The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  Swaha to him who neighs,

  To him who has been tied,

  Swaha to him who will be loosed,

  Swaha to him who will depart from here,

  Swaha to him who trots, to him who canters,

  To him who gallops, swaha.

  The priests echoed the swahas. It sounded like the strings of many bows turned into veenas.

  To him who snorts, swaha.

  The horse inclined his head to listen. Then a Brahmin with a veena sang eulogies to Eldest in the sweetest voice: “This emperor has offered sacrifices. He has performed the Rajasuya and will perform the greatest of all sacrifices, the king of sacrifices. This excellent horse is worthy of him. Of all the kings who ever trod the earth, he is the most regal.” After the ghee oblations the eulogies died down. There was a sudden hush and then with soft pleading voices the Brahmins chanted:

  We have conciliated Savitra.

  Through him, the god of lovely fingers

  That spreads sunlights across the earth,

  That earth will be made ours.

  And now the priest spoke courage into the horse’s ear:

  You are the horse, you are the racehorse,

  You are a stallion,

  You have a male heart of courage,

  You are Vayu, the fleet one.

  The priest crooned:

  You are Shishu, the child.

  Then he raised his voice and cried out:

  Follow the way of the Adityas.

  Now the vinaganagas burst into praises of the ancient kings and of Eldest, all famous for their Dharma. The ritual was nearly over when we awakened Bheema who had pulled his angavastra over the head. He emerged so dazed that I pinched his arm to stop him from asking about food in the middle of the ceremony.

  Greatfather Vyasa led all through the mantras, and when the moment came Eldest stood and said to me: Follow this horse in peace. Conquest through strife is vain. Wherever possible win back former enemies through gentleness of Dharma.”

  Greatfather Vyasa raised his arm, the sword flashed golden in the sun. “Swaha!” Its edge sliced cleanly through the softened rope. He smacked the horse upon its rump, enough to set it on its way. It clattered across the platform and down the ramp. Immediately, the gelded horses closed around him.

  There was such a press of people to see us leave that many called: “We cannot see you, Prince Arjuna!”

  So, standing in my chariot, I held Gandiva high above my head for all the citizens and the children. The sight of it was deemed auspicious. I left the city with the sound of cheering and the galloping of a hundred horses.

  37

  The horse turned east and led me straight into Trigarta country where my sworn enemies awaited me. It seemed just as well to get it over with, I thought. They must have received word of my coming. And it was on the outskirts of the town that the survivors of the battle came out in their chariots and surrounded the sacred horse. I rode up to them, Gandiva slung over my shoulder, and called to them as to friends.

  “I bring you greetings from King Yudhishthira. I come in peace as his ambassador, without an army, as you can see. The families of the Kaurava forces and our families together offered oblations. The dead are sacrificed for peace. The sacrificial horse has chosen this before all other kingdoms. If you let us through we may still live to see auspicious days.”

  They listened only because their curiosity at my coming alone was greater than their outrage, but their mouths were full of scorn and their eyes of hardness.

  “Your speech is very pretty, but do you really think, Arjuna, that after you have killed our king and almost all our kinsmen we are going to let you through because you call us friends? You came alone no doubt because your men are dead.” The others laughed. “Now even if you sang to us in the sweet voice of swans, we would not let you through. Have you borrowed Bheema’s brain and tongue that you make such idiotic speeches?” Their eyes were greedy for my anger. I tried to smile. I would bite off my tongue before responding to his warrior’s challenge. I prepared myself for what they might throw at me. It was Suryavarman’s younger brother, Ketuvarman. He rolled his chariot up to mine.

  “It is most thoughtful of you, Arjuna,” he said, “to have deemed our city worthy of your bones.” Their voices were so filled with hatred I wondered how I ever thought I would persuade them without a battle.

  “Yes,” said Suryavarman, “Arjuna is most kind. It must be the compassionate Dharmaraj who told him that our crows and vultures are short of carrion.” At this they hooted as at a fine and subtle piece of wit. Another cousin took it up: “They say that Yudhisthira’s greatfather filled his kingly ears with pious counsels from that bed of arrows.” At this I felt the rage mount to my head in fine hot arrowheads. “Krishna,” I said inside myself, “send me inspiration.”

