“Purpose, Arjuna? To what end? How can anything have purpose? You call me Eldest but I am not. Karna was our Eldest.” To this there could be no answer. Krishna said nothing. “Can you imagine what he suffered? No other warrior would have acted with such nobility.”
“You always have, Eldest.” I saw he did not hear me. With a look I delivered him to Krishna.
“The fault is mine, Yudhishthira,” said Krishna. “Why do you make your mother suffer? She is my father’s sister and it hurts me to see her so. It is I who did not tell you. Karna made us swear never to tell you, and the only way to honour him was to keep our promise.” Eldest drew a sigh.
“Yes, you are right. She should not suffer. But I cannot look at her. It is too painful. Ah, Krishna, Krishna. I said it in Virata, that we would be like dogs snarling over a scrap of meat. Two packs of dogs. Well, we have got that scrap and it is carrion. It must be cast away. This dog has not the stomach for it. Not for all the gold and all the horses in the world should we have done it. Only savages kill kinsmen. Listen, Arjuna. I cannot rule this kingdom, I must renounce it. You have to take it. The sin is too heavy on me. Renunciation is my only refuge. Sacrifice gives no absolution. We are already dead, or I would have summoned Yama to lift me from these ashes we call earth. As things stand, I must suffer and drink the bitter wine with all its residue. The only victors are the dead that we defeated, they have attained the warrior’s heaven and left us this cremation ground. Duryodhana was right; beside the lake he saw that we had lost.
“You have to take my place, Arjuna. I give you Bheema as your right arm. The twins will be your ministers. Nakula is conciliating and will not allow useless war. Sahadeva with his strength and foresight will prevent more harm from coming to us.” We were stunned and before I could find words to protest he shook his head. “Never again, never again. I must be free from birth and death and all its agonies. The only truth of life is liberation, complete liberation, and that can come only from renunciation and detachment. Domestic bliss is not for me. Henceforth, whether I am spat upon or lauded, whether I am shrivelled by heat of fire or the ice of the Abode of Snow, whether I die of thirst or hunger or fall diseased and my brain is picked clean by birds of prey, I shall not murmur a single protest. Detachment. Liberation. I shall not feel, I do not want to feel. Do you understand, Arjuna? I want nothing. I want to want nothing. To expect nothing. Be nothing.”
“Eldest,” I took his hand and stroked his head. “Eldest, if I could I would relieve you, but I cannot take it. I cannot take your burden. You saved us once before, you saved us many times. And now you will have to do it once more. Do you remember how you saved us in the forest with your answers to the Yaksha-crane when he asked what was the happy man? You said the happy man was the one who far from turmoil cooked his simple meal in the Sixth Hour of the day.
“The thing you yearn for, Eldest, is simplicity of living. But no life is devoid of life, nor is it ever fit for crematoriums. Eldest, do you not remember when you sent me on my mission for the celestial weapons, what were your last words to me: ‘Let your tapasya be fierce.’ And so I stood up on one leg and gazed into the sun until I was both lame and blind. That did not liberate me, it only stunned my mind. It was Krishna who tore away the golden shields that sat like lids upon my spirit and undammed my power. The power of truth is discernment.” I was speaking to him as to a younger brother now, it was no time to observe deference.
“I cannot take your burden from you, Eldest. I cannot live your life. The sacrifice has chosen and it is not me. My karma is to follow. I put my head on my king’s feet. Command me, Majesty, but do not make me kill my Dharma.” He looked beyond me and I understood. Who should know better than I the state in which you lie collapsed with nerveless fingers that cannot hold Gandiva, or fulfill your Dharma? His agony joined me to him as though through a connection of the flesh. I looked to Krishna to reveal his truth once more but he looked away. My most telling arguments had failed and Krishna would not be drawn in. I was left to rattle dry bones of the shastras. And came to practicalities.
