Mahabharata: Right to the Bharata Throne

In the Mahabharata, who is the rightful heir to the Bharata throne – Yudhishthira or Duryodhana? Recently I put this question to a group of about a hundred bright young people, all of whom were familiar with the Mahabharata story. The opinion was clearly divided. In fact, while many were confused, a slight majority felt it belonged to Duryodhana.

A lot of people feel that Duryodhana was the rightful heir to the Bharata throne throughout the central story of the epic. The argument is that even if Dhritarashtra was originally denied the throne because of his blindness, Pandu gave it to him and hence he was the king – if not while Pandu was alive, definitely after his death. And since Duryodhana was Dhritarashtra’s son, he was the rightful heir to the throne of the Bharatas, however unfair it sounds towards the Pandavas. They feel that in spite of being good and all, the Pandavas had no legal claim over the Bharata throne and it is our sympathy for them that makes us take their side and Krishna too supported them because they were good and were his people.

However, the Mahabharata itself does not agree with this position.

Here is what Bhishma tells Duryodhana in the Udyoga Parva, during a heated scene immediately before the war, in yet another attempt to make Duryodhana accept the truth:

Andhah karanahīneti na vai rājā pitā tava
Rājā tu pāndur abhavan mahātmā lokaviśrutah
Sa rājā tasya te putrāh pitur dāyādyahārinah

Mā tāta kalaham kārshī rājyasyārdham pradīyatām

“Since your father was blind, he could not become king, being disqualified by that. It was the noble Pandu, renowned everywhere, who became king. Since he was king and the Pandavas are his children, they are the heirs to his property. Don’t quarrel, son, and give [at least] half the kingdom to them.”

There is no mention in Bhishma’s words of Dhritarashtra ever becoming king of the Bharatas.

Gandhari, Duryodhana’s mother, too participates in this discussion, with the hope that she may influence Duryodhana. If what Bhishma says is not enough, her statement here makes it clearer still:

Rājyam tu pāndor idam apradhrshyam;
tasyādya putrāh prabhavanti nānye.
Rājyam tad etan nikhilam pāndavānām;
paitāmaham putrapautrānugāmi.

“This powerful kingdom, indeed, belonged to Pandu. And after him it belongs to his children, and to no one else. The entire kingdom belongs to the Pandavas, for, the tradition is that the kingdom comes down from the father to the son and then to his son.”

If these statements by Bhishma and Gandhari are not enough, here is what Dhritarashtra himself says on the issue on this occasion. Old Dhritarashtra point blank tells his son that he has no right to the kingdom. The kingdom belonged to Pandu, since he, Dhritarashtra, was disqualified by his blindness, ever since Pandu’s death, it has belonged to his eldest son Yudhishthira. Dhritarashtra concludes his long discourse to Duryodhana here, saying:

Mayyabhāgini rājyāya katham tvam rājyam icchasi.
Arājaputro hyasvāmī, parasvam hartum ichhasi
Yudhishthiro rājaputro mahātmā;
nyāyāgatam rājyam idam ca tasya
Sa kauravasyāsya janasya bhartā;
praśāsitā caiva mahānubhāvah.

“I was not fortunate to have the right over the kingdom; how can you then desire to be king? You are not the son of a king and therefore the kingdom does not belong to you. You are coveting what does not belong to you and trying to snatch it away from its rightful owner. The noble Yudhishthira is the son of the king, and this kingdom has rightfully been inherited by him. He is now the lord of all of us Kauravas, and that generous one is the [rightful] ruler of this land.”

By the rules and traditions that existed in the Mahabharata days and in the Bharata family, Yudhishthira and Yudhishthira alone was the rightful heir to the throne of Hastinapura.

There is one other way of looking at it. In India in general, and in the Bharata family in particular, apart from the fact that the claimant had to be the eldest of the diseased king and was healthy, there was by custom another requirement: that he was morally too fit to be king. Of all the unlikely people, it is Dhritarashtra who dwells upon this fact and clarifies that by this convention too, it is to Yudhishthira that the kingdom belongs. Speaking about this, Dhritarashtra says:

sa satyasandhah satatāpramattah; śāstre sthito bandhujanasya sādhuh
priyah prajānām suhrdānukampī; jitendriyah sādhujanasya bhartā
kshamā titikshā dama ārjavam ca; satyavratatvam śrutam apramādam
bhūtānukampā hy anuśāsanam ca; yudhishthire rājagunāh samastāh
arājaputras tvam anāryavrtto; lubdhas tathā bandhushu pāpabuddhih
kramāgatam rājyam idam pareshām; hartum katham śakshyasi durvinītah

“He is always truthful and invariably clear-sighted. He follows the injunctions of the scriptures, and is always favourably disposed to the advice of his friends. He is dear to the subjects and kind to his friends. He is a master of his passions and a protector of the virtuous. Yudhishthira has every virtue required in a king, such as patience, forbearance, self-control and straightforwardness. His studies are deep, he is bound by truth; he is filled with compassion for all beings and is disciplined. Whereas you – you are not the son of a king, your conduct is ignoble, you are greedy, and you always think of how to harm your own people. By inheritance, this kingdom belongs to others. And you, O wicked one, how can you grab it for yourself?”

Well, all this makes it quite clear to whom the kingdom belongs. However, in the Mahabharata things are never so unambiguously clear. We have a discordant note here too – Drona. Just like Bhishma, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, Drona too says that the kingdom belongs to Yudhishthira and not to Duryodhana – but in saying so, he says something that none of the others has said: that Dhritarashtra has been installed on the throne by Pandu.

This is what Drona says, speaking about what Pandu did:

tatah pāndur narapatih satyasandho jitendriyah
rājā kurūnām dharmātmā suvratah susamāhitah
jyeshthāya rājyam adadād dhrtarāshtrāya dhīmate
yavīyasas tathā kshattuh kuruvamśavivardhanah
tatah simhāsane rājan sthāpayitvainam acyutam
vanam jagāma kauravyo bhāryābhyām sahito nrpah


“Then Pandu, the king of the Kurus, the perpetrator of the race of the Kurus, ever-truthful, a master of his passions, rooted in dharma, noble in his vows and fully a master of himself, gave the kingdom to his sagacious elder brother Dhritarashtra and to his younger brother Vidura. Having placed Dhritarashtra on the throne, oh prince, that scion of the Kurus, the king, went to the jungle along with his two wives.”

Subsequently Drona adds: visrjya dhrtarāshtrāya rājyam sa vidurāya ca – having given away the kingdom to Dhritarashtra along with Vidura.

From what Drona says, we will have to conclude what Pandu put Dhritarashtra on the throne – that is, officially appointed him king. If he did that, the whole argument changes and all that Bhishma, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari say become invalid.

How do we reconcile the positions taken by these three with what Drona says. The only way I can think of is Drona is not aware of the exact position – he was not present when these incidents took place, whereas Bhishma, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, all three of them, were present. They were not only present, the whole series of incidents were centred around them. If Drona’s words contradict them, we will have to reject those words and go by what these three say.

I do not see any choice but to agree with the position taken by them: Duryodhana never had any right to the throne of the Bharatas, it always belonged to Yudhishthira.

O0O

A Profile in Courage: 12-Year-Old Stops Child Marriages

The Hindustan Times, Kolkata Edition of 12th April has this report about little Rekha Kalindi.

“In a village with the lowest female literacy in the country,” says the report by Sanchita Sharma, “a 12-year-old bidi-roller has done what the government has been trying to do for years – stopped child marriage.

“Rekha Kalindi [12] has become a household name in her district for refusing to get married in November last year. “Since Rekha’s revolt, there’s has been no child marriage in the village,” said Prasenjit Kundu, Assistant Labour Commissioner, Purulia, West Bengal government. “Now all the girls want to be like her and some others, like Afsana Khatoon [13] from a neighbouring village, also said no.”

“Rekha seems an unlikely hero. The frail girl lives in a one-room home with seven others in Bararola village… Her home has no electricity, no running water and no toilet.”

Rekha who has never watched a film, says the report, spends their evenings collecting firewood and tendu leaves in the forest to sell at the weekly market in the nearby town seven kilometres away.

“Rekha belongs to the Kalindi tribe, a scheduled tribe in which girls are married at the age of 12. “My sister Jyotsna, now 15, got married at 12 and has already had four dead babies. She now lives with her second husband because the first one left her. Still, my parents wanted me to also get married but I said no, I want to study. They finally agreed,” said Rekha.” Though her father Jagdish Kalindi stopped her food, water and soap for some days, she stood firm and he finally came around.”

Rekha’s inspiration was the National Child Labour Project school she is attending.

I hope Rekha’s story inspires more children like her and more parents like her parents are converted to her views. Thanks Sanchita, for profiling Rekha’s courage before the world.

