“Well, if you would not kill me then perhaps my life is owed to you so I shall now not kill you.” I offered him this gambit so that he might laugh and call the challenge off.
“We owe each other nothing. So now there is nothing between us but this freak of a painted horse.” Shamba, Krishna’s son, and the young bloods laughed around him. It was this laughter and the way in which he said it that had my fingers itching for my arrow but I had come in peace and made myself remember it was Subhadra’s brother, Krishna’s brother. Words must be my weapons but all the words that came to me were insults. I must not say “This time my foot will rest upon your neck.” I told myself it was the blood of Abhimanyu, the blood of Krishna, the blood of Subhadra that ran in them. My Kshatriya training stood me in bad stead. I said: “This time my foot will rest upon your neck.”
“Take care, Arjuna, my brother Krishna is not here to save you with his miracles.” I felt the blood rush to my head. I could no more have stopped my fingers than dammed the River Ganga. They pulled the string back. “Ah, you are saved, Arjuna. I hear my father’s chariot wheels.” I heard them too. My uncle on my Mother’s side. The old Lord Vasudeva! Krishna’s father. My anger fell from me and sweat rose through my pores to think if my hand had opened I might have killed his son and Subhadra’s uterine brother.
“I came in peace,” I said.
“And you shall go in peace,” said Sarana. The lads around him smiled at me. The chariots of my uncle and some counsellors were upon us. I jumped down from my horse and swung myself into my uncle’s chariot when it had hardly stopped; my head was on his feet. He grappled me to his breast with arms that were still strong.
“Uncle,” I said, “never have I been so pleased to see anyone.” He looked from me to Sarana and Shamba who were all eager smiles, and seeing them I had to ask myself how much I had imagined. Sarana kept me so ill at ease that taking as excuse my mission, I refused the hospitality of Dwaraka. After having dreamt for nearly twenty years of visiting Prabhasa and walking on the beach, I never even entered the gate through which Subhadra had driven our abduction chariot. It was of no consequence, I told myself. My uncle had of course promised to come to the sacrifice as had Sarana, though I could not regard the latter as a blessing.
Following Kalidasa into the desert, I hoped that he would take me straight to Hastina; nothing mattered but that Subhadra, Krishna, and Satyaki would be waiting at the end with Draupadi and my brothers. And I would hold Abhimanyu’s son once again. It seemed that Dwaraka after all for me was nothing but Subhadra and her brother Krishna. I recalled Aunt Gandhari’s curse and in the dry heat of the desert I felt the goosebumps on my arms and shivered in the cloth I had wrapped round myself to guard my mouth and nostrils. The burning heat by day and the sharp cold of desert nights soon scoured Aunt Gandhari’s curse away. Sarana and his smile evaporated. The great camel on which I sat rocked me into repose such that I sometimes fell asleep upon his back. Kalidasa went before, leading us home and to his fate, though it was a glorious one. Under the desert stars I felt regret that I would never hear again his whinnying in the night. That night, I was tired from my travelling, tired in my bones. I saw the stars adding to each other. It seemed that every time I looked there were more stars. Krishna had crossed this desert when he led the Vrishnis and the Bhojas to Dwaraka to found the city just as he had later led us all to Indraprastha. And then I thought of all the people, all the rulers who had crossed this desert over centuries with tribute after victory, or fleeing from a tyrant. Were they as numerous as the stars?
All the way around and back and forth in the past months one thought sustained me. The rite is very sacred. There is none greater than the Ashwamedha, nor more powerful. Greatfather Vyasa said so. Now that my campaign was over, in the vastness of the desert the idea lost itself like a favourite ring slipped from your finger that is buried deep in sand. Krishna had said to me that it was enough to offer a leaf, a flower, or a fruit with a fervent heart. Why then were gold coins and cows and silks offered to the Brahmins? Silk and the finest woollen shawls, skins, and blankets from Kamboja, finest swords and inlaid bows from Magadha and sapphires from the south? Why then the death of Kalidasa…if a fruit, a flower, or just the fervent heart was sacrifice enough?