“It is not for me to quote the shastras to you, Yudhishthira,” in my despair his name slipped out, “but it is the sacred duty of a king to win his kingdom back and to avenge his kinsmen. We had to go to war. How can there be war and not be suffering? The earth is yours when you have purified yourself, and offered all the sacrifices that the priests ordained. You will feel differently and you will know that all of this belongs to you, and rightfully so. Even if Karna was our Eldest, he is now dead. He never shirked his duty and you must not shirk yours.” Even to my ears my words clanged, stone on iron. In my embarrassment I went on. “The kings will come to honour you once more as you deserve.” I looked at Sahadeva for support. But in his wisdom he said nothing. “Sahadeva will go south…”
“He cannot bring back Ghatotkacha. What else is worth bringing from the south? No one can bring back Abhimanyu from the west. What else is there worth bringing? What will I do with rubies from the Southern Island? Who will I give them to? Where shall we put them, in the eyesockets of our dead?” We listened in shocked silence. Bheema twisted his body angrily. Nakula’s head jerked up. “No brother,” continued Eldest, “I cannot do it. There is only one thing left to do. I shall go back to the forest and do what I failed to do before. Do not speak of sacrifices wiping out our sins, what good would it do to kill more animals? A thousand elephants and camels, a thousand thousand horses have been offered along with human heads. Sages have no need of sacrifices. Their discipline is true Dharma and their austerities are the road to knowledge. Even a little knowledge liberates. Do not dissuade me. That is my chosen path.”
Bheema burst out: “You know, Eldest, when I hear fools quoting the shastras and babbling on like this, it makes me sick. You should have thought about all the consequences before the war. You were good about going to the forest and honouring your gambling debt. You were firm about declaring war when Duryodhana behaved like a scoundrel with his speeches of not so much land as would balance on the point of a needle. During the war you behaved like a true king throughout. Now you must bear the onus of victory. You said, ‘War’! The kingdom is not a crying baby you can put in someone else’s arms. If you think killing the Kauravas is a sin, you certainly compound it by your moaning and whining, because you disrespect the sacrifice of their lives. You dishonour them as well as yourself and all of us.” Krishna raised his eyebrows at me. Nakula smiled. Draupadi put her arms around Eldest. “What is so terrible about being a Kshatriya,” Bheema growled. “Is he an animal that cannot feel compassion for human beings? If you could achieve liberation by sitting in the forest enduring cold and heat and listening to the birds and the cries of animals and living by yourself, then the frogs that croak should be the first to gain it.” He made frog sounds that rose from his stomach. “There are plenty of things that would get liberated, the trees, the mountains, they are celibate. Even the fish would do better than we. Pah!” Bheema stamped around, swimming with his arms. Draupadi said softly: “Your brothers love you and are pained to see you suffer.” She spoke slowly now and musingly.
After the death of her sons and brothers she would always speak like this. “It is not fair on them. Do you not remember that near the Dvaita Lake you told them to prepare their minds for war? You never wavered after that. All of us did but you did not. A Kshatriya cannot falter when he most needs strength.” Eldest ignored her, and raised his head from Draupadi’s lap. She helped him wrap his angavastra round his head and propped him into a sitting position. He turned towards Bheema and spoke: “It is power, ambition, and greed, Bheema, which make you speak like that. Control your ambition. You rail at me because I say that I will come to peace of mind while listening to bird song and breathing fragrant air and seeing wild things grow before my eyes? But I know that it is so. I have only one stomach and it desires little. You should curb the fire in your belly, Bheema. Until you rule your stomach you cannot rule a kingdom. Give in once to what desire asks and
you feed fire with fuel.” He was our eldest brother in command again. Finally he said, “I always liked the words of King Janaka, ‘Owning nothing I am rich. I am rich whether I have my kingdom or not.’ Yes, I chose war, what else was there to do? I was a Kshatriya then and still had Kshatriya pride. And I thought of you. Now that is over. I want to be the wise man that the shastras speak of. He sees as from a mountaintop the plains of ignorance below, their multitudes caught in desire, and mourning without cause.”
“On behalf of the multitude I say rubbish. Look elsewhere.” With this the arguing stopped. Dhaumya lit the sacrificial fire and chanted evening prayers:
You have come, blessed night, gentle-born,
object of our longings.