O0O

The Holy Virgin and the Juggler

My wife who is a writer was looking for a good love story to translate into Hindi for a reputed journal that is bringing out a special issue on love stories from the literatures of the world. It is her request for help in selecting a story that made me to go through some works of DH Lawrence and Gabriel Garcia Marquez [both among my favourite writers], a collection of short stories by Vladimir Nabokov of the Lolita fame, Jhumpa Lahiri’s recent short story collection Unaccostomed Earth, the Jaico collection entitled The World’s Greatest Love Stories and a few other books. It was in the Jaico collection that I came across the 1921 Nobel Prize winner Anatole France’s Our Lady’s Juggler, a story that perhaps should not have been there, for it is not a love story in the traditional sense of the term. Though it was not exactly a love story in the usual sense, it is in a different sense, and I loved it very much. Last evening I told the story to my daughter who is briefly home from her studies and will again be away on an internship with a newspaper in a couple of days. She was delighted with the story and seeing her pleasure, I felt I should share it with others too.

“In the days of King Louis, there lived a poor juggler by the name of Barnabas, a native of Compeiegne, who wandered from city to city performing tricks of skill and prowess.” Thus begins France’s charming, old-fashioned narrative. Barnabas was both a good man and a good juggler. One of his tricks was standing on his head with his hands on the ground and throwing into the air and catching with his feet six copper balls that glittered in the sunlight. Another was throwing himself back until his neck touched his heels and thus assuming the form of a perfect wheel. In that position he juggled with twelve knives. When he did that the poor people who formed his audience became generous with their admiration and threw coins on the worn out carpet on which he performed.

As I said, Barnabas was a good man and a good juggler. However, sometimes being a good man and being good at what you do is not enough to fill your stomach, especially if you have chosen a profession like juggling. Such was the case with Barnabas too, particularly in winter when people preferred to stay at home rather than crowd on the cold streets. Besides, the frozen earth was not exactly the ideal condition for him to spread his worn out carpet to stand on. Nor were rainy days any better for him. The poor man suffered the pangs of hunger in silence.

One rainy day evening, after the rains had ceased, he was walking sad and bent along a lonely road. He had his juggling balls under his arm. The knives were wrapped up in his old carpet. He was looking for some old wayside barn where be might go to bed hungry and supperless. It was then he fell in with a monk who was also going in the same direction.

The monk asked Barnabas who he was and our juggler introduced himself, giving his name and profession, adding sadly that it would be the finest calling in the world if he could eat every day. The monk admonished him mildly for his words. “Be careful what you say,” he told Barnabas. “There is no finer calling than the monastic. The priest celebrates the praise of God, the Virgin and the saints; the life of a monk is a perpetual hymn to the Lord.”

The juggler apologised for his words, and told the monk of his own devotion to the Virgin. He expressed his desire to live a life devoted to singing the praise of the Virgin every day. “I would willingly give up the art for which I am known from Soissons to Beauvais, in more than six hundred cities and villages, in order to enter the monastic life,” he said.

The monk was the prior of a monastery and he told Barnabas perhaps it was the Lord who had put him across his path. He took Barnabas to the monastery, where he became another monk.

The poor man however soon realized something. Everyone in the monastery was good at something useful. The monk who had taken him into the monastery wrote books. Another monk copied this and a third one decorated the parchments. Another monk was good at sculpting and yet another, at writing hymns. Only he was good at none of these things.

“Alas!” he sighed as he walked by himself one day in the little garden shaded by the monastery wall. “I am unhappy because I cannot, like my brothers, give worthy praise to the Holy Mother of God to whom I have consecrated all the love in my heart. Alas, I am a stupid fellow, without art, and for your service, Madame, I have no edifying sermons, no fine treatises nicely prepared according to the rules, no beautiful paintings, no cunningly carved statues, and no verses counted off by feet and marching in measures! Alas, I have nothing!”

Day by day the former juggler sunk into deeper and deeper misery. He sighed in his grief as he walked bent through the monastery, lost in his sad thoughts.

And then one day he jumped up from his cot where he was lying after his breakfast and ran to the chapel where he remained for more than an hour all alone. When he came out his face was beaming. That night, after dinner, once again he ran to the chapel with joyous steps and was all joy as he came out a long time later.

The juggler monk was now a transformed man. There was no more sorrow in his eyes, no more grief round his mouth. Every step he took had the jauntiness of a youth and his very presence exuded joy.

The whole monastery was mystified by the transformation. One day as the monk rushed towards the chapel, the prior followed him quietly, along with two other monks.

What met their eyes scandalised them. “They saw Barnabas before the image of the Holy Virgin, his head on the floor and his feet in the air, juggling with six copper balls and twelve knives.” He was now performing in the honour of the Virgin what he had performed earlier for the few copper coins it brought him.

Let me now say what happened in Anatole France’s own words. “The prior knew that Barnabas had a simple soul, but he believed that the man had lost his wits. All three set about to remove Barnabas from the chapel, when they say the Virgin slowly descend from the altar and, with a fold of her blue mantle, wipe the sweat that streamed over the juggler’s forehead.”

O0O

Is this a love story? I do not know. What I know is it is a beautiful story. Every culture, every religion, has similar stories. One of my favourite stories is that of Ekutana, which comes to us from the Buddhist tradition.

The story says that Ekutana was a simple unlettered monk who lived alone in the jungle. Since a monk was expected to teach every day, he would come in front of his tiny hermitage every evening and say in simple words whatever he had learned from the Buddha. His audience was the trees and plants of the jungle, and the birds and beasts.

One day it so happened that a small group of scholarly monks happened to be passing by and they stopped at Ekutana’s hut. That evening Ekutana requested the monks to speak to the jungle. They were confused, but they granted him his request. One by one, all the monks in the group spoke and as each finished, there was complete silence in the jungle.

‘What is happening?” asked Ekutana, surprised. “Your discourses are wonderful! But no one is applauding!”

“Who will applaud?” asked the monks. “There is no one here.”

‘Oh, but they do when I speak,” said Ekutana.

“Who does?” asked the monks.

“The whole jungle,” answered the unlettered monk.

The guest monks wanted to hear and Ekutana gave his discourse. He spoke – the same words he spoke every day, exactly the same way as he spoke them every day. For he knew no other words, nor any other way of saying them.

But when he finished, the entire jungle resounded with the sound of delighted applause. The story says that the trees and plants, and the birds and the beasts, all applauded thunderously at the end of Ekutana’s speech. Exactly as they have been doing every day.

O0O

There is a beautiful story said about the famous Guruvayoor temple in Kerala. The great scholar Melpattur Narayana Bhattatiri, author of the Sanskrit classic Narayaneeyam, was in the temple when he heard Poontanam, the simple poet of devotion, sing Vishnu Sahasra Nama, the thousand names of Vishnu. When he came to Padmanabho’maraprabhuh, Poontanam paused at the joint of the two words, thus changing the second word from Amaraprabhu to Maraprabhu, altering the meaning completely. It is said that Melpattur interfered and corrected him, asking him not to make such errors, which, he said, are sacrilegious. And out came a voice from the sanctum sanctorum: “I prefer Poontanam’s bhakti to your vibhakti.”

Bhakti is devotion and vibhakti, grammar.

In the Gita, Krishna says: patram pushpam phalam toyam, yo me bhaktyā prayachhati; tadaham bhaktyupahrtam, aśnāmi prayatātmanah. Whoever offers me a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water with devotion, I accept that gift of the pure-hearted presented with love!

What is offered is not important. Two things are important: how pure your heart is, and with what amount of devotion you make the offering. Frequently the words of an unlettered man are more acceptable to that of a scholar. A grammatically faulty hymn is more acceptable than a grammatically perfect one. And jugglery is more acceptable than a hymn.

Here is how Narada defines devotion: Sa tvasmin parama-prema-rūpa. Devotion is boundless love. Boundless love that can be born only in a pure heart.

Nothing else really matters.

Miracles happen where such love exists.

O0O

Yatra Yatra Mano Yati: Sri Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti and Samadhi

Samadhi is the highest spiritual experience – an experience worth waiting for birth after birth, worth striving for through lifetimes. The real purpose of all yoga, of all bhakti and of all sadhana is making this experience possible. And yet for the mind that is awakened, whether through bhava and bhakti, or through meditation or any other means, Samadhi is an everyday experience, as common as, let’s say, falling asleep and waking up, and as natural as breathing, as frequent as walking from one room into another, which is not to say that the momentousness of the experience or the immensity of its power is reduced by the frequency of its occurrence. Speaking of such awakened masters and their mental condition, our spiritual tradition says: yatra yatra mano yāti, tatra tatra samādhayah – wherever the mind goes, it finds samadhi there.

