The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  There was a hush. Everyone was with Eldest. Suddenly, their approval broke out in roars. Our blood beat like the ocean on the shore.

  Poor Sanjaya. He had to shout to make himself heard above the acclamation. Apparently, having foreseen the possibility of such a speech, my uncle had instructed him in some pious platitudes: “Consider the brevity of man’s life on earth.”

  If there is anything worse than a pious platitude, it is a pious platitude shouted at an unsympathetic audience. The assembly tried to stifle its amusement out of sympathy for Sanjaya and not out of respect for my uncle.

  “Life is full of suffering and sin. It is therefore necessary to avoid sin. Life is impermanent. Those who seek for immortality should quench desire.”

  There were titters throughout the speech that Sanjaya managed to rattle off with just about as much expression as was needed not to make it an outright insult to my uncle. His spies must have been in the assembly. “Yudhishthira, you have been cultivating those who have renounced the world. Have they taught you nothing? Desires lead to wrongdoing. Your years of righteousness will be wasted if you insist on war which is a sin.” There was no amusement now, nor at the next piece of sophistry which provoked growls.

  “If you consider the dice game an injustice, you should have fought thirteen years ago. Krishna, Balarama, and your brothers were all eager to do so then. Why work yourself up after thirteen years? Why did you lull us into security if it was to be false? The wise man, for the good of all, swallows his anger like a bitter medicine and the body politic, society, is purged. Go back to the forest and end life there to save the world from destruction, or go with your friend and ally Krishna of the Vrishnis.” Bheema had, at various points, got up to pace the hall like a panther. Even Sahadeva’s serenity had been struck. He shook his head in impatience and frowned into himself.

  Yudhishthira was icy. “Opinion is the privilege of our elders. My anger should not strike you, a messenger, faithful Sanjaya, whom we have ever loved. My uncle reminds me of Dharma. My Dharma is Krishna who urges us to fight.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than I felt the burden leave my spirits. Perhaps this was what we should have said thirteen years ago. Perhaps…perhaps…we are what we are and what the gods and samskaras have shaped in us. Perhaps it was inevitable that we wandered all those years from one forest to another waiting for the monsoon, waiting for the spring, listening to Draupadi’s distraught words, and seeing Bheema thin and expressionless scaling stones across the surface of the lake. There was no more “perhaps”. The decision was now with Krishna.

  “Sanjaya.” Krishna spoke at last. “The homily on Dharma by your king is ludicrous and impertinent. He is a thief. Tell him that if Indraprastha is returned to Yudhishthira, we will cancel all plans for war. The message you may take is that the insult offered to Draupadi spells death to all those who stood by watching. Karna should know that what he said to the queen is indelibly imprinted on Arjuna’s memory. As for Duhshasana, tell him that Bheema will have his blood. Tell Duryodhana that his shapely thigh is with Bheema by day and by night.”

  Krishna then said something which left us all silent. “The tree growing in Hastinapura is rotten and evil and its root is called Dhritarashtra; and here is the tree called Yudhishthira, with Arjuna for its trunk, Bheema for its branches, and Nakula and Sahadeva for its flowers and seeds. The root is myself. Which do you think will stand the test of war? I will take the responsibility for peace if Indraprastha is handed back to Yudhishthira.”

  Poor Sanjaya. It was no boon to carry a message from us to Dhritarashtra, and we knew it. Sanjaya’s eyes were miserable and his moustache drooped, but his virtue was above the indignity of his position, and Eldest comforted him.

  “Sanjaya, we know your heart. The golden bowl, even when filled with poison, remains golden.” Eldest ended with the civilities that were second nature to him. He asked Sanjaya to convey his greeting to each one individually in Hastinapura.