Be favourable.
Abide!
28
A bullock cart brought Greatfather Vyasa to our tent.
“You are not a forest sage,” he said to Eldest. “Your grief is futile. It serves no purpose for a Kshatriya-born. It serves no purpose for a sage. I want to tell you something, Yudhishthira. Before the war when your uncle Dhritarashtra sent Sanjaya on the embassy to Virata, he said he did not fear Arjuna and he did not fear Bheema. He feared only the wrath of Yudhishthira because the ire of a truly dharmic sovereign is more formidable than all the astras in the world. And he was right to do so. That anger carries the sanction of the gods whether he fights with weapons or whether he does not fight at all. You have a power and it is god-given. The forest is no place for it. If you want to lead a holy life, do the holy things that are fit for kings and benefit the world as well. They say that I am Veda-obsessed, and so I am. Our hymns and sacrifices have a meaning which must not be further lost, and which will be lost if kings retire to the forest. Our dharmic kings belong to thrones; if they retire the war has been fought in vain and will be fought again when kingdoms are left to men like Karna, Duryodhana, and Jarasandha. That is why Krishna came, that is why you came. Great sacrifices can renew the world. On the first day of Kurukshetra, the world hung in the balance because Arjuna would not fight, Krishna showed him he must. The world hangs in the balance today as it did that day; I have come to show you that it awaits the greatest sacrifice of all, the king of sacrifices that wipes away all sins. If you feel the need for expiation, do what an emperor should do. Perform the Ashwamedha.” The Horse Sacrifice! It was something that bards sang of, a sacrifice no one had thought of. Once it was said, we wondered that no one had spoken of the Sacrifice of sacrifices, the king of rites. “It is the sacrifice that as victorious king you have the right and sacred duty to perform.”
“Must we really kill another horse, have not enough steeds been slaughtered on the battlefield?” Eldest asked in a hollow voice.
“The Horse Sacrifice! Even in delirium a king should not speak thus!” growled Bheema. “The Horse is a King Horse, and it gives its life as we do for the land and for God…”
Krishna silenced Bheema with a hand and said: “In the last Yuga when gods still moved on earth, and the Vedas were understood in their innermost intention, the Ashwamedha was the surrender of the King’s Power of Life with all its forceful impulses, pleasures, and desires to the Presence of the Divine from whence they come. It was a joyful inner offering that raised a man to inner sovereignty and outer emperorhood and raised his people with him. Greatfather Bheeshma knows this. This was what his life was all about, and you must go to him before the Northern Solstice signals his time. No one can do it for you, Eldest, and nobody can do it for us other than you. Karna was never destined to be a Chakravarti Samrat. Lord Surya sent him to prepare the throne for you. As for the steed, do not forget that it is a sacred horse which will go consciously towards its self-offering if we ourselves go consciously towards our destinies. The people in their ignorance demand the grosser sacrifice, they need to see the fire’s flame rising to heaven, and do not know that it is from the heart it rises. The Vedas say about the Horse King:
Your innermost self I have perceived in spirit,
A Bird from heaven who directs his course on high.
“Yudhishthira, my king,” begged Krishna once again challenging Eldest with his own fire, “must you now lose your own immortalized substance in obstinate refusal to see what lies beyond, and think that what you pour into the fire is nothing else than flesh and ghee? You are not that king, Yudhishthira. That is not your understanding, it is the demon of your depression speaking. Throw it off and return to us!” Krishna passed a hand over Eldest’s forehead and gathered something in his clenched fist. He looked at it and at Greatfather Vyasa. I felt it squeezed out of existence as he strode towards the entrance and flung it out towards the river.
Greatfather Vyasa dipped into his kamandalu and flicked the water from his fingertips over Eldest’s head. There was a freshness in our tent that we welcomed with relief. It ran in tears from Draupadi’s closed lids. Krishna rested his head on Greatfather’s feet, and one by one we followed. Eldest tried to struggle to his feet and we all rushed to help him, but he parted us with his outstretched arms and rose to meet Greatfather who came towards him. Before he could bow down, Greatfather gathered him into his arms and engulfed him with his radiance.