Today is my new-year day – Vishu. Traditionally Keralites open their eyes to the Vishu-kani the first thing in the morning today – flowers, fruits, vegetables and lighted lamps arranged just for that purpose. My kani for years have been my books. Early in the morning I picked up The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and began reading it at random when I came across the following.

“Oh, what a state of mind I passed through! When I first had that experience, I could not perceive the coming and going of day or night. People said I was insane.”

This is Sri Ramakrishna speaking of himself, about the times before his marriage. One of the first things that happen in India when a young man has experiences like this is for his people to conclude that he now needs a woman, and they give him a woman to cure him of his disease. And that is precisely what Sri Ramakrishna’s people did too. They got him married. The marriage, fortunately, had no negative impact on the master’s life, though. He continued to live seeing the Divine everywhere and in everything, and entering samadhis as effortlessly as we get carried away by a thought or an image into worlds of memories or fantasies.

"Oh, what an ecstatic state it was! Even the slightest suggestion would awaken my spiritual consciousness. I worshipped the 'Beautiful' in a girl fourteen years old. I saw that she was the personification of the Divine Mother. At the end of the worship I bowed before her and offered a rupee at her feet. One day I witnessed a Ramlila performance. I saw the performers to be the actual Sita, Rama, Lakshmana, Hanuman, and Bibhishana. Then I worshipped the actors and actresses who played those parts.

"At that time I used to invite maidens here and worship them. I found them to be embodiments of the Divine Mother Herself.

"One day I saw a woman in blue standing near the bakul-tree. She was a prostitute. But she instantly kindled in me the vision of Sita. I forgot the woman. I saw that it was Sita herself on her way to meet Rama after her rescue from Ravana in Ceylon. For a long time I remained in samadhi, unconscious of the outer world.

“Another day I had gone to the Maidan in Calcutta for fresh air. A great crowd had assembled there to watch a balloon ascension. Suddenly I saw an English boy leaning against a tree. As he stood there his body was bent in three places. The vision of Krishna came before me in a flash. I went into samadhi.”

After speaking briefly of his life as a guest in a house in Janbazar in Kolkata, where he lived feeling he was a handmaid of the Mother Goddess and seeing Mother in all women, he concludes:

"Even now the slightest thing awakens God-Consciousness in me. Rakhal used to repeat the name of God half aloud. At such times I couldn't control myself. It would rouse my spiritual consciousness and overwhelm me."

Sri Ramakrishna’s biographer describes another beautiful samadhi experience of the master:

“About half past nine in the morning Prankrishna took leave of the Master. Soon afterwards a minstrel sang some devotional songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. The Master was listening to the songs when Kedar Chatterji, a householder devotee, entered the room clad in his office clothes. He was a man of devotional temperament and cherished the attitude of the gopis of Vrindavan. Words about God would make him weep. The sight of Kedar awakened in the Master's mind the episode of Vrindavan in Sri Krishna's life. Intoxicated with divine love, the Master stood up and sang, addressing Kedar:

“Tell me, friend, how far is the grove
Where Krishna, my Beloved, dwells?
His fragrance reaches me even here;
But I am tired and can walk no farther. . . .

“Sri Ramakrishna assumed the attitude of Sri Radha to Krishna and went into deep samadhi while singing the song. He stood there, still as a picture on canvas, with tears of divine joy running down his cheeks.”

O0O

In his Notebooks, J. Krishnamurti, a very different kind of awakened master, as remote from bhakti as Sri Ramakrishna was close to it and as different in his sophistication as could be from the ‘unpolished’ master of Dakshineshwar, speaks of his own experiences in his Notebook.

“The immeasurable was there, filling the little space and all space; it came as gently as the breeze comes over the water but thought could not hold it and the past, time, was not capable of measuring it.”

Here is another experience: “It was a cloudy day, heavy with dark clouds; it had rained in the morning and it had turned cold. After a walk we were talking but more looking at the beauty of the earth, the houses and the dark trees. Unexpectedly, there was a flash of that unapproachable power and strength that was physically shattering. The body became frozen into immobility and one had to shut one's eyes not to go off into a faint. It was completely shattering and everything that was didn't seem to exist. …It was something indescribably great whose height and depth are unknowable.”

And again: “Early this morning, just as dawn was breaking, with not a cloud in the sky and the snowcovered mountains just visible, woke up with that feeling of impenetrable strength in one's eyes and throat; it seemed to be a palpable state, something that could never not be there. For nearly an hour it was there and the brain remained empty. It was not a thing to be caught by thought and stored up in memory to be recalled. It was there and all thought was dead.”

If Sri Ramakrishna saw the Divine Mother everywhere and in everything, it is himself that Krishnamurti sees everywhere and in everything. Just as the presence of the Mother is living and throbbing in everything for the Master of Dakshineshwar, the presence of his own Being is vivid in everything for Krishnamurti. Here is one more of Krishnamurti’s beautiful experiences which speaks of this:

“There was a little girl of ten or twelve leaning against a post in the garden; she was dirty, her hair had not been washed for many weeks, it was dusty and uncombed; her clothes were torn and unwashed too, like herself. She had a long rag around her neck and she was looking at some people who were having tea on the verandah; she looked with complete indifference, without any feeling, without any thought of what was going on; her eyes were on the group downstairs and every parrot that screeched by made no impression on her nor those soft earth-coloured doves that were so close to her. She was not hungry, she was probably a daughter of one of the servants for she seemed familiar with the place and fairly well-fed. She held herself as though she was a grown-up young lady, full of assurance and there was about her a strange aloofness.

“As you watched her against the river and the trees, you suddenly felt you were watching the tea party, without any emotion, without any thought, totally indifferent to everything and to whatever might happen. And when she walked away to that tree overlooking the river, it was you that was walking away, it was you that sat on the ground, dusty and rough; it was you who picked up the piece of stick and threw it over the bank, alone, unsmiling and never cared for. Presently you got up and wandered off around the house. And strangely, you were the doves, the squirrel that raced up the tree and that unwashed, dirty chauffeur and the river that went by, so quietly.”

Krishnamurti describes yet another of his samadhi experiences:

She was carrying a large basket on her head, holding it in place with one hand; it must have been quite heavy, but the swing of her walk was not altered by the weight. She was beautifully poised, her walk easy and rhythmical. On her arm were large metal bangles which made a slight tinkling sound, and on her feet were old, worn-out sandals. Her sari was torn and dirty with long use. She generally had several companions with her, all of them carrying baskets, but that morning she was alone on the rough road. The sun wasn't too hot yet and high up in the blue sky some vultures were moving in wide circles without a flutter of their wings. The river ran silently by the road.

“It was a very peaceful morning, and that solitary woman with the large basket on her head seemed to be the focus of beauty and grace; all things seemed to be pointing to her and accepting her as part of their own being. She was not a separate entity but part of you and me, and of that tamarind tree. She wasn't walking in front of me, but I was walking with that basket on my head. It wasn't an illusion, a thought-out, wished-for, and cultivated identification, which would be ugly beyond measure, but an experience that was natural and immediate. The few steps that separated us had vanished; time, memory, and the wide distance that thought breeds, had totally disappeared. There was only that woman, not I looking at her.”

Just as Sri Ramakrishna’s life and his Gospel are, Krishnamurti’s life and Notebook too are filled with such experiences happening every day, sometimes several times a day. Of all the numerous experiences he describes, here is my favourite, an experience that sends thrills through me every time I read it, as much for the beauty of the experience as for the beauty of his description of it.

“A single parrot was perched on a dead branch of a nearby tree; it wasn't preening itself, and it sat very still, but its eyes were moving and alert. It was of a delicate green, with a brilliant red beak and a long tail of paler green. You wanted to touch it, to feel the colour of it; but if you moved, it would fly away. Though it was completely still, a frozen green light, you could feel it was intensely alive, and it seemed to give life to the dead branch on which it sat. It was so astonishingly beautiful, it took your breath away; you hardly dared take your eyes off it, lest in a flash it be gone.

“You had seen parrots by the dozen, moving in their crazy flight, sitting along the wires, or scattered over the red fields of young, green corn. But this single bird seemed to be the focus of all life, of all beauty and perfection. There was nothing but this vivid spot of green on a dark branch against the blue sky. There were no words, no thoughts in your mind; you weren't even conscious that you weren't thinking. The intensity of it brought tears to your eyes and made you blink – and the very blinking might frighten the bird away! But it remained there unmoving, so sleek, so slender, with every feather in place.

“Only a few minutes must have passed, but those few minutes covered the day, the year and all time; in those few minutes all life was, without an end or a beginning. It is not an experience to be stored up in memory, a dead thing to be kept alive by thought, which is also dying; it is totally alive, and so cannot be found among the dead.

