The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  “While we were in the forest,” she said, “Babhruvahana vowed that he would never take up weapons but to defend his country.”

  “He has no wish to conquer?”

  “He has no wish to conquer.”

  Some things should not be lifted out of silence, so I did not ask whether he would have come had I sent word. I only said I had been too ashamed to call him since I had never been to see him.

  “Now will you both come to the great sacrifice? You will be treated with great honour and welcomed as a sister by Draupadi and Subhadra.”

  “Arjuna, I do not know if I shall come but I will send Babhruvahana.” Something in me brightened considerably. A son would be amongst us for the sacrifice.

  I left the capital as I had many years before, accompanied in great pomp by Chitrangada herself on a jewelled and decorated elephant and Babhruvahana on another. The men and Babhruvahana moved tactfully away to let us take leave of each other.

  “Do you remember what I said to you last time?” she asked me, looking down the terraces into the valley we had just left. I remembered that we had stopped like this for a while, looking down to where our son lay with his nurse, waiting for his mother. I made an effort to recall but could not till she told me.

  “I said that you would gallop through the world like some wild fire,that kingdoms would capitulate before you, that if you wanted to you would only have to smile for men to follow you and women also. It was your destiny to conquer.” She removed the sapphire ring that I had given her from her finger and placed it on mine. Now I remembered.

  We climbed out of the valley. The hills that surrounded it were green and carpeted with wild flowers, flung generously in brilliant patches. Looking back we saw the lakes shimmering around the dots which were the palaces. The palaces from which, with Chitrangada, I had watched the royal boat races.

  When it was time to descend we parted. As I came into the foothills I saw that the country was not rich. The houses were clean and neat, but essential. The fields were small but the crops stood straight and full, and there were many fruit trees. The country people smiled back readily. I saw two shepherds dancing to a flute. There was a sweet serenity in the women, as they performed their chores. Chitrangada had drawn a net of harmony over her land. Its feeling followed me for days. Never had I seen so clearly Bharatavarsha as our mother whose bosom we had trampled in the war, her rivers and her mountains, her forests and her lakes and skies, her belts of white sand in the south where palm trees made the sound of rain. Aryans and non-Aryans, Nagas and Kukis and Dashras and forest people of all kinds. She had nursed us with her milk.

  We were picking our way carefully on a descending mountain trail. Kalidasa stopped as though he had been waiting since we left Hastina for me to understand. My heart and mind stretched out and suddenly my pulse beat faster, as it sometimes does when new thoughts come. We had travelled many kingdoms and breathed their air; we had eaten the fruits their earth had yielded us, we had drunk from their rivers. They had become a part of Kalidasa. He was the king with right of entry. I thought that I, Arjuna, had conquered territories for Eldest but I was nothing but the guardian and the servitor of Kalidasa. The peasants, understanding this, had fed him their sweetest apples. If Kalidasa was offered on the sacred fire, it would be their offering too, I saw this clearly as when a mist before a mountain vanishes. Both my Greatfathers had said it many times to Eldest: “He who sacrifices himself has been chosen as the Sacrifice.” This knowledge was like the fabric that Duhshasana tried to pull from Draupadi after the dice game. It kept unwinding with new colours long after you thought it must come to an end.

  To leave the mountains always caused me pain but Kalidasa consoled me and said that he was leading me across another range. I followed him towards Gandhara. I had never been there. There is a hymn that invites fever to leave one and go to the Gandharans, the Angas, and the Magadhans, for none of these really belong to our Vedic living. I had heard some old priest chanting it not so long ago when Parikshita was taken with a cold. So I had thought of Gandhara as a country full of fever-spirits and Shakunis and they had not looked very different in my imagination.

  Kalidasa led me to the foothills. “Shakuni’s country, eh?” I said to him.

  Gandhara must become a part of Eldest’s empire. Our northwest frontiers must not stop at the mountains. Gandhara was an opening to the world of which Shakuni often boasted, as though we were poor cousins or simpletons.

  Shakuni and all his sons but one were dead. I was anxious to be done. Shakuni’s territory meant treachery to me and even from a distance behind each rock I sensed a hostile presence. The horse turned his nose towards the snow mountains which lay northwest of us. As we approached the foothills we felt a steady rocking from opposing winds. They buffeted us as we began to climb. The snow piles high in Gandhara country even in summer and the temperature was freezing.

  The plains were more arid than I had expected from the boasting of Shakuni, and I wished that I had set out with more provisions than I now carried in my saddle bag. There were interminable expanses of dry and sandy soil. The world became a desert field with black specks that were sheep grazing on the scrub. There is nothing to give relief to the eye in that dryness. The only reason one would want such a country in our empire was its strategic advantage of being between east and west. It was said that our forefathers of Bharatavarsha had adventured by land into the other world across these plains and over the high passes of the snow mountains. I wondered if the land had been as parched and inhospitable then as it is now.