The death of Kalidasa caused me a searing pain. I tried to unburden myself of my depression by reminding myself of past campaigns; this weariness always attacked one at the end.
But on entering the city when the people who have lined up before sunrise begin to cheer you and to proclaim you hero and your chariot horses lift their knees in style to make their way amongst the flowers and you are garlanded, your spirits rise. I was looking at a star that was bigger than the rest and it began to grow under my gaze. It made me think of Krishna, of his.spirit and his courage and his love. Looking at the star I heard the voice of Kalidasa. It said: “You have conquered the lands but what of yourself?”
In the silence I knew what I had to do, and everything was there before me, the sacrificial pit, the fragrant woods, the sacrificial ghee, the fire sticks. There were no priests. The star was guiding me. I was the priest. I walked up to the sacrificial platform garnished with ritual objects and laid the different kinds of woods in stacks and lit the fire saying mantras which in the silence of the desert died away. The night was full of mantras. The sacrifice was Arjuna. I sat cross-legged before the flame, prepared to immolate myself. Madri, the frail young woman, had done it for my father. Could I not do it for Bharatavarsha? I was about to step into the flames when something pressed against my chest. It was jewel-hard.
“But first Gandiva.”
I saw Gandiva at my feet and I recoiled. I could not throw Gandiva in. Without Gandiva life lost meaning. Without Gandiva the very stars melt into empty blackness. Without Gandiva…
I had made many conquests. My campaign for the Ashwamedha was now over. The desert offered nothing I could take as tribute. It offered emptiness and silence. To take Gandiva beyond its destiny would fill the world with discord. I reached to touch the string; it twanged like an untuned veena. The notes it gave out grew and clashed like swordplay and filled the sky with pandemonium that was the echo of my conceit. I broke the inner Gandiva and hurled it into the fire, as I had done with Suratha’s bow, as one does with a warrior’s broken weapon when he dies.
The great campaigns are fought inside the heart. Now, in the night with Kalidasa’s bells tinkling in the breeze I knew I had no need to march into the world. It was here that I met myself and learnt what I had always known, that whatever we may cling to whether wives or weapons or specks of desert dust, they will bind you to a twilight life which is the twin of death. There is nothing that will not bind you if you cling to it. The desert tells you that. It waits for you when you have conquered all. It does not say conquer yourself; it takes from you your burden. To be free of it is to become invincible. When you have given up you know you are safe. You need no weapons to protect yourself. It is the ultimate conquest.
Something resonated within me like a hundred melodious Gandivas. It was the music that the stars make in the sky, the note the sands play in the desert, the rhythm of my blood. Had someone played this music at Kurukshetra and had we heard it then, the arrows would have fallen to the ground, the chariots would have melted, and the elephants would have knelt in meditation. There would have been no strife. And yet so many crossed the desert and heard nothing, clinging to their bundles, clinging, clinging, clinging.
“One day,” said Kalidasa, “one day they will hear and everyone will know.”
1
There are so many things to fear in life but for a Kshatriya trained in the school of Dronacharya, there is only the fear of fear. I had crossed and crossed again the wildest areas of the world and heard the tiger scraping at my tent pegs. I had felt the hot breath of a bear sniffing around me, and once a tusker had set my hammock swinging like a cradle. After Kurukshetra and the Narayanastra, I thought nothing could daunt me.
Long before I
reached the City of the Elephant, Hastinapura, I sensed the people waiting, and as I threaded the forest I felt reluctance rising in me. This was the forest we had come through with my mother and the sages after my father’s death. In spite of our loss we came serene, full of trust. But like the little store of gold a country person brings to the city thinking it will last forever, our serenity had soon melted.
One of those who had looked from his window then, drawn by the great tapping of sages’ staves, had never failed us, and Uncle Vidura was waiting still. It heartened me to think of him. Did I need such heartening when Subhadra and Parikshita sat waiting in our garden? It seemed I did. I had a dim foreboding that as I had glimpsed and then lost Krishna, Hastina would dispel my desert-born wisdom like a mirage.