  It was too much for me. I felt myself possessed and jumped up, shouting: “Tell Dhritarashtra’s thickheaded son, before all the Kurus and that foulmouthed and soon-to-be-dead Karna, that if Dhritarashtra’s son does not return Yudhishthira’s kingdom to him, then we will take it. If the thickheaded Duryodhana wants war, then our purposes will be achieved, so do not propose peace. Bheema will slaughter the sons of Dhritarashtra like a lion slaughtering cattle. When Duryodhana sees his men with their backs towards the field, he will taste gall. When Nakula mangles his chariot warriors, he will taste gall. When the modest and truthful Sahadeva advances in his silent chariot upon Shakuni, he will taste gall. When Abhimanyu, my son, falls like Death himself upon his ranks, then he will taste gall. When Virata and Drupada with their divisions grind the hostile forces, then he will taste gall. When Shikhandin moves to attack Bheeshma, then Duryodhana will repent. When my Gandiva is plucked, he will see his troops fly in all directions. He will see his brothers fall dead all around him and he will see me come like Death himself with jaws wide open. Gandiva yawns in readiness for the enemy. My arrows rise in my quivers yearning to fly. My scimitar struggles from its sheath like a snake from its slough and disembodied voices shriek and moan from my flagstaff; they provoke me, ‘When shall your horses be harnessed?’ I will hurl the pashupata and all the weapons of Indra. The fields will be covered with bones and skulls and hair-like works half wrought by the Creator. I shall kill Duryodhana with all his kinsmen, for if the theft of our kingdom is wicked and our righteous acts bear fruit, then Duryodhana cannot win. Karna too will be killed.”

  My fury was spent. I looked around as though awakening from a dream, and said, in my own voice, “So do whatever you have to do. Enjoy the sweet things of life, enjoy your wives, enjoy your wine, enjoy your hunt and the rising again of the sun, for those acquainted with the zodiac are even now foretelling the ultimate victory of the Pandavas. After the great destruction, I will rest.”

  After my shouting there was a long silence. When Eldest spoke, his voice was subdued.

  “I want peace, Sanjaya. Carry our overtures for peace faithfully, but if you fail to save half the kingdom for us, tell Duryodhana that I will not ask more than five towns. We choose those places where injustices were committed against us, I want Indraprastha, Vrikaprastha, Jayanta, and Varanavata. Duryodhana can choose the last himself, but these I must have. These I must have. Let there be peace. Let brothers mingle with brothers. I do not desire war but peace. Yet I am ready for war.”

  26

  We waited for the reply, preparing for war, reaching out for peace. We had lived between the two so many years that both war and peace were unimaginable extremes. Either the world would be wiped out or Eldest would, as I imagined it, be sitting on the throne, and Bheema and the twins and I would march to the four cardinal points again. Even that victory march would be over a desolate wasteland, strewn with the bones of our kinsmen. It would be the Kali Yuga, the age of iron, and how could we reconcile that golden time of the Mayasabha and the Rajasuya and the birth of our sons with the reign of Adharma?

  In this void I prepared my muscles and offered worship to Gandiva. When I was given the celestial weapons, we had all exulted, but now I fervently prayed that if ever I was tempted to use them, the earth would press against my feet and a voice would stop me. Karna and Ashwatthama also had celestial weapons. If we released them we would lay waste the earth.

  Eldest spoke with the sages.

  Sanjaya, the discreet ambassador, returned wearily to Hastinapura and refused to see Uncle Dhritarashtra before being given time to sleep, but Dhritarashtra could not sleep, nor could he be alone. He had to speak and be reassured and told that he had committed no fault. Uncle Vidura gave him the solace he craved. But could he give him the wisdom that would save the world? Dhritarashtra was not without perception. He could speak very well when it was a question of talk. He understood much from looking into the cave of light which lay within the darkness. How was it possible that he had forgotten the ex
tent of his power? It was still Dhritarashtra’s salt the Acharyas and Greatfather had eaten. They would have helped him restrain Duryodhana forcibly if he had asked them to.

  When the king summoned him, Uncle Vidura always went straight to him, no matter what he was doing. His dignity was unaffected by this. The basis of his integrity was that he served the king while remaining himself. Now, Uncle Vidura’s whole life and will were bent on saving Dharma.

  Uncle Dhritarashtra knew Dharma. He responded to its name. When the sages chanted the Vedas no one was more moved than the king, and so it was while his brother spoke. It seemed to me that it must have been like listening to mantras chanted in a dungeon, to hear them without the sight of the faces of the Brahmins and of his counsellors and his sons and all the splendour and colour of the Sabha. So ran my mind as I heard what Uncle Vidura was saying at Hastinapura. He was fighting a battle as long and as exhausting as the greatest I had fought, not for honour, but for the sake of Dharma only, for he had nothing to gain except peace, and in that he was the same as all of us.

