be war. That would serve his purpose; he had no doubt about the outcome - the Kauravas would be wiped out.

Sahadeva readily supported Sakuni’s proposal, needless to say, for very different reasons. He knew that the thirteenth year of their incognito living would make Kichaka’s killing in the hands of Bhima possible. He was willing to be the instrument of gods. Now since the principal advisers to Duryodhana and Yudhisthira were in agreement, they had no hesitation in giving their consent to the wager. The game started. Duryodhana gave the dice to Sahadeva. Each player declared the number he wanted, and they asked Sahadeva to roll the dice. Roll it in the name of dharma, the Kauravas said, and everyone would soon know who was with dharma. When Sahadeva rolled the dice, he did it, obviously unknown to everyone, not in the name of dharma, but in the name of the will of the gods. And Yudhisthira lost. This time defeat did not give him any sense of disgrace. The winner and the loser both looked upon the result as their karma, their destiny.

Bhima repeated his oaths to slaughter the Kauravas, dismember Dussasana, break Duryodhana’s thigh, etc., but that wild behaviour was in response to the crude and offensive demeanour of the Kauravas when Yudhisthira lost. They were gloating over the misery awaiting the Pandavas. The venerable elders in the Kaurava court like Bhishma, Drona and Kripacharya feared for the life of the Kauravas, although the Kauravas themselves did not take Bhima’s words seriously. They were certain that the exile of the Pandavas would never end. Yudhisthira of course totally disapproved of Bhima’s conduct, and made his resentment known to him. He knew that he had lost, and as far as he was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong in the way the game was played.

The first game of dice was rigged by Sakuni; the second was manipulated by the gods above and Sahadeva on earth. Sahadeva never told anyone about the mystery of the dice. Everyone had taken them as the dice of dharma, and unlike in the previous case, no one at any time later ever suspected anything foul, so no one ever asked him. And Sahadeva was constrained to share his special knowledge about things only if he was asked. This was destiny’s way to ensure that the one who had secret knowledge could not share it with others at will. The design of the gods remained buried forever in Sahadeva’s heart.

In Sarala’s narrative there was no Kaurava conspiracy to exile the Pandavas. No one from the Kaurava side invited Yudhisthira for a second game of dice. No Kaurava had in fact invited him to pay them a visit. It is of course another matter that Yudhisthira needed no invitation to visit his elders and cousins. The Pandavas belonged to the same family. More than once in Sarala’s story, the Kauravas and the Pandavas had fought together when a Pandava or a Kaurava happened to fight an enemy. In fact, they had almost just returned from such a fight when the dice rolled for the second time. That indeed was a strange fight; it began with Arjuna fighting his son Nagarjuna, with neither aware of their relationship. Further details of that terrible fight in which Krishna and Shiva had also got involved are unnecessary here. As for Sakuni, he was almost irrelevant in the second game of dice: his dice were summarily discarded; besides, he did not throw the dice then. True, the stricter requirement on the loser was his, but it might not have been accepted if Sahadeva had not consented to it, just as his dice were not accepted for this game. Sarala completely absolves Duryodhana and Sakuni of any role in the exile of the Pandavas.

In terms of Sarala’s narrative, everything that happens has a cause, whether it is evident to all or none, and whether it is humanly knowable or not. Some events have a deeper, cosmic purpose. Yudhisthira’s defeat in the second game of dice was one. When the fundamental, foundational and sustaining balance between the diverse and even contradictory forces on earth gets disturbed, it has to be restored. Therefore Kichaka and his brothers had to be killed, and for whatever reason, they could not be killed by a god. They were destined to be killed by a particular human. Under the circumstances, then, the gods’ intervention had to take the form of the emergence of enabling circumstances for that event to take place.