“Someone called from the house beyond the garden, and the dead branch was suddenly bare.”

This is precisely what the tradition means when it says: yatra yatra mano yāti, tatra tatra samādhayah. Masters like Sri Ramakrishna and J Krishnamurti, and others who have such experiences, are the proof for the statements of the scriptures and the living tradition. They convince us that such things as the timeless tradition speaks of are possible, in a world in which believing in their possibility is increasingly becoming more difficult.

O0O

Patanjali Yoga Sutras 1

I have just begun reading Meditation as Spiritual Culmination by Swami Sarvagatananda. It is a huge book in two volumes, with a total of 1611+XXXII pages in demi 1/4 size, and is an extensive commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the most authentic text on Ashtanga Yoga. The book says nothing about Swami Sarvagatananda, which is in keeping with the ancient Indian tradition in two different ways. It agrees with the timeless Indian tradition that books are authored through people and not by people and the work is greater than the man, or woman. The other is that we do not make biographical sketches of our monks.

The book is a transcription of Swamiji’s lectures/classes given at the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society of Massachusetts, in Boston. The series of lectures were given between September 1977 and June 1981. As the Preface to the book explains, there were one hundred and thirty two lectures in all and the regular audience consisted of some thirty people who included college professors, students, office workers and retirees. Transcribing these lectures from tapes required boundless commitment and superhuman patience, as anyone who has tried to transcribe even a half hour talk [I did it recently!] would instantly agree. This work was done by George Mraz, Swamiji’s personal attendant, says the Preface. I bow my head before George’s dedication.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is a work that has always fascinated me. I first came across a detailed commentary on it in 1974 – this was Patanjala Yoga Pradeep, a commentary by Swami Omanand Teerth Ji, brought out by Gita Press, Gorakhpur and was in Hindi. It is an excellent commentary from the traditional standpoint, going into the intricacies of Yoga. I did not know Hindi at that time – not really, certainly not enough to read a book, though I had studied the language in High School for three years. The person who had gifted the book to me asked me a year later if I had read it and I said, sorry, no. He was a little annoyed, I believe, and asked if he could have the book back and I gave it to him. I do not think he read it either – he knew even less Hindi than I did. In those days very few Tamilians in Madras/Chennai knew Hindi.

I purchased a copy of my own later on. There is a photograph of Swami Omanand Teerth Ji in the book – he looks very saintly and extremely old – probably in his eighties. He must have been a great scholar – the work is very scholarly, and enriched by his lifelong practices. Among the books Swamiji has used for his commentary are the Vyasabhashya on the Sutras, the Vritti by Bhojadeva, the Tattva Vaisharadi by Vachaspati Mishra and the Vartika by Vijnanabhikshu. There are other books he does not mention by name.

It appears that Omananadji was in the habit of practicing mauna when he was requested to write this commentary. He used to break his silence and then dictate this commentary for an hour every day and others used to write it down. Subsequently before publication, the entire book was read out to him and, with his approval and correction, it was brought out in book form.

Incidentally, I have with me a very old copy of the Bhoja Vritti on the Sutras – an 1880 edition. The Vritti is edited by Jibananda Vidyasagara Bhattacharya. This copy comes from the days when I used to be a collector of old books. A Tamil gentleman had died of old age and his family wanted to donate some of his books to someone who would use them. When I heard about this, I visited their home and picked up some of the books. The Bhoja Vritti of the Yoga Sutras [in Sanskrit, with no translation] is the only one I kept with me though, and others I gave to a library. I do not think I have been fair to the family with regard to this particular book – I cannot say I have really used it, though I still intend to.

Another Hindi commentary on the Yoga Sutras, called Bhavaprakashika, is by Dr Mahaprabhulal Goswami. This is published by Chowkhambha Sanskrit Sansthan and is brief. I found Goswami’s work very close to Bhoja Vritti.

One of the most detailed commentaries on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is by Osho, under the title Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega. It is published in ten volumes and, like Swami Sarvagatananda’s commentary, is a transcription of lectures. The first lecture was given on 25th December 1973 and the last, on 10th May 1976, all in English, which should make these among Osho’s early talks in English, since his earlier talks were mostly in Hindi. Osho’s insights into Yoga are brilliant.

I once used Swami Prabhavananda’s comparatively short commentary on the Yoga Sutras as essential reading in one of the courses I taught at a business school – a course in Leadership Excellence based on Indian Philosophy. This was at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, one of India’s top business schools.

Of all the commentaries on the Yoga Sutras, perhaps the most widely read one is by Swami Vivekananda, under the title Raja Yoga. The study of the Yoga Sutras by Swami Krishnandada is available online as also studies by several others, including those of Sri Shyamacharan Lahiri Mahasaya, Pt. Baldev Mishra, Charles Johnston and Dennis Hill. Other reputed commentaries on the Yoga Sutras include those of Swami Shivanandaji and of Swami Venkateshananda, both of the Divine Life Society, that of I.K. Taimini, and Four Chapters on Freedom, the commentary by Swami Satyananda Saraswati.

O0O

Photo courtesy: Gettysberg Images

Leadership and Integrity: A Lesson from the Mahabharata

(Developed from the author’s class lectures in Indian Philosophy for Leadership Excellence to senior Management students at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur.)

“Sheelam pradhanam purushe,” says the Mahabharata, meaning character, or integrity, is the most important thing in man. Vyasa’s Mahabharata, that amazing book that is five thousand years old in its original version, never ceases to astound us with its insights into life and into human nature. After an exposure to contemporary western ideas of management, where leadership per se forms the largest area of study, when one turns to this timeless Indian epic, we suddenly realize that what the book says about itself is as true about management wisdom as about everything else: yad ihasti tad anyatra, yannehasti na kutrachit – what is here could be found elsewhere, but what isn’t here will be found nowhere else.

After the Mahabharata war is over, while Bheeshma is lying on the bed of arrows waiting for an appropriate time to die, Krishna sends the victorious Yudhishthira to his grandsire to learn about life, about human nature and about leadership from the dying man who was a master of every major branch of knowledge known to man then. One of the questions that Yudhishthira asks Bheeshma is about the importance of sheela to a leader. Though sheela is commonly translated as character, integrity is a better translation. In any case, character at its heart means integrity.

In response to Yudhishthira’s answer, Bheeshma refers to a discussion between his cousin and rival Duryodhana, now dead, and his father Dhritarashtra that took place soon after Yudhishthira’s rajasuya.

Such was the glory of Yudhishthira when he performed the rajasuya sacrifice that it would have incited envy in anyone. During the sacrifice, eighty thousand Brahmin scholars were his guests throughout the sacrifice and arrangements had been made for the stay of each of these scholars in a lavish house, each of them provided with thirty beautiful slave girls. Ten thousand other Brahmins were royally fed every day in the palace, the food served in dishes of pure gold. Precious gifts had come from every corner of the known world, kings lining up before Yudhishthira’s palace in miles-long queues day after day with gifts in the form of jewels, diamonds and other precious stones, priceless clothes and furs, weapons and vehicles, and heaps and heaps of gold. One king had come with a gift of a thousand slender-waisted, beautiful young girls, of exquisite complexion, their skins without a blemish and shining, all highly talented in the arts of serving men, all decked in gold and jewels! It was acknowledged openly: no ruler on earth possessed wealth comparable to Yudhishthira’s. His wealth then exceeded the wealth of the Himalayas, of the oceans and of all the mines of gold and jewels in the world together, says the Mahabharata. And the person whom Yudhishthira had made in charge of receiving the gifts was none other than Duryodhana himself – Duryodhana who hated Yudhishthira’s very existence! Duryodhana’s jealousy knew no bounds and he confesses it openly to his father.

Dhritarashtra tells his intemperate son that if he wanted to attain wealth similar to Yudhishthira’s, he should first cultivate character, integrity. Shree, the goddess of wealth, stays only with men who have integrity. To illustrate his point, Dhritarashtra tells Duryodhana an ancient story about Narada and Prahlada.

Prahlada the Asura was then emperor of all the three worlds, conquered by the power of his integrity. As it always happens, Indra becomes jealous of Prahlada’s power and feels shaky – there is the threat of losing his throne to someone like the mighty Asura. For the throne of Indra belonged to the man who had the highest character, who performed the most difficult austerities.

Indra assumes the form of a Brahmin and goes to Prahlada and serves him as a disciple, with the desire to learn from him the secret of his success. Prahlada tells him his success comes from his following the noble teachings of wise men. However, Indra still continues to serve Prahlada and eventually the Asura emperor, pleased with the devotion shown and the service rendered, asks his disciple to ask for a boon, not knowing he is Indra.