  Vidura spoke of blindness quite openly to Uncle Dhritarashtra and even the king may not have been sure whether he was speaking of the eyes or of the mind’s clarity. He blamed blindness for all that had happened and he touched on the Adharma that had been committed by the Kauravas. The talks continued till the hour of the gods. As usual, the king was soothed. He asked questions. He displayed his fears and he was less disturbed. He sent for musicians. He ate. He spoke a great deal about the foolhardiness of his son, but he would take no action against him.

  Nothing could have made Sanjaya speak before he was ready. His embassy to us had reduced him in his own eyes and he was still smarting when summoned to the Sabha. This was what Duryodhana did to people.

  Dhritarashtra, more distanced than ever, hardly remembered what it was that he had been so anxious to hear from Sanjaya. When Uncle Vidura led him over the golden floor which had been sprinkled with rose water, he wore the face of a man being taken to he knew not what. Sanjaya, exasperated, let the kings, the Acharyas and Greatfather sit and wait on their gorgeous thrones.

  Uncle Shalya was there, for Duryodhana would not let him out of his sight. Duryodhana himself with Shakuni and Karna and his brothers tramped irreverently into the hall, ostentatiously late, and with expressions showed that nothing said by a messenger coming from Yudhishthira could interest them. But Sanjaya outdid them by coming in last.

  When the orderly-in-waiting announced him, Uncle Dhritarashtra said conciliatingly: “Our good envoy has returned speedily in his carriage drawn by the best Sindhu horses. And now that he has rested we shall hear him.”

  A lifetime of selfless service stood Sanjaya in good stead. His mantle of formal courtesy allowed him to offer our greetings with due respect, but when the blind king said to him, “In the presence of my Duryodhana and of these kings, tell us what message Arjuna has for us,” Sanjaya took pleasure in repeating and embellishing my promises.

  At the end of his tether, Greatfather Bheeshma unleashed upon the assembly the scorn he felt for the weakness of Dhritarashtra and the ill-will of his sons and Karna. “Dhritarashtra,” he thundered, “when I see you sit by while your son hobnobs with that poison-filled Sutaputra, who will lead us to war and destruction, I see that my vow was wasted.” Greatfather fell into bitter silence and Dronacharya pleaded with Duryodhana for peace. Duryodhana hung his head sullenly. When Uncle Dhritarashtra prodded Sanjaya to give details of our fighting forces, Sanjaya stood up and tried to speak but fell down senseless. It was hours before he could talk again and then Dhritarashtra must have wished him speechless, for he not only spoke of our powers in hyperbole, but berated Uncle Dhritarashtra in the Sabha for allowing Duryodhana to have his head time and again. He reminded him that he, Uncle Dhritarashtra, had laughed delightedly when Shakuni had won at dice.

  So it went on in the Sabha with Duryodhana’s endless incriminations and assertions that he could beat us, and Uncle Dhritarashtra’s waverings during which he berated himself for his foolish fondness and berated Duryodhana and Karna and praised us, and finally tried to persuade Duryodhana that he, Duryodhana, did not want war any more than did Greatfather or the Acharyas or Sanjaya or Ashwatthama or Shalya or Somadatta or Bhoorishravas, but that he was being pushed into it by Karna and Shakuni. No wonder Sanjaya had fainted.

  Duryodhana jumped up and challenged us to battle in our absence. He would fight us, he said, without the help of anyone but Karna, Shakuni, and his brothers. He declared he would not give us as much land as could be covered by the point of a sharp needle.

  To which his father replied, trembling with anger, “I now abandon my son to his fate but grieve for you kings who may follow this idiot to the House of Yama.”

  Duryodhana made another boastful speech and in the middle of his father’s retort, Karna stood up and reminded the assembly that he still had the Brahma weapon from his Guru and that though he had been cursed to forget its incantation when his hour came, his hour had not yet come, and he promised to slay all the Pandavas and their allies with this weapon before it did.

