The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  “Courage is not enough. Deliberation and reasoning are favoured by the gods as much as action.”

  The arguments went on and on and I could not stand it anymore; the need to go on a pilgrimage had begun to grow in me again. I thought of the sea-washed palaces of Dwaraka and Krishna and Subhadra and our Abhimanyu growing up so far away.

  In the sixth year, when we most needed him, Vyasa arrived. Bheema and Draupadi appealed to Vyasa to urge Yudhishthira to war.

  Looking at us with his glowing eyes which saw the present, the past, and the future, he said: “Yudhishthira is right. The time is not now. You are the same small boy who arrived in Hastinapura so many years ago, Bheema.” He traced the anger-wrinkles on Bheema’s brow. “You want to shake Duryodhana and the others down out of the mango tree, but the mangoes are not ripe—and furthermore I bring you news. Duryodhana has extracted a promise from Greatfather and Dronacharya that, in the event, they will fight on his side. They have eaten his salt and it would not have been Dharma for them to refuse. You are the beloved grandsons and disciples, But Dharma is Dharma and without it the three worlds are thrown into confusion. The other great warrior who loves you is Ashwatthama. He can not fight against his father; besides which, in these last years, without Duryodhana’s constant jealousy of Bheema, Duryodhana has proved a good and generous friend not only to Ashwatthama but to many of the kings—and they are, quite simply, indebted to him. He has cultivated several great warriors, Bhoorishravas amongst them, and Bhoorishravas is a good man. I do not need to remind you whose side Karna is on. Now that Bheeshma and Drona are compelled to fight against you, we must think of ways of defeating them. Do not forget that Drona, Bheeshma, and Karna are all students of the great Bhargava. They have the divine astras, and so does Ashwatthama. Yudhishthira is right. If you were to attack now, breaking the Dharma with your broken promise, you would be defeated.”

  Eldest said, “The one thing that disturbs my sleep at night is the memory of the way that Karna handles a bow.”

  This was an arrow straight into my heart. I knew that Eldest considered Karna the greatest bowman in the world and that was what disturbed my sleep that night and for many nights to come.

  Vyasa took Yudhishthira aside and gave him instructions for me. Later, Eldest said, “Arjuna, you remember when you burnt the Khandava forest, Indra promised that he would give you all the astras when Lord Shankara Shiva gave you his very own astra, the pashupata astra. Arjuna, you must bring the pashupata astra, you must go to the Himalayas and get divine weapons. When you have them, nothing will be able to touch you in the war. Bheema, I promise you a war.”

  The promise revived Bheema as the richest meals could not have done.

  Vyasa then gave fatherly advice. “Go back to the Kamyaka forest; you need a change of scene. You need repose and the animals of this forest need time to reproduce themselves. The plants too are in danger.”

  Now that my time had come to see Lord Shankara it was not easy to leave Draupadi and my brothers. There was much beauty in forest life and in our little ashram near the lake and in the discourses of the Rishis. But nothing was going to change the nature of Bheema and Draupadi, and I would no longer even be there to act as buffer between them and Eldest. I was not eager to leave our tightly woven group of exiles. Inspite of all the quarrelling and reliving of the dice game, the time on the edge of the lake had bound us all together as the luxuries of palace life never had done. When I left them I threw my coarse cloth over my head as Yudhishthira had done when leaving Hastinapura after the game. He had hidden his anger. He had protected the people against his fury. I protected my beloved ones from tears.

  I had been in the presence of the Gandhamadana mountain during my pilgrimage and before the Rajasuya. It had always been difficult to leave it. Now it seemed to recognize me as I recognized it. As long as I walked where trees and flowers grew, I did not remember the hardships of mountain climbing, the cold, and the wolves and the bears. I even forgot the exact nature of my mission. Vyasa had asked me to do something that did not come easily to my nature. It entailed the most rigid asceticism.

  I suddenly longed for that moment with Subhadra beside me, the reins in her hands, her laughter as the bridge came slamming down at the last possible moment, the guard’s mouth making a circle of surprise. I was heading for the coldest, loneliest, and most awesome place in the world.