Initially Indra refuses politely, saying that all his desires have been fulfilled. But when Prahlada insists, he asks: “If you are pleased with me, Emperor, please give me your character, your integrity.”

Prahlada is shaken by the request, but he grants the boon since he had offered it: after all, that is what a man of integrity does. Indra accepts the boon and goes away.

Soon Prahlada sees a dazzlingly lustrous being emerging from his body and leaving him. When Prahlada asks him who he is, the being tells him that he is Sheela [Hindi: Sheel. Integrity], and he is leaving him because Prahlada has given him away. “I shall now happily live,” Sheela adds, “in the Brahmin to whom you have given me away.”

Soon Prahlada sees another radiant being emerging from his body. Asked who he is, the being introduces himself as Dharma: virtue and righteousness. After Dharma too leaves him, telling him he is going to join Integrity to live in the body of the Brahmin since he, Dharma, lives only where Integrity is. Soon Prahlada finds another effulgent being emerging from him, this time Satya, Truth, and then another, Vritta, Uprightness, and then yet another Bala, Strength, all leaving him one by one to live in the Brahmin, following Integrity.

Following Bala, it is a splendorous goddess that emerges from Prahlada’s body and when asked she tells him she is Shree, the goddess of wealth, prosperity, good fortune and all else that is auspicious. Shree tells Prahlada that she had on her own come and begun living in his body, but now she had no choice but to leave him, because she always followed Integrity, Virtue, Truth, Uprightness and Strength.

Answering Prahlada’s question, she also tells him the Brahmin was none other than Indra, Indra has robbed him of his Integrity and where Integrity is not, there can be no Dharma, no Truth, no Morality, no Strength and no wealth, prosperity or good fortune.

“dharmah satyam tatha vrttam balam chaiva tathapyahamsheelabhoota mahaprajna sada nastyatra samshayah.” - Mahabharata 12.124.62

Concluding his story, Dhritarashtra tell his jealous son that even if a man without integrity achieves prosperity, it would soon leave him since Shree cannot stay where there is no Integrity.

“Learns from this story and practice what it says,” Bheeshma tells Yudhishthira concluding the story about the importance of integrity to a leader.

Yudhishthira sums up the lesson he has learnt from his grandsire: Sheelam pradhanam purushe. Integrity is the most important thing in man.

[On a personal note, in the church school in Kerala where I studied, we had quotes from Sanskrit displayed on each classroom door. In class VI, mine said: sheelam pradhanam purushe. Coming across these words for the first time in the Mahabharata was an especially thrilling experience to me because of this childhood association.]

~*~

The story of Prahlada and Indra is symbolic. Indra in Indian culture is a common symbol for the mind: by definition, indriyanam raja indrah – Indra is the name for the lord of the senses, that is, the mind. The mind is a tempter and when we are tempted by it, we lose our integrity. When temptation enters our hearts, the mightiest among us get corrupted, unless we are masters of ourselves. That is the reason why the Mahabharata repeatedly reminds us: atma jeyah sada rajna – a king, a leader of men, should always have mastery over himself. Indian culture accepts self-mastery as the first requirement of a leader. Without self-mastery, we become preys to every passing wind of passion, of lust and greed, of jealousy and anger, and a thousand other temptations and when that happens, the first thing that results is the loss of integrity.

In the organizational context, the integrity of the leader is of supreme importance. While a leader definitely has power arising from his position, his true power base is referent power: power that comes from the respect he commands from his followers by virtue of his integrity, from their admiring him, identifying with him and looking up to him, from their trust in him.

Where the followers do not see integrity in the leader, no respect is possible for him and consequently he will have no referent power over them. Integrity builds trust, builds reputation and is a powerful influence on all around the leader. Without integrity, the leader loses the power to command.

The greatest power in the world cannot bend a man of integrity. That is why it is said that when the gods want to destroy a man of power, they first destroy his integrity, exactly as Indra did with Prahlada.

In the case of Prahlada, Indra succeeds in destroying the Asura king’s integrity. And that invariably happens when a leader has a weakness [chhidra, in the language of the Mahabharata] in him, when he is not a master of himself, has no self-mastery. We do not know what Prahlada’s weakness was – the Mahabharata does not tell us that. May be it was pride, maybe it was one or more of the many passions that prey upon the mind of the powerful and successful, we do not know. But we would be safe in concluding he had one – or else he wouldn’t have lost his sheela, integrity.

The Mahabharata tells us another story in which Indra tries to destroy the integrity of yet another epic king, and fails: the story of Marutta, a king of incorruptible character, of unshakeable integrity. [For details, please see the author’s Marutta: A Lesson in Character for our Times]. Indra’s failure with Marutta tells us: if you are a master of yourself, no power in the world can corrupt you.

Integrity works and is absolutely essential in a leader in all contexts, including the organizational context. For, integrity builds a solid reputation and high credibility and without these, no leadership is possible. Integrity is a powerful influence all around. And integrity is like milk – a drop of impurity can spoil it all. It is for this reason that a leader should invariably act with integrity.

Fearlessness is an integral part of integrity. Speaking and acting on what you believe speaks of integrity. “Walking the talk,” as we put it these days, is important. So is standing up for what you believe is right, without being swayed by what others would like us to say, and freely admitting mistakes, rather than trying to cover them up. As Brian Davis et al put it, when you make a mistake and admit it, it “will encourage others to do the same, and the problems that stem from attempts to hide mistakes can be circumvented. Admitting your mistakes will also increase your credibility because it lets others know that they will not be severely punished for making mistakes. They will believe that you understand they are human, too.”

As Robert H. Rosen says in Leading People, people “want to be proud of their leaders. They want to be led by people who maintain the highest ethical standards, not someone who is likely to cheat or deceive them or others.”

Speaking of highly effective leaders, Rosen says such a leader develops “a deep moral and psychological integrity, a kind of wholeness as a person. He balances the traits of his head [problem solving, logic, initiative] with the traits of his heart [courage, generosity, fairness, idealism, compassion]. This wholeness allows him to rely on both parts of himself and confront head on any potential ethical problem by using a wide range of skills.”

Integrity works. But, more importantly, a world in which men are without integrity would not be a place worth living in.

~*~

The redoubtable Chanakya Kautilya, the mighty empire builder of ancient India and the world’s first management guru, places such importance on integrity that when he speaks of the qualities of the prime ministers, other ministers and senior officers, he places it among the most basic requirements. Not content with that, Chanakya goes on to prescribe tests for evaluating the integrity of these people. “Assisted by his prime ministers and his high priest, the king shall, by offering temptations, examine the character of ministers,” says Chanakya. He says that “a commander of the army dismissed from service for receiving condemnable things may…incite each minister to murder the king in view of acquiring immense wealth, each minister being asked "this attempt is to the liking of all of us; what dost thou think?"

The prime ministers themselves are not exempted from the integrity test, for so great is the importance of that virtue. “A woman spy under the guise of an ascetic and highly esteemed in the harem of the king” says Chanakya, “may allure the prime ministers one after another, saying "the queen is enamored of thee and has made arrangements for thy entrance into her chamber; besides this, there is also the certainty of large acquisitions of wealth." Of course, if the prime ministers, the ordinary ministers or other officers fall for these tricks, they prove their lack of integrity, and otherwise, their integrity.

~*~

Greek mythology tells us that "Prometheus, that potter who gave shape to our new generation, decided one day to sculpt the form of Veritas (Aletheia: Truth, Integrity), using all his skill so that she would be able to regulate people's behavior. As he was working, an unexpected summons from mighty Zeus called him away. Prometheus left cunning Dolus (Trickery) in charge of his workshop, Dolus had recently become one of the god's apprentices. Fired by ambition, Dolus used the time at his disposal to fashion with his sly fingers a figure of the same size and appearance as Veritas with identical features. When he had almost completed the piece, which was truly remarkable, he ran out of clay to use for her feet. The master returned, so Dolus quickly sat down in his seat, quaking with fear. Prometheus was amazed at the similarity of the two statues. Therefore, he put both statues in the kiln and when they had been thoroughly baked, he infused them both with life: sacred Veritas walked with measured steps, while her unfinished twin stood stuck in her tracks. That forgery, that product of subterfuge, thus acquired the name of Mendacium (Pseudologos: Falsehood), and I readily agree with people who say that she has no feet: every once in a while something that is false can start off successfully, but with time Veritas (Truth) is sure to prevail."

This is precisely what happens. Lack of integrity might appear to succeed. But that success is short-lived, especially in a leader. And that is what Dhritarashtra means when he tells Duryodhana at the end of his story about Indra and Prahlada that even if a man without integrity achieves prosperity, it would soon leave him since Shree cannot stay where there is no Integrity.