  “Dhritarashtra, let this old Greatfather and the Acharyas and the kings remain snug and cosy with you. The honour of killing Kunti’s sons will be mine. This I will do for Duryodhana.”

  Greatfather’s reply was to the effect that Karna’s words were the product of an addled mind and that Krishna’s discus could reduce any weapon to ashes and that the serpent-headed arrow which Karna worshipped with garlands would perish with him because Krishna protected me.

  “Yes,” said Karna, “Krishna protects Arjuna. You have had your say, Bheeshma, and I lay down my weapons. I will not fight on the battlefield as long as you are there, but when you have gone on the unknown journey, I will show the world my prowess.”

  Even as he was striding out of the council, Greatfather mockingly asked, “And how then will the Suta’s son keep his promise to slay the enemy by the thousand?”

  Vexed to the point of tears, Duryodhana asked hotly whether the Pandavas were not of earthly birth as other men that everybody thought they could not be conquered. This only earned him Uncle Vidura’s long speech on our purity and righteousness.

  Uncle Dhritarashtra said for the last time, “Avoid the destruction of the world, hold out your hands to the Pandavas, and give them a share of the kingdom.”

  It was one thing for Uncle Dhritarashtra to declare in public and in the heat of exasperation that he had abandoned his son, but it was another to change the lifelong habit of wanting to give him the world. After the council he called Sanjaya to him for a secret meeting. He wanted the already exhausted Sanjaya to go over all the details of what he had witnessed when visiting us, the strength of our forces, and the possibilities of our losing. Sanjaya refused to continue the fruitless discourse in secret and insisted on the presence of Gandhari and Vyasa before he spoke further. Vyasa came and Sanjaya said, “Counting the akshauhinis of the Pandavas is useless. Krishna by the power of his soul is master of Time himself, the wheel of the universe, and he is the Lord of Death, and the whole universe works but like a humble labourer in the field. We are blinded by the power of his illusion and don’t forget this. They have Krishna. Krishna is Dharma. Where Krishna is, there will be success. Nothing can reduce Krishna and so we cannot win. Do not ask me about chances of winning.”

  Uncle Dhritarashtra called Duryodhana and asked him to seek Krishna’s protection, but if Uncle Dhritarashtra had wavered, Duryodhana did not. Even if Krishna were to annihilate mankind, he said, he would not submit to him.

  27

  We had paid our gambling debt. We were denied our kingdom.

  So it was war.

  Eldest said, “Krishna, when conciliation fails there is no recourse but to war, and then we have to go through all the motions of diplomacy and the display of prowess, much like dogs over a scrap of meat. First comes the tail-wagging and then a growl and then a bark in reply, and then we circle each other baring our teeth, then come
s the fight, and the stronger dog eats the meat. Krishna, how does one reconcile virtue with Dharma? At this point, what is truth?”

  I thought that Krishna would say, as he had said so often, “War.” Instead, seeing Yudhishthira’s anguish, he offered to go to Hastinapura to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement without the sacrifice of our kingdom. We, none of us liked his being exposed to Duryodhana’s grossness and ruthlessness, but he, who cared so little for what people thought of him, insisted that his embassy would absolve us of all blame and that in any case he was in no danger.

  Bheema practised with his mace all day. The omens pointed to war: birds and beasts screeched and howled at dusk. If Krishna thought it necessary to keep our reputation for virtue intact, then we would have to let him go. It would be the last embassy. The nearer we came to war, for which we had thirsted in the past, the more we hated it and the more terrifying Krishna’s prophecy about the great bloodletting became. If anybody could gain peace with honour for us, it was Krishna.

  At the entrance to the palace Bheema knelt at Krishna’s feet and clasped his ankles.

  “Speak mildly, Krishna,” he said. “Duryodhana is arrogant and quick to anger, which works against his own good. Let there be peace with the Kurus.” Right up to the moment when we gathered round Krishna’s chariot to give him our last messages, we all pressed for peace, but Sahadeva sprang into the terrace of Krishna’s chariot saying, “Provoke war, Krishna. Provoke war. Even if the Kurus want peace I want war, for I saw Draupadi dragged into the assembly, and if Eldest and Bheema and Arjuna are interested in hanging on to their virtue, I am not—and I say war.”