  I returned to the wind in the pine trees and the sight of snow peaks reaching up to Indraloka. From down here in the foothills it looked as though once I had climbed up, I would be able to reach my hand into the blue heaven and draw down Indra’s weapons. There was a sparkle to every rock. The stones appeared to be inlaid with silver and glittered in the sun. The air was clear enough for my eyes to feel as if they had been washed with herbal water, and as I looked about me each flower and stone had been touched by Maya’s finger. Indeed, I could believe the whole mountain range to be a figment of his mind, his gift of gratitude to some god who had helped him. Here was the spur to his inspiration for our Sabha. The sky was sapphire blue and I left behind me pools of lotuses glowing like rubies with their emerald leaves.

  Somewhere above was Shankara Shiva’s cave. It was said to be inaccessible. I drew deep breaths of air; they made everything not only possible but easy. New energy surged through me. Something was happening at last; I thought of Bheema sending stones skimming across the water to make it ripple, and I was sorry not to have him with me. How much better I understood now the torture for him, of nothing happening, of going nowhere, of waiting with furrows on his brow and in his heart.

  The ties that bound me to Draupadi and my brothers jerked tighter as I moved away from them. I saw them constantly before me: Draupadi’s dark eyes and velvet cheeks stained by tears, Eldest’s grave sweetness as he spoke words which failed to convince her, Bheema wasting away, and the twins toiling without plaint.

  As I trod the little path used by shepherds, I said a prayer to Indra and my footsteps lightened. After a while, on either side, mass upon mass of minute flowers sprang blue and pink and yellow as if direct from Maya’s pointed fingers. I could not be so far from the site that had given him the marble for our Sabha. As I continued, the Sabha itself receded further and further away and the Dharma over which Greatfather and Yudhishthira devoted so much time to support the universe dwindled to an intricate plaything. Here, another law began to open out under the wideness of the sky. I saw smoke curling from the hilltops. I had taken no food with me. I had vowed that I would eat what I found on the way or what was offered me. I hoped to find a shepherd’s hut at the source of the smoke. I heard a sound like an off key conch, the silly sound that sheep make. There they were, all around me, blocking my path. A girl came running out of the flowers trying to head the sheep off. When she turned to look at me, I saw that she was lovely. Her eyes were the colour of silver green fern. Her forehead was hung with silver ornaments which stopped just above her soft brown brows. Heavy silver dropped from her ears, pulling down her little lobes. She said something to me in an outlandish tongue that made me laugh, so unlike was it to anything I was familiar with; it made even the Rakshasa language seem less strange. I wanted to ask the girl her name for the sound of it in that tongue. She looked so much as though her skin had been washed by the snow of the mountain peaks that in my mind I called her Snow Flower. I pointed at her with an inquiring gesture and then pointed at myself, saying “Arjuna”.

  “Arjuna?” she asked. My name sounded so sweet in her voice that I smiled. She laughed, showing teeth that glistened like the seeds of a young pomegranate. I guessed at a perfect form under her loose and rough woolen garment.

  “Arjuna?” she said, blurring the pronunciation even more than the first time and pointing to herself with a well-shaped grimy hand. This made me laugh again. The name of the greatest bowman in the world appended to this little green-eyed maid.

  “No,” I signed with my head and repeated my name, pointing at myself and again at her. She pondered this a mo
ment and, touching me lightly on my armour with her little stave, she repeated my name and then touched her own chest with her finger and then repeated it questioningly as though it was something we held in common. I wondered what notion had got into her head. I noted the filthy hem of her garment and its sweat-smoothed wool. The sheep were milling all around us. Had I not been so intent on my pilgrimage it would have dawned on me by now that in her language “Arjuna” might mean something like an invitation. My breast began to tingle under the armour where her stick had touched, but I remembered Vyasa’s mantra that Yudhishthira had passed on to me and their last words.

  “Your asceticism must be ferocious.”

  There would be no marriage on this pilgrimage and I said so to her regretfully, smiling into her green eyes for the last time. Then to her utter amazement and that of the sheep, I twanged Gandiva. The sound echoed from rock to rock, bounced off the mountains, and lost itself in the skies. The sheep ran helter skelter and the girl ran after them, throwing a reproachful look over her shoulder. I would be more careful, I swore. Lord Shiva would no doubt sow my path with temptation now.