  The thought that you might not have sufficient water creates a thirst which I was fighting when I felt the ground under my horse’s hooves reverberate with the approach of the cavalry. The people of Gandhara are the best horsemen in the world and they can cut you down before you know it. Shakuni’s people would have no qualms of conscience about ignoring my individual challenges. I saw dots moving the horizon forward. There must have been two thousand men charging towards me. The sacred horse came to a halt. And what was I to do? My thoughts went out to Eldest. Had I come all this way only to fail? If Eldest was on Dharma’s side, should I not try to lead the horse away? Then I remembered Islandborn Greatfather’s saying:

  “Follow the horse.

  It is the sacred horse who knows His ways,

  The horse is indeed Prajapati.”

  He started cantering and then broke into a gallop, heading straight towards the host. So I pursued him, even as I prepared a speech in my mind in case anyone was willing to listen to it, which seemed unlikely.

  The horsemen swept towards me like an ocean, and I prepared to meet Lord Yama. But even before I saw their faces I felt their energies were bent elsewhere, not on the sacred horse and not on me. The faces of the men who want to kill you are always tightened into hate and have a certain tension in the eyes that cannot be mistaken. But the faces that I saw looked elsewhere. At first I thought that they were following a leader, but soon I saw the man that they converged upon held something hairy to his side. It was unwieldy; he held his whip in his clenched teeth to secure his purchase on it. Great Indra! My head was full of thoughts. Were the men of Gandhara so desperate that they must track a single animal down thus, or was this man a thief? I knew they cut the hands of thieves off at the wrist.

  There was no further time for thought. Some of the men were waving me back with flailing whips, and so I turned and found myself swept up with them and rolled along, as when a shell is carried by strong currents.

  Where was Kalidasa? I turned my head and something flashed like black lights by my eye and temple. It was Kalidasa. There was shouting all around, and only later did I feel the sting of thongs. My only thought now was to get ahead of this mad troupe. I saw some of the riders slashing at each other’s faces, and could not fathom what the wild race was about.

  Suddenly the men converged on me, screaming and shouting, brandishing their whips so that there was a constant whistling in my ears. In this demonic wo
rld I looked for the one familiar thing, and crouching forward to escape the slashing I espied Kalidasa abreast of the horse between us. The horse now had the hairy burden slung across its shoulders. Kalidasa nudged him to me. I could smell blood. We breasted tighter than three carriage horses. The sacred horse crashed sideways into them. I found the mangled carcass thrown on to my horse’s neck and without thinking I held it tight.

  Now Kalidasa broke ahead. It was a race. We pursued him. With the man behind us spewing guttural anger, I dug my fingers into the hairy thing to discover what it was I held, it was a bloody lamb without its head. I assumed this was some un-Aryan ritual and concluded I was safe as long as I had it with me. But it could be a two-edged weapon. The only certainty I had was Kalidasa. So I did what I had always done, I followed him at his own speed. We rode and rode till we had felt the men far behind.

  A post flashed past me on the right, and Kalidasa swerved so that we shot past and had to slow and turn about. And now once more he led me straight towards the wild men and their clouds of dust which the strong wind brought towards us. Horses whinnied and veered aside as we loomed up out of the storm before them. They flung into each other.

  At last I had crossed the riders but for the stragglers. But the others had turned round and followed me. Once more I rode the open plain in Kalidasa’s wake. And now he did the strangest thing of all, he slowed and turned to look at me. He stood within a circle drawn with stones. I stopped before him in my bewilderment and said: “Here, Kalidasa, this is yours.” I dropped the ritual offering at his hooves. I saw the constellation on his forehead, it was grey with dust instead of white. I too followed his gaze. The riders who had recovered and turned around to follow us showed us teeth from under their thin dust-caked moustaches, and shouted words. Kalidasa did not move, so I held my ground. I saw that they were smiling at me. It seemed I had performed the ritual for them.

  One ugly fellow came towards me baring his teeth. I did not recognize him. But he folded his hands in respectful greeting and spoke to me in fluent but accented Sanskrit. He had been in Shakuni’s retinue as charioteer when he was in Hastina, and now explained that I was victor of the game.

  I looked down at the lamb and saw that it and Kalidasa had done my work for me. For now, not only had I water in abundance, but I became the hero of the day and was feted with stewed mutton, which to my great discomfort was served in a communal dish. The men around me plunged their dusty long-nailed fingers into the meat, then ate and sometimes licked their fingers to prepare them for the next foray into the dish. They were nomadic tribes and had no sense of cleanliness. Yet I was grateful to them, they honoured me, a stranger, when they could have killed me for my interference. They now regarded me so highly that I bent my will to pleasing them and partook of their oily mess. They offered me their best tent and a young girl for the night, but both had a high odour and my Aryan nostrils forced me to decline. My interpreter told me quietly that my hosts had swallowed this insult because I was the champion of their annual game, and thus they held me as sacred as anything in their rough lives. Though the night was cold, I preferred to spend it under the stars. My last thought before I slept was that crude they might be, but they were more trustworthy than Shakuni. What might now follow in his kingdom could well be more hazardous. There was but one thing to do: follow Kalidasa, he was indeed Prajapati.

  A great mountain range lay northwest and Kalidasa led us over a high precipitous pass into a deep valley. The wind picked up every afternoon and probed our woollen clothes with glacial fingers. We pressed further on into the lower altitudes where the land began to flatten.