HOW THE GAME OF DICE BEGAN

His brothers had gone with Krishna to Dwarika, and Yudhisthira was in Varunavanta with mother Kunti and wife, Draupadi. All of a sudden, as it were, he felt a strong desire to go to Hastinapura and meet Dhritarastra, his father’s elder brother, bada baapaa (“elder father”), as one would say in Odia ( the new spelling of "Oriya"). It is not incorrect to say “all of a sudden” for two reasons: one, Sarala’s narrative does not seem to support any other interpretation; for example, a fairly realistic one such as the following: Yudhisthira always wanted, almost longed, to go there and meet the family elders and brothers (Duryodhana and his brothers were “brothers”, not “cousins”, to him), but he knew that his own brothers would neither like to visit Hastinapura, nor let him to go there alone. In any case, his elders would never consider it normal if he went there leaving his brothers behind, and he would have to explain their absence. Now his brothers’ fortuitous absence in Varunavanta offered him a great opportunity, and he wanted to seize it. The second reason for “all of a sudden” is that it is in tune with the philosophy of Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata: things happen because they are destined to happen; an appropriate environment gets formed in order that the pre-ordained takes place.

In all humility Yudhisthira paid his respects to Dhritarastra, and told him that he had come alone because his brothers had gone with Krishna. The elder father welcomed him most warmly. He told him that he himself was a sinful person, and so were his sons: quarrelsome, and wicked, and such offspring as them were threat to the family line. He wished he had one virtuous son like him, he told Yudhisthira, and not those hundred wicked ones that he had. He implored his nephew to forgive Duryodhana, always, no matter how vile he was, and how often he wronged him. Yudhisthira chided him for being so unfair to Duryodhana, and told him that he valued him as a brother more than he did Bhima. The blind, old, former king of Hastinapura felt reassured, and said as much to Yudhisthira.

The poor old father had understood that his sons had no chance at all against the Pandavas, in the event of a conclusive fight between them. He was particularly scared of Bhima, who, he knew, hated his sons as intensely as they hated him, and who, he believed, could finish off all of them. He was also aware that it was Yudhisthira alone who could control the tempestuous Bhima. That was the main reason why he was so generous in his words of welcome to the eldest Pandava. One must not, however, be unfair to him; he was not unkind to his nephew, and his words of welcome were not totally insincere. In any case, he knew that Yudhisthira was his sons’ most effective shield against their destruction.

After the greetings were over, Dhritarastra asked Yudhisthira to go to the Kaurava court. He went there and paid his obeisance to Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Shalya, Sakuni, Bhurishrva, and other venerable elders. Apart from king Duryodhana everyone received him warmly.

The court was not engaged in any particularly serious business. There must have been a lazy atmosphere in the court. Sakuni looked disinterested and aloof, like one who had nothing to do. He was sitting alone at a corner, and was rolling dice, playing against himself as it were, something a compulsive player of dice would tend do when without a playmate, or when fighting a sense of boredom. He seemed to be neither hoping nor expecting any one to join him to play a game or two. No one in the court was paying him any attention.

Now Yudhisthira had paid his due respects and courtesies to all, and the main purpose of his coming had been served. He must have felt relaxed and happy - the feeling one has when with people one is fond of. He had a strong liking for dice, and the sight of dice cubes rolling must have been irresistible for him. He knew, as did everyone else, that Sakuni was an excellent dice player, who really enjoyed playing it – on the whole the kind of person a connoisseur would like to play with.

Yudhisthira directly went to him, and most warmly asked him if he would like to play a game or two with him. “Shall we have a game of dice, Uncle”, he said. And without waiting for a response, he took out a piece of chalk from his waist wear, and started drawing out the patterns for the game on the floor. He surprised everyone in the court with his enthusiasm.