  “But, anyway,” I said to him, laughing at the skies, “this one smelt of sheep.”

  I continued along the path which became steeper and narrower. There were more sheep, but they were tended by boys. They had seen pilgrims on their way to Shiva’s cave before, but none with armour and helmet and shield. Some did not even know the use of my bow. I had no intention of teaching them, recalling Ekalavya. I kept it strung and when they pointed, I twanged it, sending its deep note bouncing from surface to surface. They scanned it with delight but dared not touch it. As I went on, even the shepherds became less frequent and then there were times I could see no plume of smoke at all.

  By night there would be a flickering light, and another, but seldom more, and always the shining snow above them. I had to repeat mantras not to be consumed by loneliness. Below, I heard the river sing on endlessly to the moonlight that danced in it.

  What reason could Lord Shiva have had for choosing such an inaccessible place for his abode? The stories were conflicting, and it was not until I awoke on the third morning to find a fellow pilgrim sitting beside me that I heard something like a good version; at least it pleased me. My pilgrim friend told a fine story. He, too, was on his way to obtain a boon, though, of course, he could not tell me what.

  The cause of it all was Shiva’s wife, Uma, he said, delicately scratching his scalp through his matted hair with the long nail of his little finger. “You know what wives are, being a lusty young warrior yourself. Uma wanted the one secret that Shiva would not tell the gods themselves. She went on at him day and night. What else is a good wife for if not to torment you? She nearly drove him mad. She woke him at night to ask him and first thing every morning. Uma’s question was quite simple. ‘What is the secret of life?’ At length in desperation, he promised to reveal it to her, but a secret is a secret, it must be told in a high secluded place which nobody else can reach. So Shiva left his mount the bull behind, and climbing higher, unwound the serpents from his hair so that even they should not hear it and left them in the lake, over there somewhere.” The storyteller waved his long arm vaguely and went on, “Finally, when he was above the tree line he led the exhausted and bruised Uma into a cave.”

  “And that is where we are going?” I asked.

  An eagle flew above us and I must have been distracted for a moment, for when I turned around he was gone. Of course I was beginning to feel strange. The sharpness of the air which had been so exhilarating on the first day now cut unkindly into my chest. In the distance I saw a moving point, infinitesimal against the boundless expanse of snow. Perhaps it was a fellow pilgrim, like me the most insignificant of beings on the threshold of the omnipotent Shiva, the Lord of the Universe.

  I wished for Bheema beside me. When night fell, I found a ledge and sat under it watching an avalanche of snow which fell like a curtain. In the morning the sun melted it and I almost slipped from my perch. Once the danger was past I was so happy to be in this snow-silent world that even if death waited for me above, I would go on. Suddenly, Bheema was beside me and I embraced him. Nothing was impossible here. I told him how often I had thought of him and asked him to speak; but he disappeared into the whiteness. I had heard from pilgrims that they saw people walking beside them in the high snows. I was still sure that in this case it had been Bheema. He had never had any problem with the most difficult of marches. Ah, there he was again, striding beside me, and not even breathing heavily.

  “Do you remember when you carried Mother all the way down the tunnel away from the palace of lac and wax?” He opened his mouth to speak and his breath steamed in the air. I could not hear his voice but knew what he was saying.

  “Oh, that Palace of Delight!” and laughing he disappeared again. This time I turned my head to try and see where he had gone and in that sudden movement nearly plunged to my death. Would a death in quest of weapons count as the death of a warrior and would it open heaven to me? Strangely, it seemed to matter less up here. So it was with what we all believed in and wanted so much; with our Indraprastha, and with the dice game; and almost with that one thing that mattered more than anything else: Draupadi, dragged into the Sabha by the hair, in her period. The world up here was so big that the figures in my mind became smaller and smaller. It was difficult to breathe after taking a few steps, and what would have been but a stroll over uneven ground below became a great battle up here. It seemed that it would never stop; other companions came to join me only to disappear. Ashwatthama, his face radiant with love, Eldest, the twins, Draupadi, Subhadra, Satyaki, Krishna.

  I do not know how many days I had been climbing when I found a holy man sitting in the snow, naked. An unearthly light emanated from his bare chest.