  Once I had pitched my tent, the sky began to flicker with a violet light and there was a sound as of distant akshauhinis advancing, thousands upon thousands of wheels clattering over stones, their rumble ricocheting off the mountains. The lightning came closer, and when the thunder followed, it had the sound of astras exploding all around. As I lay staring through an opening at the sky snakes of fire criss-crossed just above my head, I saw their flickering tongues. There was sheet lightning too that lit up sky and mountains; I had never seen Lord Indra so aroused.

  But the next day, the sky was blue again, the earth was fragrant and the air was full of bird-song. If it were not that my ears still rang with rending thunder and that my tent pegs were all but rooted up, I might have thought that I had dreamt it all.

  Down in the valley Shakuni’s son came out to meet me with a dozen chariots. Before I could get my greetings out, Kalidasa struggled with a noose around his neck. He reared so violently that they could hardly hold the rope and when they came to fetter him he dealt one of the charioteers a death kick to the head. Without wasting challenges the prince dented my diadem with a snake-headed arrow while I splintered his bow with mine. His men surrounded me but Shakuni’s son was proud, and held them back. When I had splintered two more bows he drew his sword. I prepared to shed his blood but the gods preserved us from it and sent his mother in her chariot. She threw herself between us and nearly had her head sliced off.

  I felt her weight upon my feet and for a moment thought the prince’s downward slashing sword had caught her, but it had only grazed her shoulder. With a cry of anguish he threw the sword aside. I raised the sobbing woman to her feet. She turned to him.

  “I begged you. I begged you,” she repeated, as though all other words were lost to her. We helped her trembling form into the carriage. The prince put his head upon her feet. She touched his hair and struggled to find words. She was a woman of astounding beauty with great grey eyes such as Aunt Gandhari’s blindfold must have hidden. Her nose was aquiline like that of so many Gandharans. There was something in her bearing, even in extreme distress, that spoke to me. She drew a shuddering sigh. After that her panting eased. The tears rolled down her cheeks from now closed eyes. She held her son’s hand and taking mine, she tried to lay them palm to palm.

  “Promise,” she said. “Promise.” And that was all she said. I felt a tide of emotion flow through her to me. She held us on this road that overlooked her kingdom. Something hung suspended, waiting for a word. But there was only silence and it grew until it seemed that fate would be extinguished if it were not said. At last she spoke.

  “The earth wants peace,” she said. “The earth has drunk the sacrifice of blood. She needs no more. She cannot take more blood.” She spoke as though in a trance, her eyes still closed. “If Kshatriyas shed more blood than what is duly paid, the earth will not accept it. She will regurgitate it. There will be dire consequences. The Pandavas were wronged and we have paid the price.” She turned her head and fixed me with those great smokecoloured eyes. I felt a shock go through me. They were still washed by tears. And when my thought returned I wondered how she had spent so many years beside Shakuni. I felt a palm relax against my palm and press down in promise. The prince’s eyes met mine. There was a promise in them too.

  He signalled for his men to unfetter Kalidasa and sent a guard to set us on the mountain trail. The guard saluted me: “May Pushan be your guide.” I was alone with Kalidasa again. The moments we had lived reverberated in me. I felt that they had happened many times and were still happening and that the trail we took was taken many times as though no other thing or way were possible.

  Kalidasa led me across the length and breadth of Bharatavarsha. My dream proved true; it was a journey into myself. The hymn says:

  It does not matter

  Where you look

  In the three worlds

  Or in the ten directions.

  For you will find yourself.

  He took me everywhere but to my heart’s desire. He left that for the end.

  39

  “Expect nothing,” as Greatfather always said, “if you do not want events to make a fool of you.”

  In Dwaraka, Subhadra’s brother Sarana and a number of young warriors rode out to greet me, or so I thought, but with a challenge, whether thrown out in fun or in defiance I never could decide. There was something in
Sarana I did not understand and cared for less. He was too fond of dangerous pranks and risked his life when his party captured Kalidasa.

  “This is a better joke than last time when you came disguised as Subhadra,” I called, pretending laughter, “but you will get more than a kick in your hind parts this time.”

  I had meant, whatever his intentions were, to persuade him that his challenge was a prank but there was no oiling the edge in my voice. He stood there in his chariot smiling at me, with his curly hair and long lashes, so much like Satyaki that my anger all but melted. I smiled back. He was Vrishni in his look but not in soul. There were beguiling shadows in his smile no other Vrishni had, and it went on too long. There was a little pleat of malice in its corner and teasing in his eyes. I felt my peaceful resolution slip away and had to keep my hands clenched on Gandiva in order not to dip into my quiver. Perhaps I could still get around him with words but what came out was ill thought out: “If you wanted a good fight, Sarana, what kept you home? You could have made the Kaurava heroes tremble at the sight of you. What kept you safe at home?”

  “Ah no, dear brother,” he replied. “I might have had to kill you.” His eyes widened at the very thought. It took me time to understand that he, like Balarama, might favour Duryodhana, or was he teasing? His friends were staring at me with smiles fixed to their mouths.