~*~

And that is integrity must be genuine integrity, not a faked one.

There is a beautiful story once told by Abraham Lincoln. A farmer had in his garden a huge tree that looked truly mighty. One day the farmer saw a squirrel running up the tree and disappearing into a hole. Curious, the farmer went near the tree and looked in and what he found sent shock waves through him. The tree that looked so towering and robust was all hollow inside and was on the point of collapsing any day!

Lincoln, one of the greatest leaders ever, used to say: It is not enough for you to look mighty, you should be mighty too. “To be a leader, you must have more than the image of integrity—you must also have substance.”

And what is what the Mahabharata says: Sheelam pradhanam purushe. The most important thing, the worthiest thing, in a man is integrity. With integrity, you have virtue, truth, uprightness, strength, wealth, prosperity and good fortune. And without integrity, you have none of these. To repeat what the Mahabharata says about it:

“dharmah satyam tatha vrttam balam chaiva tathapyahamsheelabhoota mahaprajna sada nastyatra samshayah.” - Mahabharata 12.124.62

“Virtue, Truth, Ethical Conduct, Strength and the Goddess of wealth, prosperity and good fortune, all for ever cling to Integrity. Have not the least doubt about this.”

Retelling the Ramayana: Padma Purana

The voluminous Padma Purana, essentially a Vaishnavite text, makes fascinating variations in its retelling of the Ramayana story.

It is one of the largest Puranas, with around 55,000 verses, which is more than twice the size of Valmiki Ramayana, with only the Skanda Purana among the Puranas being bigger than it. The Padma Purana is thus the third largest book in Indian literature, after the Mahabharata, with 100,000 verses, and the Skanda Purana, with 84,000 verses. It consists of seven books, each called a khanda. These are the Srishti, Bhumi, Swarga, Brahma [also called Swargottara], Patala, Uttara and Kriya Khandas, in that order. The text is also divided into six khandas in some recensions, leaving out the Brahma Khanda, and into just five in others, leaving out the Kriya Khanda too.

The Srishti Khanda of the Purana has a small section dealing with Rama’s killing of Shambuka and a couple of other things. Uttara Khanda too deals with Rama’s story in a few chapters which tell the story of his birth, birth rites, the naming ceremony, etc. Here we are also told briefly of the birth of Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna as well as of Sita, Rama’s guarding Vishwamitra’s sacrifice, the weddings of the four brothers, Rama’s exile to the forest and life there, Sita’s abduction and Rama’s subsequent battle with Ravana, his return to Ayodhya, the crowning and his eventual departure from the world. The narration here is mostly the same as what is found in Valmiki Ramayana, with some variations. Rama’s story here ends with Sita entering the earth and later Rama and his brothers walking into the Sarayu accompanied by the citizens of Ayodhya, the Vanaras, the Rikshas and so on, to end their life on earth, as in the Uttara Kanda of Valmiki’s epic.

However, it is in the Patala Khanda that we have the detailed narration of Rama’s story. Though this Khanda also speaks of other things, most of the Khanda is essentially Rama’s story, named Rama Ashwamedha, which is the story of the last part of the Ramayana narrated against the background of the first Ashwamedha sacrifice that Rama conducts years after he abandons the pregnant Sita in the jungle. The story is not narrated in strict chronological order – for instance, the abandoning of Sita, an incident that takes place at the earlier part of the story, is narrated towards the end.

Let’s now take a look at how the story of Sita’s abandonment given here differs from that in the Uttara Kanda of Valmiki Ramayana.

O0O

Rama Abandons Sita: the Uttara Kanda Story

In the Uttara Kanda of Valmiki Ramayana, we meet Sita for the first time in Chapter 42, in the beautiful Ashoka Vanika gardens attached to her palace. This is a beautiful place, filled with all kinds of flowering and fruit trees, with hundreds of birds perched on the trees. A beautiful fragrance fills the whole place. There are several bowers there. There are pools and tanks with steps paved with gems, their water cool, in which stand lotuses and water lilies in bloom. In the middle of all this beauty, Rama is seated with Sita and is giving her a drink [madhu-maireyaka] with his own hands. The Ramayana compares Rama here to Indra who gives drinks with his own hands to his wife Shachi. Servants bring all kinds of delicious food. Apsaras and Naga and Kinnari women, all experts in dancing and singings, sing and dance near Rama. Several pretty women get drunk [pānavaśamgatāh] and in their intoxication, dance close to Rama.

The Uttara Kanda now tells us this is how Rama spends his all his days. He spends the first half of the day in his court, dealing with official matters, and the second half with Sita.

It is on one of these days that Rama discovers the signs of pregnancy in Sita. Rama is delighted and enquires her of her longing [the desires of a pregnant woman, which according to culture and tradition the husband should be fulfill without failure]. Sita, smiling, tells him she desires to spend at least one night in the ashram of holy ascetics living on the banks of the Ganga. Rama assures her that her desire will be fulfilled the very next day.

That night, as was his habit, Rama is with his friends, ten of them mentioned by name, sharing light moments of fun with them. In the middle of some story, Rama asks them what the people of the city are saying about him, about Sita, about Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna and about Kaikeyi. One of the friends, Bhadra, tells him the people are all praise for him, but Rama insists on hearing their criticisms too. He assures Bhadra that he can speak freely about these, for he wants to know so that he can practice what people appreciate and avoid what they criticise.

Bhadra again assures him that the people have only the best of things to say about him. But he also tells him people are not happy about his having brought Sita with him. She was abducted by Ravana and kept in the pleasure gardens of his antahpura for long and it is amazing that Rama does not detest her. The men of the city say` they are afraid that now they will have to keep their own tainted women too with them [asmākam api dāreshu sahanīyam bhavishyati] – for what the king does is what the people follow. Bhardra tells Rama people are saying many such things all over in cities and all towns [evam bahuvidhā vāco vadanti puravāsinah nagareshu ca sarveshu rājañ janapadeshu ca].

Rama asks his other friends if this is true. They all agree it is so without a doubt, such talks are common among the people. Rama immediately sends away his friends from his chamber and asks one of the guards to go and fetch all his three brothers. They come to him immediately. Rama embraces them and asks them to be seated. Then he tells them how the people of the city are talking evil about Sita and him. He reminds Lakshmana he was present when Sita entered fire to prove her chastity. Agni, the god of fire, had appeared and testified to her purity. The gods in the heavens and the sages had appeared and declared her stainless. Indra himself had appeared and handed her over to him. He knew she was pure and that was why he had brought her to Ayodhya with him. But now things have changed. The people of Ayodhya do not approve of her, do not approve of his keeping her with him.

Rama then tells his brothers that there is nothing worse than ill fame. He says he would give up his very life out of fear of the censure of the world, he would give up them, his brothers, what to talk of Sita.

Having stated this, he asks Lakshmana to take Sita the next morning and leave her beyond the Ganga in the wild forest near the ashram of Sage Valmiki. He tells Lakshmana, “Obey my order. I do not want to hear anything more on this subject from any of you. If you do, it will cause my great displeasure. My curse shall be upon you if you try to dissuade me from my decision. Do what I ask you to do if you want to remain within my command. Take Sita away from here to the forest. She has asked me to take her to the great ashrams on the banks of the Ganga. This way her desire will be fulfilled.”

As Rama speaks these words, his eyes well up with tears.

The next morning Lakshmana takes Sita to the jungle in a chariot driven by Sumantra. Sita has no idea that she is being abandoned, though evil omens throughout upset her. She can see Lakshmana’s open grief. She asks him lovingly if it was because he will have to be away from Rama for two days. She tells him she too loves Rama more than her life itself, but she does not grieve as he does. She asks him not to behave so childishly. They will visit the ashramas, give gifts to the ascetics and after spending the night there, come back.

They spend the first night on the banks of the Gomati and continue travelling the next day. Lakshmana is silent throughout the journey. When they reach the Ganga, Lakshmana leaves the chariot with Sumantra on this side of the Ganga and crosses the river with Sita in a ferry.

On the other side of the river Lakshmana is no more able to control himself. Joining his palms he weeps uncontrollably and says he wants to die rather than do what he is doing, or if there something worse than death, even that is better. Unable to stand the heartlessness of what he is doing, he collapses on the ground. Sita is shaken and asks what is wrong. It is only then that he reveals the truth.

Sita faints on hearing what Lakshmana has to say. When she comes to, she asks Lakshmana what she would say when the sages ask her what the fault for which Rama has abandoned her is. She tells him she would have ended her life – she was not doing that only because she was pregnant and she did not want her husband’s royal lineage to come to its end. Through Lakshmana she sends her respects to all her mother-in-law and all her elders at Ayodhya and assures Rama that he should not grieve over abandoning her, he should do what will get him keerti – righteous fame, and that is his dharma.