Bheema crouched upon his haunches beside Island-born Greatfather and looked up at Eldest with sparkling eyes. The night had deepened to Dhaumya’s chanting as though his beckoning still lingered on the air. My heart swelled in repetition of the welcome:
You have come, blessed night, gentle-born
Object of our longings.
Be favourable
Abide!
And then again there was the sense of being rushed through worlds of time as on the very first day of the war. I understood it was a moment of great happenings. Island-born Greatfather laid a hand on Bheema’s head to help him control his happiness, and to draw in the overflow. His own eyes sparkled as he raised his head and said:
Happy, bringing the gods’ eye of vision,
Leading the White Horse with perfect sight,
Dawn is seen expressed entirely by the rays,
Full of her varied riches,
Manifesting her birth in all things.
“All things we will offer,” he repeated; “not only you, Yudhishthira, but all the people will be represented in a Sarvamedha. How shall we do that, Krishna Vasudeva?” And Krishna flung his arms up and threw his head back. His laughter ran and thrilled through all of us and made the tent silk ripple in the ghee-lamp flames.
“Did we not learn how to surrender, Arjuna, and you, Bheema, when Lord Narayana passed over us on the sixteenth day?” Krishna’s eyes grew tender as he looked upon Nakula, who had been the first to throw himself into the dust before Krishna’s instructions were fully out.
Nakula chanted in his sweetest voice:
In the beginning arose the Golden Germ:
He was, as soon as born, the Lord of Being,
Sustainer of the Earth and of this Heaven.
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
He who bestows life-force and hardy vigour,
Whose ordinance even the gods obey,
Whose shadow is immortal life—and death—
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
Krishna, music itself, flowed in with unutterable sweetness, and Sahadeva’s voice, beckoned by its twin, wove into the hymn of Hiranyagarbha:
Who by his grandeur has emerged sole sovereign
Of every living thing that breathes and slumbers,
He who is Lord of man and four-legged creatures—
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
Who held secure the mighty Heavens and Earth,
Who established light and sky’s vast vault above,
Who measured out the ether in mid-spheres
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
The singing stunned me and I fought my way towards my faltering voice:
Toward him, trembling, the embattled forces,
Riveted by his glory, direct their gaze.
/> Through him the risen sun sheds forth its light…
And then all that I had learned from the Gandharvas and Chitrasena when Matali took me up to Indraloka poured out of my chest and throat and heartbeat like heated gold.
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
At last the pure copper of Eldest’s voice, raw at the edges from his fever, came in a controlled, sustaining measure:
Whence came the mighty Waters, bringing with them
The universal Germ, whence sprang the Fire,
Thence leapt the God’s One Spirit into being.
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
In Veda-Vyasa’s presence the hymns took birth amongst us. He who drew us in one after another now led us with the grave timbre of polished metal. Breaking all tradition, he beckoned with wide arms to Draupadi and our Mother Kunti whose moon and star-beam voices floated in. And with the passion of an ironsmith, Bheema’s thunder made the music roll to heaven.
This One who in his might surveyed the Waters
Pregnant with vital forces, producing sacrifice,
He is the God of gods and none beside him.
What God shall we adore with our oblation?
It was when Bheema entered and all of us were singing that the tent walls disappeared, and in their place a sheath of light descended and unwrapped itself around us. The scission that we had feared was healed. I became aware of a blur of faces. Our servitors and mourners from other tents, and even the creatures of the forest that had gathered by the music began to press towards us with enraptured eyes.
29
The month was over. We bathed and offered oblations at the river for the last time before setting out for Hastina. When I heard the creaking of the ritual bullock chariot sent by Uncle Dhritarashtra, I felt it came to us, to draw us into the last third of our lives. How soon we reached it. How brief those thirteen forest years seemed, that had once seemed endless. The Indraprastha years of splendour had been but a flicker. Even when you survive against all odds, the whole of life is not much longer than a song.
The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata Page 61