  “Why the bows and arrows?” he said. “Nobody comes here with weapons. This is no place for war. Take your armour and throw it over the edge.”

  Sorely as I was tempted to end the immense and growing discomfort of carrying arms and armour, I knew what I had come for.

  “You look silly in that get-up,” said the Brahmin.

  That was what I had suspected, but I was not prepared to let anybody tell me so. “Whatever I look like, nothing will make me throw it away.”

  “Ask for heaven and become a god,” said the Brahmin. “This is the one place where you can do that.”

  I remembered Draupadi’s parting words, a repetition of my mother’s wish that we should never be born Kshatriyas again. Still, for now we were Kshatriyas, and all I wanted were the weapons I had come for. I said so.

  I knew where the mouth of Lord Shiva’s cave lay. A Yaksha, a spirit being, had pointed it out to me and, while I could see it at a distance, I never seemed to get there. The big black mouth remained fixed in the white snow which, though I walked and walked, never came any nearer. Below, the path I had trod on looked so narrow, with such a dizzy precipice falling to the river thundering below, that my head began to spin. What an end for a warrior that would have been!

  I had laughed at the funny little horses I had seen shepherds using below; they looked like toys after our high-stepping Sindhu horses, but I should have been more than glad of one now. The armour which had been warmed by the sun below now cut me with its cold, and Gandiva weighed me down cruelly. The ice I walked on had frozen a pair of feet that I had once thought of as mine. Suddenly, I found myself on my side, one leg knee-deep in water, the other twisted under me. I clambered to my feet and placed them more carefully.

  I do not know when I lost consciousness, but when I awoke I was in a dark cave full of whispers. I knew that this must be the place where I was to meet Him. Shankara Shiva. I splashed melted ice in my face and my strength returned. I sat down in meditation. Strange things happened then. A wild boar charged into the cave. It had an arrow sticking in it. With the hunter’s annoyance that it had not been properly dispatched I shot an arrow into it, and then the hunter and his woman enter
ed the cave. I was so angry with his incompetence and at being disturbed that I prepared to kill him.

  But he spoke to me sharply and with authority. “You think he died from your arrow, Arjuna? It is simply your conceit, typical of someone who had Ekalavya’s finger cut off. But I am no Drona.”

  I forgot my penance. The fight was on. But all my arrows disappeared in mid-air and my inexhaustible quivers were empty. I hit the hunter on the head with Gandiva and then tried to break that head with my sword. But nothing touched him. Finally I lost my senses. As I regained consciousness, I prayed to Shankara Shiva to give me strength.

  “For what do you want strength?” asked the hunter.

  I do not know why I answered, but I did. “In order to continue my asceticism, to reach Lord Shiva, and to ask him for the boon of his personal weapon, the pashupata.”

  The hunter gave a mighty laugh. “Why put your faith in that ragged uncombed mendicant?” he said. “With his snakes and animal skin, what can he do for you?”

  My hand went to my sword, but I could not draw. I understood at once and, looking into the hunter’s face, saw the radiant fierce smile of Lord Shankara Shiva himself. I fell at his feet and worshipped him.

  Then Lord Shiva gave me the pashupata, with the mantra for sending it forth and the mantra for calling it back, whereupon the Lords of the East, West, North, and South appeared and gave me their astras, promising me victory. Then, once again, I lost my senses.

  It had been drummed into me by my tutors that Dharma maintains the equilibrium of the three worlds, but nothing was said to me of the region that I had now reached where the middle world touches heaven. It is the hope of all Kshatriyas to enter the abode of Lord Indra after their life on earth. This was why we tried to walk the path of righteousness and to die heroically on the field of battle. So when Indra, Lord of Heaven, sent his charioteer to take me to him, I wondered whether Lord Yama had already drawn my soul out of my body with his noose. There was one rite to perform before climbing into the chariot. The mountain had been good to me. Whenever it seemed that the high gods themselves would not protect me, I had prayed to the spirit in the mountain and put myself into his power. He was very powerful and was the refuge of many Rishis who had realized themselves. His trees and roots had fed me, his flowers soothed me, his springs quenched my thirst. I prostrated to the mountain and asked for a blessing. The next thing I knew I was sitting beside my father, Indra, on his golden throne. Now I was sure I must have died.