  “And would you like a bed of arrows, Arjuna?” quipped another.

  “Then you can play at being a greatfather, giving us advice.” I was still clinging to some shreds of Eldest’s admonitions when one of them called out: “Is it true you killed your eldest brother so that Dharmaraj could have the throne?” The word “Dharmaraj” was spat out with such contempt that my hands unslung my bow. Before I could reach over my shoulder for an arrow, Gandiva clattered to my feet. Suryavarman had grazed my hand with a straight arrow. It was as though Great Indra could not reach my mind. I saw the blood run from the corner of my little finger. Krishna’s ring had saved it. I thought it best to let Gandiva lie. The Trigartas were bent on having fun with me and maybe if I let them I could buy time.

  “Friends,” I said. The brothers looked at each other as though I were a madman. “We have killed enough. You know the injustice that we suffered. What would you have done if a queen of yours had been dishonoured in the sabha?” I thought that either they would kill me or I would make them listen. “What would you think of us if we did not fulfill our warrior’s vows after the dice game? Duryodhana sent you his embassy before we could. If it had been otherwise we might have fought together on the side of Dharma. We had but seven akshauhinis but Mother Durga gave us victory. You know that when Dharmaraj was the emperor there was both peace and prosperity. You know the virtues of King Yudhishthira. If you let the horse through bearing his insignia…”

  “Shoot an arrow into his mouth before he sweet-talks us.” But Suryavarman held up a hand.

  “But if you do not let this sacrificial horse through, I will have to challenge you one by one,” I ended hurriedly.

  “We have heard you, Arjuna,” said Suryavarman, “but you forget our vow. It is bad fortune that your horse has led you here to your sworn foes. Perhaps if you had sent Bheema whom we have not sworn to kill, it could have been otherwise; but you will have to fight your way through, though we will fight you one by one.”

  “So be it,” I said.

  I disabled Suryavarman, then Ketuvarman, without killing them. Their younger brother surrendered. It was all over.

  After three days I began to wonder which god inspired Kalidasa, as I now called the horse, for after this he took me straight to Bhagadatta’s realm. His son, Vajradatta, came out on a cloud-grey elephant that was the twin of Supratika, whose enormous tusks were tipped with gold. Like his father, Vajradatta was well built and handsome. His wide black eyes stared down from under his white silk umbrella. I never felt at a disadvantage fighting an elephant from my chariot, but to make speeches at someone looking down on me robbed me of my eloquence.

  “I bring you the greetings of Dharmaraj.” I was struggling for more words when Vajradatta shouted: “You killed my father, keep your greetings. You Pandavas think that you can rule the world and come here under cover of your sacred horse. I tell you, you are trespassing. You killed my father for he was advanced in years but I am not.” Indeed he was no older than Abhimanyu had been when he died. The gajaroha on the elephant’s neck looked back at him for orders but he looked down at me and said, “Turn back, Arjuna, if you wish to live.” He lifted a jewelled goad above h
is head in a threatening gesture. I saw there was no use talking to him and so I nocked an arrow to my bow and sent it into the elephant’s right ear. The elephant raised his trunk and squealed in rage. Even if Vajradatta had wished to hold him back I doubt he would have managed. The beast turned round upon itself and then danced in a circle. I saw he was beyond control. He turned away from me and charged an invisible enemy only to turn back again. Gandiva thrummed with the thunder of his feet. My chariot swerved right and I tried to find the elephant’s brain. My arrows went into his trunk, his cheeks and ears while I ducked the arrows and javelins of Vajradatta. I shot arrows into the elephant’s toes to slow him down, but like Supratika, he was magnificent and indomitable. I swerved. He cut across my path and made me wheel about. I felt his trunk brushing my neck and once it pushed against my diadem. I could not kill him. Then, as we passed I hurled a lance with all my might into his temple. Mother Durga guided it. The elephant ran on a while, then stopped and fell upon his side. Vajradatta was thrown from the varandaka and flung onto the ground. I jumped down. He lay upon his back, his sapphire-studded diadem lay in the dust beside him. Now he looked the boy he was. His cheeks were round and beardless, his hair shone with the gloss of youth. He put a jewelled hand upon his forehead as he mumbled: “Do not place your foot upon my head. Ask anything of me but do not place your foot upon my head.”