Now quite unexpectedly and uninvited, Duryodhana came and asked his uncle, Sakuni, to move, so that he could play. Yudhisthira had no objection, not that Duryodhana sought his permission. Yudhisthira and Duryodhana sat facing each other, and Sakuni sat between them. “What shall we wager”, Yudhisthira asked him. In response, Duryodhana took off the ornaments on his body, and staked them as the wager. Yudhisthira thought it was reasonable wager, and took off the ornaments from his body. Then Duryodhana told Sakuni, sitting in the middle, that he would be the witness in the game, and also that he should cast the dice for them both – they would each mention a number and he would roll the dice, an arrangement that Yudhisthira had no objection to. Unlike in the canonical version of the narrative, here in Sarala’s, Sakuni was not rolling the dice on behalf of Duryodhana alone. When the game was about to begin, the idea of exploiting the situation to take revenge on Duryodhana occurred to Sakuni. He had realized long back that he would succeed in his secret mission of destroying Duryodhana comprehensively only by setting him against the Pandavas. He realized that the game of dice would be the chance of a lifetime for him. He invoked special powers to come to his help. Unknown to both the players, their witness, who they believed would be fair to them, had decided to betray their trust. When Duryodhana called a number and won, and Yudhisthira called a number and lost, neither suspected foul play. The former thought he was lucky, the latter thought he was not.

Thus in Sarala’s story, robbing Yudhisthira of his property, kingdom, etc. through the game of dice was not pre-planned. Leave alone any carefully hatched conspiracy by Sakuni and Duryodhana, there never was even any talk between them in this regard. Just as the brothers of Yudhisthira were not keen to visit Hastinapura, Duryodhana was not keen to meet them either. No one had invited Yudhisthira to come to Hastinapura and play a game of dice. Then if Duryodhana came to play with him, it was not because of any prior arrangement between Sakuni and him. It was a spontaneous decision on his part. It is possible that he decided to play in order to make it a game between kings, and thereby turn it into a more exciting event. It is also possible that since the atmosphere in the court was dull, and he felt bored, he might have wanted some relaxation. As for the wager, the idea was not his; it was Yudhisthira’s. It is unclear why he brought in the wager idea; it is possible he did so in order to make the game much more exciting. It was this wager that transformed the game into gambling, and it became the cause of all the terrible things that happened that day. Without it they would have played a few games, Duryodhana would have got tired of it all, sooner or later, since he was not a connoisseur, and at the end of the day Yudhisthira would have happily returned home.

This said, one probably should not blame Yudhisthira for all the outrageous things that happened that day, which eventually led the Kauravas and the Pandavas to the battlefields of Kurukshetra. What he did was natural to him: visiting his elders, inviting his maternal uncle to play with him, looking forward to an exciting game of dice, etc. None of these can count as impeachable conduct. He indeed did surprise the court, as the poet put it, when he happily started drawing out the patterns for the game on the floor. What the court might have found somewhat odd could be his enthusiasm, or over-enthusiasm, considering the quiet and composed person that he was, but it is understandable. He was happy after meeting his elders, and others, and might have wanted to play a game or two to amuse himself. In any case, his enthusiasm for the game would hardly constitute a good reason to censure him. He did introduce the gambling element into the play, but that would again hardly constitute justification for censure. His intentions were not mean; he did not covet things that Duryodhana had, and did not want to acquire the same through some devious means. Incidentally, there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that Duryodhana’s intentions with respect to Yudhisthira’s possessions were any different. As for gambling itself, it does not appear to have been stigmatized as unethical or undignified then. Yudhisthira was also not the kind of person who would have done something that would have lowered the prestige and the dignity of the great Kaurava court. In any case, if gambling were considered unethical or improper practice, then it would not have been allowed in the august royal court itself in the first place; there would have been voices of protest from the elders. It would be entirely wrong to think that the court was silent because of fear for Duryodhana; Bhishma, Drona, Bhurishrava were not the ones to keep quiet for fear of the king. But more than that, it must not be forgotten that wager was not Duryodhana’s idea at all. At one stage during the game, when Yudhisthira had lost all his jewelry, Bhishma did intervene to caution Yudhisthira; he advised him to stop playing because he had lost so much. His grounds were practical, not ethical.

The beginning of the game of dice brings out an important aspect of Sarala’s belief system, namely that things happen because they are destined to happen. There is a proverb in Odia, which is as follows: daiba daudi manisa gaai, jeniki otaari teniki jaai (“Destiny is the rope and the human is a cow, wherever it pulls him, he goes (there)”). The gambling episode is certainly one of the most emphatic pieces in Odia literature that illustrates it.