I turned from the main road into a smaller forest, a shortcut that would lead me to the outskirts. Now my heart began to pound. This was the end of something, the end of freedom, and I found the wanderer in me was not dead. But Subhadra and the son of Abhimanyu beckoned, and my heart subsided like a wild bird moving to an outstretched hand. And after a while Krishna would come. All the wanderings of the world, all the adventures were in him; all the worlds themselves were Krishna, and there my soul danced like a thousand dolphins.
Yet I dismounted and walked around awhile before sitting on the grass to give my horse respite. It was with the Sacrificial Horse that I returned to Hastinapura. The breeze turned cold and seemed to carry a word, a name on its soughing: Durga… Durgadasa? Durga, The Goddess Mother to whom we pray before battle.
The horse turned his head as though listening, as though he heard his name.
“Pray to Durga,” Krishna had said at Kurukshetra, before we blew our war conches.
Still drowning in his awesome revelation, my Being had managed to make my lips murmur: “I pray to you, my Lord.”
“Pray to Durga,” he had insisted.
So now I knew where the unspoken injunction came from; it was the faint intimation that there might be another campaign. But who could challenge us now?
“Well, whatever it may be, we had better go and meet it”, I said, “whether you be Kalidasa or Durgadasa.” But even as I said these words I sensed he would never be anything but Durgadasa again.
We were still in the forest’s gloom. I saw the sunlight waiting where the trees came to an end and I said to Durgadasa, “We move towards a new beginning.” He threw his head up and lengthened his pace. My own mount drew abreast of him and for a while we paced closer than carriage horses on the narrow path, Prajapati and his protector, though I knew that he was more truly mine. There would be no more rides like this. Soon Durgadasa would be a prisoner in the stable of the king horse. He would no longer lead, but be lead out onto the royal sacrificial platform. The thought stabbed my heart and I cracked my whip above our heads and called to him, “Prajapati, lead me once more.” His plaited tail came up, he turned his head and tossed the mane that fell about his neck and shoulders like a warrior’s and, gathering his legs, shot forward, streaming between trees, trying to lose me. Laughing through clenched teeth, I followed. The wind blew through my hair and lifted my horse’s mane. I came back to the path; it forked now. A faint haze of dust showed me that I must go right but when the path came to an end there was no trace of Durgadasa, only a fading hoofbeat rhythm in the distance. I could shoot by sound, and turned my horse’s head. The hoofbeats died as though a door had closed between us. We were alone and my charger knew it. Feeling uncertain, he slackened, waiting for my decision. It was the first time I had lost my Ashwamedha horse. For more than a year he had been a moving landmark that I followed. I turned around, walking my horse now, for he was covered in lather.
The deep stillness of the forest came to meet the echoes of silence. It stunned my ear. A four-syllabic birdcall pierced the stillness with a question, Where is he then? Repeated and repeated it became, Who is he then?
The silence startled something in me. Now everything was still. I reined in my mount. It was as though someone had thrown a noose around the sacred horse. But we were home now.
The noose tightened around my heart. And then it snapped and I felt exultant, and suddenly like a thunderclap knew what it was my heart had been protesting; I did not want to enter Hastina and I did not want to give Durgadasa up for sacrifice.
This knowledge was so grave and so tremendous that my breath caught. The sacred horse belonged to the God. He was Prajapati’s. To wish for his escape was to sin beyond redemption.
My heart remained unmoved. I only knew I did not want the killing. To offer their own children to the gods. What type of sacrifice was that? Durgadasa was a celestial steed, an energy from heaven. Let the gods recall him if they would—I would not stand in the way but I would not have a hand in quenching his bright life. I flung my challenge up and vowed to Durgadasa that we would change the custom. Then I dismounted and sat among the fallen leaves to ponder my decision and the Ashwamedha.
The horse sacrifice, to me, smacked of the time when human offerings were interred under the foundation stones of buildings, or for that matter of the Sarvamedha of old when a man as well as a horse had been quartered and offered. There must have been a time when it had seemed as natural as the Ashwamedha. Who, I wondered, had changed that custom? Was some god now telling me to change it once again, or was the voice I seemed to hear my own?