When Lakshmana leaves, leaving her to the mercy of the jungle, she falls on the ground, weeping. She watches Lakshmana disappearing across the Ganga and on the other side, feeling fully the sense of being abandoned by her husband and being all alone in the world.

Later Valmiki hears of her wailing in the forest from ashram boys who happened to be near where she was and takes her to the shelter of his ashram.

O0O

The Padma Purana Retelling

In the Patala Khanda of the Padma Purana, the palace garden scene is altogether missing. There is no scene describing Sita and Rama sitting together in the gardens attached to their palace, no scene in which Rama tenderly offers Sita drinks with his own hands, no scene in which Apsara, Naga and Kinnari women, intoxicated from drinks, sing and dance near Rama.

The Padma Purana is specific about the fairly advanced stage of Sita’s pregnancy – we are told she is five months pregnant, while Valmiki tells us only that Rama observes on Sita the signs of pregnancy.

It is rahasi, in privacy, that Rama asks her about her dohada – the desire of a pregnant woman.

And whereas in Valmiki it is the ascetics that she wishes to visit in their ashrams on the banks of the Ganga, it is specifically female ascetics that she wishes to see in the Padma Purana: Lopāmudrādikā striyah…sundarīh – Lopamudra and other beautiful women [ascetics].

It is interesting to wonder why the author of the Padma Purana felt the need to make these changes – to avoid the scene of intimacy between Rama and Sita which includes his giving her a drink with his own hands, and the scenes of drink-intoxicated dances close to Rama by Apsara, Naga and Kinnari women, which he appreciates. It is also equally interesting to wonder why the Padma Purana felt the need to change the gender of the ascetics – the ascetics of the Ramayana become female ascetics here, with Lopamudra specifically mentioned. Also, the ascetics are mentioned as sundarīh, beautiful. No doubt the princess-turned ascetic Lopamudra was an extremely beautiful woman – but beautiful is not a very common word used to describe holy ascetics.

As in the Ramayana, Rama gladly promises her that her desire shall be fulfilled the next day.

As we saw, in the Ramayana he makes the promise in the evening and it is the same night that he hears about the displeasure of the people. And it is his close friends that tell Rama about what the people are saying. When Rama hears of the evil talk of the people from Bhadra, his friend, in the Ramayana, he has been joking and laughing with his friends for a while. When he asks his friends to tell him what people say about him, his brothers, his wife and about Kaikeyi, it is his past achievements that Bhadra mentions as what people are happy about: his commanding the obedience of the Vanaras and Rikshas, his building a bridge across the sea, his slaying the mighty Ravana, etc. There is no mention about how pleased people are with his rule [It is not implied that they are not – only that it is not what they mention]. And the whole conversation, including the report of the evil thing that people say about his keeping Sita with him, is very brief.

Whereas in the Padma Purana, it is all very different. Here it is not from his friends that Rama seeks and gets feedback, but from his spies. Unlike in the Ramayana where this takes place the night after Rama’s conversation with Sita, in the Padma Purana it is in the morning, and it is in the royal court where Rama is seated with his ministers, sages and advisers, his brothers attending on him, that his [six] spies approach him to report to him. They are apparently disguised as citizens. Seeing that they wish to speak to him, Rama takes them into a secret inner chamber. Alone with them, he asks them to report to him. The question Rama asks them here is strange. “What do people say about me, and what do they say about my wife? What do they say about the conduct of the ministers?”

Lokā bruvanti mām kīdrg bhāryāyām mama kīdrśam
Mantrinām kīdrśam lokā vadanti charitam katham. [Patala 56.8]

Rama instructs them to give him the facts exactly as they are – yathātathyam.

We can understand Rama asking feedback about himself and his ministers, but it is indeed strange that he should ask his spies about what people say about his wife, who, for all we know, has no public functions. [The word used by Rama is his ‘wife’ and not ‘the queen.’]

The spies had previously met during the night and decided among themselves that the words that the washerman spoke were evil, born of a wicked heart, and there was no need to report them to Rama. They are aware of Rama’s central preoccupation in life – his keerti, righteous fame. They report that his keerti is sanctifying everyone in the whole world. Rama is happy at this report but he notices that the face of one spy is rather dull, in disagreement with the general mood. Rama questions him closely and repeatedly and eventually lays on a curse on him unless he tells the truth and then he reports what he has overheard at the washerman’s house.

In the Uttara Kanda of Valmiki’s epic, what Bhadra reports is that there is widespread displeasure among the citizens about Rama still keeping Sita as his wife after her stay in Ravana’s pleasure gardens as his captive. They speak about it in cities and towns, everywhere where people assemble. In the Padma Purana, the sixth spy reports that while his kirti has spread everywhere, because of such things as his slaying of Ravana, this is not so about his wife who has lived in Ravana’s house. He reports what he has overheard the washerman telling his wife. The implication is that only one person – the washerman – is unhappy about his keeping Sita with him.

The Padma Purana not only says all people are happy about Rama, it gives us interesting details of the conversations among Rama’s subjects at night, reported to Rama by his spies [all collected from their homes and not from the streets]. For instance, in one home a mother, suckling her infant asks him to drink as much of her milk as possible – for he is not going to get it in his coming lifetimes. There will no future lifetimes for him – those who live in Rama’s city will have no future lifetimes, they will attain liberation in this life itself. In another home, a wife compares her husband to Rama and the pleased husband denies the comparison – where is Rama the sun in the sky and where is he a mere moth; where is Rama, the sacred Ganga and where is he, but a mere pool on the road? In yet another house, there is a game of dice going on between a love-intoxicated young husband and wife. The wife beats her husband quickly at the game and declares herself the winner, making her bangles dance as she speaks gesturing with her arms. The husband, laughing, refuses to take the beating and declares he is not yet beaten and is going to beat her in an instant, by remembering Rama, as the Devas in the past defeated the Daityas. And he does exactly that and the delighted man and woman give themselves into each others arms in a tight embrace.

Interestingly, while people are certainly proud of Rama’s past achievements, it is equally about his present rule that they are happy.

It is in yet another home that a spy overhears a washerman shouting at his wife asking her to get out of his home, kicking her brutally, his eyes red with rage. “You have spent the day in another man’s house and you can go back there now. I am not going to keep you in my house.” His mother interferes and tells the man his wife is innocent but he won’t listen to her. “I am not Rama,” he says repeatedly. “He can keep his wife who lived in the house of his enemy the Rakshasa, but not I. I won’t keep a wife who has lived in another man’s house.”

The spy’s words strike Rama like lightning. He faints and collapses on the floor and the spies fan him with the ends of their uttareeyas and soon he comes to.

In Valmiki, Rama remains in control of himself when he hears the criticism, though he is deeply upset.

He immediately sends for Bharata.

In the Ramayana, it is all three of his brothers he sends for on hearing of what people say about his keeping Sita, though Rama’s order to take Sita to the forest and abandon her there is given specifically to Lakshmana. In the Padma Purana, initially it is only Bharata that Rama calls to his chamber.

Rama, weeping, tells Bharata of how his kirti, otherwise spotless, has been tainted by the words spoken by a washerman. He asks him what he should do now: end his life, or give up Sita? Saying this Rama starts shivering all over and, weeping profusely, collapses on the floor.

Bharata tells him Sita’s purity has been proved through the fire – she is agniśuddhā. And her purity has been testified by Brahma himself, and also by their father Dasharatha. He tells him his kirti that is sanctifying all earth cannot be spoiled by a washerman’s words and asks him to continue ruling the kingdom along with Sita. Bharata also tells him that Sita would not be able to live one moment if he is separated from him.

Rama agrees what he says is in accordance with dharma, and Sita’s purity has been proved by fire. But Bharata should now do what he orders – because he, Rama, is afraid of ill fame. He is giving up Sita. “Take a sharp sword and cut off [my] head, or take my wife Sita and abandon her in the forest.” Hearing these words of Rama, Bharata starts shivering all over and tears flowing down from his eyes, he faints and falls down on the floor.

Rama now sends for Shatrughna. When he comes, Bharata is still lying unconscious on the floor. Rama tells Shatrughna of the washerman’s allegations and of his own decision to abandon Sita. Shatrughna argues against this, calling it wrong but Rama keeps repeating his decision to abandon his wife until eventually, unable to stand the pain of it, Shatrughna too falls down like a felled tree.