WHEN BHISHMA AND ARJUNA FACED EACH OTHER IN THE BATTLEFIELD

The Kurukshetra war had already started. Bhishma had assured Duryodhana that he would kill the Pandavas in the war. Yudhisthira had gone to the Kaurava side to seek the blessings of the elders, and Bhishma, Drona, Bhurishrava, Kripacharya, Aswasthama and Karna had each blessed him to win the war. Duryodhana’s brother, Durdasa, had changed over to the Pandavas’ side in the battlefield itself, and was engaged in a fierce fight with the Kaurava army as he was protecting Yudhisthira, who was in the enemy’s territory, and was weaponless. Before the eldest Pandava could return to his own army after paying respects to his elders, the war had started.

Bhima had rushed to where Durdasa was fighting, and Arjuna was trying to reach them; he was very worried about Yudhisthira’s safety. That was how he ran into Bhishma, who blocked his way. This was the first time the doting grandfather and the devoted grandson met after the Pandavas’ return from vanavasa (living in the forest) and ajnatavasa (living incognito). Arjuna paid his respects to him, and in all humility and sincerity prayed to him to use his authority to stop the war. Even after Yudhisthira had decided in favour of war, he was not inclined to fight, more sure than unsure about the immorality of that war. Let us not ask now whether Arjuna had any authority to take any step towards stopping the war, because such questions are meaningless when it comes to peace.

The grand old man expressed helplessness. How would peace be possible with a person who was intent on killing his brothers, and was unconcerned about the adharma of that act, said Bhishma. Therefore instead of thinking of peace with Duryodhana, Arjuna must concentrate on the war and devise a strategy to kill him.

Arjuna was upset. He got down from his chariot and prostrated before him. Bhishma gave him blessings for victory. How could he ever even think of killing him, his grandfather, who with so much loving care had looked after him all along, he asked him. Bhishma said that such feelings were inappropriate at that point of time. If he really did not want to kill his brothers, why did he desire kingdom instead of returning to the forest, he asked. In a family, he continued, there would sometimes be a troublesome person who would bring disgrace and ruin to the family. However, the virtuous would not abandon him, or eliminate him, rather they would find some way to accommodate him. But the wise Pandavas had done the contrary. It was indeed they who had abandoned dharma, coveted kingdom and entered the battlefield against their brothers. If Arjuna was really so fond of his brothers, then he should return to the forest. That would be the acid test of his brotherliness. That would also save the family.

This could be seen not merely as his counsel, but an implicit challenge to his grandson to follow the path of dharma. His words were direct and sounded harsh, but those were well-meaning words, and not at all unloving. Those were the words of a deeply hurt, disappointed and helpless family elder. He too didn’t want war! But he knew that war could be averted only if the Pandavas wanted, since they, unlike Duryodhana, understood dharma, and had the courage to live in accordance with it. And he said all this to Arjuna because he knew that he was a sensitive person, and would understand. It didn’t matter to him that he would, in all probability, not be able to accept his challenge, and meet the demands of peace, indeed, of love.

This was the only time Bhishma told a Pandava what he thought about averting the war. Unlike Arjuna, when Yudhisthira came to him on the Kurukshetra battlefield, he didn’t seek his help to stop the war; he only sought his blessings for victory. He had also asked him how he could be out of their way in order that they win, and he had told him what to do on the tenth day of the war to make him give up fighting. In all this talk, the eldest Pandava did not mention peace. It was Arjuna, who brought up the matter.