To challenge custom in this would be to foil Eldest’s dearest wish. He lived now only to cleanse us of the guilt of slaying our kinsmen. Why else had I followed the Ashwamedha horse through country after country? If I were to try and save Durgadasa from his fate, would I be pulling down the Empire we had spent our sons’ lives to uphold? And yet the Kalikuta poison could not have burned more strongly than the thought of Durgadasa tied to the stake with the priest’s cleaver poised above his neck.
Why? Why had this dilemma struck me now? In the desert I had seen how any speck of dust can bind you if you cling to it and I had been free. Now I was clinging once again. Man does not slip his moorings easily. The desert may free you, but you leave the desert and your freedom goes with it.
At Kurukshetra, Krishna had said, “All these men are dead already,” but he had also said it was enough to offer a leaf or water. He had stopped the sacrifice of cows.
It was like Kurukshetra once again when I had to choose between killing my guru and the only father I had ever known, or forsaking Krishna and my brothers. That day, Krishna said, the world had hung in the balance. And it felt the same today. My world waited on my decision.
Was this once again a weakness of the heart, a lack of heroism? I felt the same confusion as on that first day. Yet then I had been the chief hope of a great cause against unrighteousness. Here my work was finished. All I had to do was to enter the city. The priests would now take over. But at this thought darkness descended on my soul. My mouth was dry. And Krishna was not here to counsel me.
My reason told me that had been a moment in a great world struggle, This was but a single sacrifice. Yet my heart told me with a much greater force that this too was a moment in a struggle, a battle of unseen worlds.
Viveka. Discernment. I could hear Krishna laughing, “Jishnu, you have not learnt it yet.” I lay down among the leaves with my hands behind my head and looked up at the piece of sky between the trees, waiting for a sign. A cloud moved in that took the shape of Durgadasa, mane flying and legs at full stretch. Another took its place—Durgadasa with hanging head beside the sacrificial post.
The gods would send no sign. The choice was mine. His freedom and his death both hung above me thus and I must reach for one of them. After a while a round cloud scudding in and turning on itself made me think of something; the Narayana astra had moved across the sky like this. So a sign had come after, a shape that said, “surrender.”
I came out on the road among the Shudras and Vaishyas, just one more worn and weathered Kshatriya.
No one straightened his back or even turned his head to look. A little further on I met
a vanguard party from the palace, but even they did not recognize me at first.
It was one of Uncle Dhritarashtra’s old suta counsellors who looked again and reined his chariot back, shouting, “Lord Arjuna.” He drew up beside me and leapt down, staring up into my face. Tears came into his eyes. He prostrated and his tears watered the dust. I raised and embraced him. Over his shoulder I saw the sky and trees, and men with bows and shields and swords; men who would not challenge me. Some of them smiled tremulously, some of them gaped. Some looked on curiously. After a while my uncle’s suta drew himself away. “Lord Arjuna, Lord Arjuna,” he kept repeating in a voice that broke. “What you have done, my Lord, nobody has ever done without an army at his back and nobody will ever do again.” He glanced around for the Ashwamedha horse but was too experienced a counsellor to ask the question.
Ritual greetings and messages from Eldest and Uncle were delivered. Then came their messages of congratulations and praise to the Gods who had preserved me. At last, being unable to restrain myself, I smiled and put a hand upon his shoulder.
“How is my grandson?” I asked.
“Prince Parikshita, Prince Parikshita. He thrives like wheat coming into season. How could he not under the care of the Lady Subhadra, who is also well,” he smiled discreetly, “and all the more so since she has news.” Then, casting protocol aside, he burst out, “The Princess Uttaraa did some dancing steps that you taught her when she heard of my Lord’s approach.” I saw that the only talk in Hastina had been of my coming, and as he babbled on about the feast Bheema proposed to lay before me, and the horses that the twins were grooming for me, and how Eldest and Draupadi had both wept with relief at the news of my return, the great reluctance in my heart began to melt. I gazed into the distance towards Hastina.
The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata Page 73