  “I am sitting on your chest instead and that is hardly a respectable position for either of us.” His eyes searched mine for my intention. “Prince Vajradatta,” I said, “I have never placed my foot on anybody’s head. Now if I get up and give you back your arm, can we talk as one prince to another?” He looked uncertain of his duty and rolled his eyes up skyward searching for a sign. I felt a rush of warmth towards him. In times of peace I might have known him well. We would have met at royal events. If I had a daughter she might have chosen him at her swayamvara. Perhaps no sign had come to him for he turned his face to look about him. “You know my son was Abhimanyu. He was seventeen. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” he replied, “but not too young to kill the man who killed my father.”

  “I am four times your age and much too old to think that killing you would solve anything.”

  “You hurt my arm,” he said, which was probably his way of saying he had surrendered. I released him but he could not stand so I propped him up against a tree.

  “How old was Abhimanyu?”

  “Seventeen,” I said again. After a pause a crane flew over touching us with its fleeting shadow. “Have you not heard that King Yudhishthira, my eldest brother, reigned as the emperor from Indraprastha and that your father was his friend and our father’s great friend and paid him tribute?”

  “That was long ago,” he said.

  “But not before your birth. Your tutors should have told you of it.”

  “My father told me.”

  “Did he tell you King Yudhishthira was a bad king?”

  “What he told me was before you killed him.”

  “He almost vanquished our armies single-handed. He died magnificently as great heroes die.” The boy’s eyes filled with tears. We reminisced a while about his father and my father and their friendship. Soon we were asking about each other’s families. At last I said to him. “Would you honour us by coming to the Ashwamedha? It is to be on the full moon in the month of Chaitra next year.” The boy bowed from the waist but when he tried to fold his hands to me he winced and when he reached out for his diadem, he hissed with pain. I had wrenched his arm. I retrieved the gold and sapphire circlet for him. I smoothed his hair and placed the diadem gravely on his head, reciting coronation mantras. Then I tied a cloth into a sling and placed his arm in it. We parted friends.

  38

  “Is this the land of King Jayadratha?” I asked.

  “He is dead,” a farmer told me. “Did you not know? He died at the end of a great battle down in the south.” “Down in the south?” I echoed.

  “Yes,” said the man, “down near Hastinapura, the City of Elephants.” To a farmer anything below the forest of Kamyaka was spoken of as south. I did not want to be in Sindhu country and for the first time I had a thought to call the sacred horse back over the river to go to Kekaya country. The thought lasted a trutti before I sent it skulking with a mantra. The horse was guided by the Ashwins. You cannot cheat the gods. It would have fallen on the head of Eldest and might have changed the world in ways we cannot know.

  I did not relish meeting Duhshala. I had not known her well. She was the youngest child of Dhritarashtra and being the only girl kept much with women. In Hastina no girl was ever taught to shoot or ride as in Dwaraka or some of the more northern regions. It came, we thought, out of Greatfather’s sacrifice. He avoided women. Even had she been my close childhood friend she would hardly welcome him who had killed her husband. I knew that her son Suratha lived, and that meant a fight. I did not recognize Suratha. Others of his clan arrived with ropes. The men of Sindhu are excellent with horses. In the time it takes to say Great Indra they had flung their ropes over Kalidasa and shackled him. There was a skirmish and I had to kill five men before I could release him. Once done, I felt the lighter for it. I had not wanted killing but in the Ashwamedha the gods choose for you. I tied up a survivor with his rope under a banyan tree beside the road; I asked him where Suratha was. The answer was that he had killed himself on hearing I was coming. There came the sound of chariot wheels. The thought that they would make me kill again enraged me now that my blood was up; I stood ready to let fly. There were no men besides the charioteer—only Duhshala herself, with a baby in her arms. She was distraught, her hair unoiled, her clothing in disarray. She placed the baby at my feet and would have done obeisance but then I gripped her by the elbows. She was incoherent with fear and kept on repeating: “This child at least should live.”