Incidentally, if Bhishma’s suggestion brings to mind Sakuni’s to Yudhisthira (see the piece “The Last Proposal to Avoid War” in this blog), his views concerning the problem person in the family reminds one of what the wise Bidura had told Dhritarastra about the infant Duryodhana. He had told him that his eldest son would be the cause of the destruction of the entire family; therefore in the larger interest of the family, he should allow him to kill him. Dhritarastra didn’t. Sons hadn’t come easily to him. Destiny had to be cajoled in the form of intervention by Vyasa, and later Durvasa, so that he, destined to be sonless, had sons. That’s a rather longish story, which we might skip. Besides, how could a father allow the killing of his eldest son, who was an infant then, on the basis of a prediction? Bidura’s fears came true of course, but his attitude came under scrutiny after a long time, in a different context. Bhishma’s words can easily be seen as a severe indictment of the Bidura’s thinking.

Listening to Bhishma, Arjuna was sad; he told his grandfather that he felt guilty. But why didn’t Duryodhana give them just one village, he asked him. There was anguish in his tone. Bhishma evaded the question. What answer could he give? He himself had advised Duryodhana to give at least two villages to the Pandavas, but he didn’t listen to him. He was helpless. But there was no point in saying these things to Arjuna at that point of time, he must have thought.

All he said was that things had been ordained that way, and it was in no one’s power to alter them. It was pointless to talk about giving or not giving. Neither had seeing nor not seeing mattered, he had heard, neither again had not getting. Now not giving would also not matter. He elaborated. Kansa saw and Dasaratha did not; both died. Bali gave; Ravana did not; both met the same end. Kichaka did not get, and he perished, and now, without giving, Duryodhana would meet the same fate.

But if Duryodhana was to perish for not giving, why must Bhishma and others perish, Arjuna asked his grandfather. Well, said Bhishma, things were ordained that way. He had heard that he would die in the war, and he knew that he would. It is here that their exchange ended. There was fighting all around, and the war was closing on them. Soon they too started fighting.

To return to Bhishma’s proposal for peace, it was not formulated within the framework of afterlife or reward in any world. It was not founded on any notion of the spiritual progress of self, spanning over births, or recognition of the illusory nature of the phenomenal world. Bhishma did not deny any of these, but nothing of these would matter for his computation of the right and the wrong, of one must do and what one must not. Rebirth would not bring with it the memory of the previous existences, and one couldn’t be guided by what lay beyond one’s awareness. For Bhishma relationships were real, and they mattered; bonds were real, and precious; and dead bodies on the battlefield were real too. A life of dharma would not discount these; on the contrary it would be crucially founded on these. That is why, for Bhishma, sacrifice of the interests of the self became so necessary for the adamant, uncooperative, and ignorant other in a relationship.

And what a metaphor to express a fusion of two profound ideas: no shastras or puranas, but one’s sense of discrimination, and understanding of dharma alone can be one’s guide to choose the right course of action for oneself, and one’s courage to pursue it enables one to work in accordance with it At the same time, one has no control over the consequences of one’s action, and the action and its consequence may lack logic and intelligibility. One followed dharma and gave, another committed adharma and did not give, but the result was the same for both. Did the great Bhishma mean to say that pursuing family dharma and renouncing the kingdom for Duryodhana might not necessarily yield positive results for the Pandavas, but that would be no reason for them to abandon the path of dharma? Perhaps he did. Incidentally, in Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata there is no exemption from right action; here Krishna does not give any assurance that he would protect one, who had surrendered to him, from the consequences of one’s action.

Krishna had kept quiet throughout the exchange. It wasn’t in his nature to remain silent when the talk around him was subversive with respect to what he wanted. He wanted war. So how could he remain a passive listener to that exchange? He probably thought that at that stage there was no need for him to intervene, when the language of peace had lost all meaning. He knew that nothing concrete would emerge from all that talk between those two conscientious, and sensitive persons, who nevertheless were too ineffective to change the course of events. They were only letting out their sense of disappointment and feeling of guilt. In that delicate moment they should be left to themselves.

Besides, their talk was their family-internal matter. He was an outsider. He was no one’s emissary any more. In the battlefield he was a charioteer, and he must behave in accordance with the charioteer’s maryaadaa (dignity): it was entirely inappropriate for him to intervene in a matter that did not concern him in that specific role.