Bharata is still lying unconscious on the floor. Leaving them there, Rama in his single-mindedness now asks the guard to fetch Lakshmana from his palace. When he comes he sees his brothers lying in a swoon on the floor. He asks Rama what terrible thing has occurred to make all this happen and Rama tells him all that has happened right from the beginning. Rama then repeats his decision to abandon Sita, hearing which, Lakshmana is stunned. Rama then gives vent to his feelings by saying that he is going to end his life – there is no point in living on the earth with his name tainted, he does not want to live any more, he is going to kill himself. He despairs that until now his brothers have invariably obeyed him and now even they are contradicting him. He fears the other kings will now revile him as healthy people revile lepers. Rama rejects all the counter suggestions of the shocked Lakshmana and orders him to obey him without delay and take Sita and abandon her in the jungle – or, alternatively, kill him, Rama, with a sword: mām vā khadgena ghātaya.

Lakshmana now recalls Parashurama who had killed his mother on the orders of his father – perhaps the right thing to do is to obey the orders of your elders. He agrees eventually, expressly telling Rama he does not like what he is going to do. Rama is pleased with his acquiescence and repeatedly expresses his pleasure. Weeping profusely, Lakshmana takes leave of Rama and orders Sumantra to bring the chariot. He goes to Sita and tells her he has been sent by Rama to take her to the ashrams to visit the female ascetics there. A delighted Sita gets ready immediately.

As the Ramayana does, the Padma Purana too describes several evil omens on Sita’s way to the jungle, the first of which happens as she takes her first step out – she trips over the threshold.

Lakshmana takes her up to the Ganga by chariot [driven by Sumantra] and then across the river by a ferry. All along he is silent and weeping, puzzling Sita. The jungle that they reach is nothing like the area were ashrams are to be found – it is wild, filled with terrifying animals and scalded trees, and there is no sign of human habitation anywhere near. A shaken Sita now insists that Lakshmana should tell her the truth. It is only then he informs her that Rama has abandoned her. At those words, Sita collapses on the ground. Lakshmana brings her back by fanning her with the end of his uttariya.

When she comes to, Lakshmana consoles her by telling her Valmiki’s ashram is close by. He then circumambulates her in reverence and then walks away, eyes streaming with tears. Sita watches him with wide eyes, unable to believe what is happening.

The Padma Purana tells us here that Sita is still unable to fully believe what Lakshmana has just said, in spite of all she has spoken. After all, says the Purana, Lakshmana is her devar [and the relation between the devar and bhabhi is of joking] and perhaps he is joking with her: hasati ayam mahābhāgo lakshmano devaro mama. She keeps looking at Lakshmana who is walking away, with unblinking eyes – animeshanā. It is only after Lakshmana has crossed the Ganga and disappeared in the distance leaving her in the middle of the fearsome jungle that she finally accepts the reality and faints again – for ‘how could Rama abandon me: I am without sin and dearer to him than his life?’ [katham mām prānatah preshthām vipāpām raghavo’tyajat]

The very forest is moved by Sita’s grief. The air of the jungle changes and a breeze starts to blow, scented with the perfume of flowers. Swans dip their wings in water and coming to Sita, fan her with them. Elephants fill their trunks with water and sprinkle it on her, washing away the dust on her body as she lies on the ground. Wild deer stand in a circle around her, their eyes wide open as hers were a moment ago. The trees around her instantly put on flowers, though it is not the season of spring.

When she comes to again, she begins wailing aloud, calling out to Rama. Valmiki who happens to go to the jungle at this time hears her cries and sends his disciples to find out who is wailing in the middle of the forest. That is how Sita reaches the sage’s ashram.

O0O

Many things here suggest that the author of the Padma Purana is trying to glorify Rama going beyond the Valmiki Ramayana, as most of the retellings of the Ramayana since Valmiki do. He drops both the light scenes in this episode – the one in which Rama sits with Sita, watching female dancers performing and giving Sita a drink with his own hands, and the one in which he is sitting and having fun with his close friends at night. It is perhaps beneath the dignity of the Rama of Padma Purana to do such things – he is not only a maryada-purushottama, but is God himself, the Supreme Lord of the Universe.

It is the need to justify him in the process of glorification that makes the Padma Purana tell us the past life story of the washerman. Through the story, the blame has been shifted quietly from Rama to Sita. It is Sita who is to blame for her abandonment, and not Rama. She is abandoned because of what she did long ago when she was a young girl – it is the curse of the birds to whom she had been cruel.

Very briefly, the washerman’s past life story says that he was a male parrot in that other life time and one day he and his wife parrot, both perched on a mountain cliff, were speaking about Rama and Sita – how Rama would wed Sita and how they would live a happy life as king and queen and so on. Sita asks her sakhis, her girl friends, to catch the birds and bring them to her so that she can get more details of her future from them. When they are brought to her, they answer all her questions, but she refuses to let them go, saying that she would let them go only after Rama comes to Mithila and weds her as they said, for they have created longing for Rama in her heart through their words. She tells them she would keep them in her palace with all love and care. The female parrot tells Sita this will not do, they will not be happy in the palace since they are birds of the wild. She also tells Sita she is pregnant [with eggs] and would go to the wild and after the chicks are born, would come back to her.

When Sita does not agree, the male parrot too speaks, promising to bring his wife and give her to Sita after the chicks are born. Sita tells him he can go wherever he likes, but she is not going to let the female parrot go. The bird requests her repeatedly to let his wife go, but Sita refuses. Eventually, the female bird give up her life after cursing Sita that she too would be separated from her husband Rama while she is pregnant. Seeing her dying, the male birds throws himself into the waters of the Ganga, vowing he would be reborn in Rama’s city and because of his words Rama would give her up. It is the male bird who dies with vengeance in his heart after cursing Sita that is reborn as the washerman.

In addition to shifting the blame for abandoning the pregnant Sita from Rama to Sita, the washerman’s past life story achieves another purpose. It says that none of his subjects is really unhappy with Rama. The only one who criticises him is the washerman – and his criticism is not valid because it is only an expression of the sorrow that Sita had caused him in his previous birth.

The Padma Purana intensifies Rama’s pain at the words of the washerman: such is his pain that he faints at the words of the spy and has to be brought back by all the spies together fanning him. It also intensifies Rama’s pain at what he is going to do to her, and through it, speaks of the intensified depth of his love for her.

True, the Padma Purana shifts the blame for Rama’s abandonment of Sita to Sita herself through the past life story of the washerman and thus exonerates Rama from the responsibility for an action which Indian culture has never been able to accept or digest. But apart from that, the Purana does not in anyway reduce Sita. She is purity itself, and her purity sanctifies the world. Such is the awe in which Bharata and Shatrughna hold her that as realization sinks in that Rama is bent on abandoning her, they both faint. So deeply are they shocked that when Lakshmana enters Rama’s chamber, they are still lying unconscious on the floor. No less is Lakshmana’s love and respect for Sita.

When evil omens are seen one after the other on her way to the forest, Sita’s first thoughts are that no evil should come to Rama or his brothers, nothing bad should happen to the people of Ayodhya. Subsequently she sees the omens as relating to herself – something bad is going to happen to her, but she deserves it, she concludes, for leaving Rama, albeit so briefly, and desiring to visit the female sages in the ashram.

The Padma Purana adds fine touches to Sita’s innocence and naivety. One example is that even after being told that Rama has abandoned her, even after she is left behind in the wild forest on the other bank of the Ganga, Sita does not believe it. As Lakshmana walks away, she keeps looking at her with incredulous eyes, suspecting perhaps he is playing a practical joke on her. After all, he is her devar, younger brother-in-law, and as a devar, he has a right to play such jokes on her.

A question that naturally arises is if the Purana’s attempt to exonerate Rama succeeds or not. The answer is in the negative. The story of the birds does in no way exonerate Rama from the responsibility for his action. Even if we take the story at its face value, it only gives a reason for the washerman to accuse Sita – it does not give a valid reason for Rama to abandon her. In fact, in the Padma Purana, Rama’s action becomes all the more glaringly disturbing. While in the Ramayana he has the reason, however invalid it is, that all of Ayodhya is speaking against his continuing to keep Sita as his wife after she has lived in Ravana’s ‘house’, here he has one only single man speaking against it – an intemperate man whose name itself, the Purana tells us, is Krodhana, Short Temper. Also, frightening is Rama’s determination to get rid of Sita the moment he hears the accusation. He calls Bharata, who faints at Rama’s order. While he is lying unconscious in the chamber, Rama calls Shatrughna and gives him the same order. He too faints and while both Bharata and Shatrughna are lying unconscious at his feet, he calls Lakshmana to him and gives him the order. The only choice Rama gives his brothers is between chopping off his, Rama’s, head and abandoning Sita in the jungle.

Both the Ramayana and the Padma Purana give us the same reason for Rama’s decision to abandon Sita: his boundless attachment to spotless keerti, untainted righteous fame, which Indian culture asked every king to strive for.

O0O

[To be continuted.]