  I looked for signs of her pursuers and said: “No one will harm him while I am here and while Eldest is on the throne.” Her eyes started to roll in her head so I made her sit beneath a tree and put the baby in her arms. I have often seen this bring a woman to her senses. And so it was with Duhshala.

  She said more quietly: “Arjuna, take my life but let the child be saved.”

  I realized she thought that I might kill the child. “What are you saying, Duhshala? It is over now. Speak no more of killing.” I saw she could not understand me. I sat beside her and took her by the shoulders to shake her gently but quickly stopped lest she think I meant her harm. Her eyes stared at me with no light in them and I thought it best to give her time. I was appalled that we had come to think of each other as monsters. The war had made Satyaki do things that he was never meant to do, it had made Ashwatthama murder Kshatriyas in their sleep. Why should she think me any different? I remembered the time I had taken Duhshashala piggyback and she had offered me a sweet that she had kept for me in her little hand. “Cousin, what makes you think that I have come to kill?” What else should she think when we had killed her brothers? “We killed your people in the war but that is now behind us.” She went on staring blankly. There was no reasoning with her. “Look at us now, Duhshala, sitting by the roadside, in mortal terror of each other, when in Hastina you rode upon my back and gave me a sweet that you had saved.” I paused, not looking for further arguments where none would serve. “Suratha took his life, my Abhimanyu was killed; they have left these babes in arms but who will look after them?”

  There is little use in talking sense to people who have left their reason. It was my babbling that brought her back. She hung her head and wept quietly. We stayed there talking of the children and of the age at which we might expect to see their teeth and how many times they cried or sucked at night. What else was there to speak about? They were the future.

  “Let us promise that this child and Parikshita will be taught to love each other. To begin with, you must bring him to Eldest’s Ashwamedha.” I saw the shadow of uneasiness come like a cloud between us.

  “Where?”

 
“Where but in Hastina of course.” Now there was only sadness in her eyes.

  “Cousin,” she said to me at last, “the palace has bad memories for me. I knew that it would come to war. After the dice game nothing was the same again. I was afraid of everyone. I feared that what had happened to Draupadi might come to me one day in someone else’s sabha. I was there when Krishna came with the peace proposal. I saw that Duryodhana was mad and Karna too. You know, Arjuna, after the dice game I did not want to marry and leave my father’s kingdom. When at last I married Jayadratha and he came to me with hair shorn off by Bheema for carrying your queen away, I wished that I had been an independent sairandhri. That was Jayadratha’s wedding gift to me. Five tufts upon his head because he was inflamed with love for Draupadi. I thought then that Kshatriyas were like a great disease. My Mother had a sairandhri who mixed her perfumes and wove her garlands. When her husband met her at the gate each night they smiled into each other’s eyes. I envied her. Every time I saw Duryodhana, Karna, and Duhshasana strutting about the palace and thundering through the streets, I was filled with fear. It is bad karma to be born a Kshatriya.”

  “My mother also says the same,” I said.

  “My Mother said that Krishna should have stopped the war.”

  “But when he tried…you know what happened then. Do you remember Jarasandha of Magadha who collected kings to sacrifice to Rudra? If Krishna had not taken us to kill him the world would be in darkness beyond telling—human sacrifice would be the order of the day. What an emperor does today, the tributary kings will do tomorrow.” Duhshala shivered. “It would soon have become pious custom to offer captured enemies to Rudra. There would have been a reign of terror.” I revived our memories for her: “In Magadha the shops were full of fruits and flowers we had never seen. The goldsmiths, silversmiths, and swordsmiths displayed wondrous wares above the monstrous dungeons where he kept his victims. Everyone looked normal while darkness crept towards us; Krishna held it back.”