But is it also possible that Narayana knew what kind of a nara (human) Bhishma was; Bhagawan knew what kind of a bhakta (devotee) the son of Ganga was. The Kaurava elder was an authentic person, a person of great integrity, who lived a life of dharma. And Krishna knew how to respect him.

THE LAST PROPOSAL TO AVOID WAR

In Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata it came from Sakuni. On the eve of the Kurukshetra war. Duryodhana had sent him to the Pandavas with the message that they must come to the battlefield and together with Sakuni, work out which side of the battlefield which army would take for camping. Sakuni was not supposed to offer any proposal to the Pandavas to avoid the war. But that was what he did. First he gave them Duryodhana’s message. Then he said that there was indeed an alternative to war: Yudhisthira must return to the forest with his brothers.

To make his point he then told Yudhisthira a story. Once upon a time there was a woodcutter in a small town named Kamapura near the river Krishnaveni. His name was Melaka. He was lazy and ignorant. All he did was bring home some dry wood, and his wife would go out and sell it. They had no children. He had acquired no other skill. Forty years passed in this way.

Once it rained heavily for a couple of days. It wouldn’t stop. Melaka couldn’t go out to collect wood, and the husband and the wife starved. When the weather improved, she shouted at him and asked him to go out and do something. The fellow went out with his axe, stretched himself on a temple platform and went off to sleep. He woke up in the evening when the conch was blown at the temple.

He was very worried. He had gathered nothing, and it was already evening. The very thought of facing his wife frightened him. It was getting dark, there was no one around, and it was very quiet. He went inside the temple. There were three idols: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. He threw the wooden idol of Vishnu on the floor and raised his axe to cut it to pieces. The wood would support him for some three or four days, he figured out.

Vishnu materialized. How could you think of cutting me to pieces, you ignoramus, he asked. Unafraid, Melaka told him that he had nothing to eat, and that if he was really Vishnu, could he provide him some food till that spell of heavy rains was over, he begged of him. Vishnu readily granted his prayer. When the rains were over, there was no more free food. So the lazy man used the same strategy on Vishnu, and this time when he appeared, he wanted him to provide him food as long as he lived. Vishnu agreed out of fear. Soon Melaka became prosperous and his status in the town improved.

Now he had a neighbour called Ananta. He was a man of virtue, but was poor. His wife, Lilavati, and Melaka’s wife were friends. Lilavati grew jealous of her friend. She would shout at her husband, insult him, hold him responsible for their miserable existence, and would occasionally threaten to leave him. If that lazy man, her friend’s husband, could manage his affairs so well, why couldn’t he, she would ask him. He asked her to find out from her friend how her husband had come to do so well.

Having found out the secret of his prosperity, one day Ananta went to the same temple. He picked up the stone idol of Shiva, and raised his axe. Now Shiva materialized in a terrible form. How dared he attempt to attack him, he asked, and told him that he would tear him to pieces. Ananta was greatly unnerved, but could still manage to ask him why he was so angry with him when Narayana was so generous to Melaka in an identical situation.

Then Shiva told him that Melaka was an ignoramus, a lazy person; he lacked understanding and a sense of the right and the wrong. But he, Ananta, was not like that. He was honest and knowledgeable; he had a sense of discrimination. So they both could not be dealt with in the same way. Gods fear those who have an undeveloped conscience, who have no inner growth, but they are not afraid of the knowledgeable, who have a well-developed moral sense. Shiva told him that Melaka would suffer in hell, but he, who had looked after the needy, and had lived a pious life, would be reborn as a saadhu, a pious person. Ananta put the idol in the proper place and returned home. He told his wife that he just couldn’t break the idol; he got terribly scared. He was not going to make another attempt, he told her, even if they were to die of starvation.

After death, Melaka and Ananta met the same fate as Shiva had said - Melaka suffered in hell, and in his next birth, Ananta was the pious king of Kashi.

Now, Duryodhana was like Melaka, and he was like Ananta, Sakuni told Yudhisthira. How could he do something so sinful? He was renowned to be a man of virtue; how would he fight a war to kill his brothers, he asked him. He might suffer in this life, but would have a life of bliss in the next. He should not give in to anger, desire for power, hatred and violence. He should reject war, and return to forest.

Yudhisthira’s reply was sharp. During his vanavasa (period of forest dwelling) he had traveled from arka tirtha (Konarka) to himagiri (the Himalayas), and there was probably no tirtha (place of pilgrimage) that he did not visit, he told Sakuni. He said he knew him well, and knew that he never wanted the Pandava and the Kaurava brothers to have good relations. Now, instead of asking him to go back to the forest, he should persuade Duryodhana to go for vanavasa for a while, and let the Pandava brothers rule the kingdom during his vanavasa. The poet doesn’t say anything about how Sakuni felt and what all he thought.

He of course did not fail to see that Yudhishthira was uncharacteristically harsh. Speaking ironically to one’s elder and kin is showing disrespect to him. This is probably the only example in Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata when Yudhisthira spoke ironically to anyone. He thought Sakuni was trying to exploit him – what else does the devil have in mind when he quotes scriptures?

It didn’t even occur to him that his uncle Sakuni could be honest. During this episode Sakuni told him that he did not really know him; Sahadeva did – he hinted that the youngest Pandava was aware of his compulsions, and his real goals. Yudhishthira didn’t ask him to elaborate, or to clarify himself a bit. He ignored his words; they surely made no sense to him. One’s perspective is limited by the stereotypes of knowledge one has constructed from one’s past experiences. Even Yudhishthira, the living embodiment of dharma on earth, was no exception.

Sarala’s – the poet who is sometimes believed to be deeply inspired by the Buddhist thought - Sakuni provides the ultimate argument for peace: there is no road to real peace through violence, and total commitment to rejection of violence would mean choosing to sacrifice the self at the decisive moment. The wise, loving, and non-violent Yudhishthira (whose non-violent and considerate nature had once upset his mother because in her view these were not the qualities that a king should have) did not opt for peace. He didn’t even care to give it a thought because it came from the one who in his eyes was an unworthy person. Like any ordinary person he believed that it is the source that matters, not the thing.

Besides, there probably were other things in his mind at that time. They had almost just returned from twelve years’ stay in the forest, and one year’s stay incognito. It had been a hard life. He was in no mood to return to the forest. He didn’t want a kingdom, didn’t want even his own kingdom back, if the war could be averted that way. He just wanted two, if not two, only one, village. But it was never nothing. He never talked of returning to the forest. Besides he knew he wouldn’t have his brothers’ and Draupadi’s support - for many reasons, including avenging Draupadi’s humiliation. His brothers knew that the time for this had come.

Except Yudhishthira, no one really wanted to avert the war, although it must be said in all fairness that only a few were looking forward to it. But even he was not committed to total and unqualified rejection of violence. And he didn’t ever think in terms of renunciation. His concept of a virtuous life did not include it. He had never renounced anything.

This apart, he was not the one who worked for reward in afterlife, whether in heaven or in the subsequent birth. He was the only one in the narrative who left the world of the mortals without undergoing death. But he never worked for it. It was neither his aspiration nor his goal. In fact, afterlife, rebirth, etc. were not part of his language. All this was characteristically Krishna’s language, also the sages’ language – Agasti’s or Vyasa’s, for instance, and occasionally, Sakuni’s, and a few others’ too. But never Yudhisthira’s, or for that matter, Bhishma’s, Drona’s or Karna’s. Whatever their beliefs about rebirth, these great men lived their days as though there was only one life to live. They did not allow thoughts and concerns about afterlife to govern their present. A generous, deeply conscientious, and scrupulously honest person, Yudhishthira did his best to live a life of righteousness. There was no compensation he sought in the form of reward, if not here, elsewhere. A “gain-hereafter” argument was unlikely to impress him.

Peace sometimes demands self-denial, renunciation. That was the essence of Sakuni’s proposal; that was also his challenge to Yudhisthira, the one believed to be the very embodiment of dharma. He chose to brush it aside.
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