The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  When the water oblations had been offered, the boys purified of their father’s death, and the Brahmins feasted, Pandu’s family came to live in Hastinapura under the protection of their uncle, King Dhritarashtra.

  There was now a sense of uncertainty which no one dared mention: the people needed to see the royal umbrella opened. They had lived too long without an established king; Bheeshma, just and upright, was ageing and, according to the Shastras, Dhritarashtra, because he was blind, could not be king; and now Pandu was dead. Vidura’s mother, of course, was not a princess.

  The five princes were young, and so were the numerous sons of Dhritarashtra. People knew that the crown prince was Yudhishthira, the eldest son of the last king, Pandu. It should be him of course, but then what of Dhritarashtra’s son, Duryodhana? He had been the one in the public eye, a handsome, gifted boy, and ambitious.

  It was nothing more than a vague insecurity, the need for certainty, for a name. Nobody doubted that Bheeshma, upright, honourable, and resourceful, would, with the help of Vidura the wise uncle, sort everything out. It was in their hearts and in their dreams at night that the people of Hastinapura had misgivings.

  Vyasa was the first to put the vague foreboding into words, and it was to old Satyavati, his mother, that he spoke. He sent all her servant women away and, sitting beside her, facing her altar, he said, “Mother, the seeds of decay have been planted. The best days are over. Earth has lost the flower of its youth with which it has lived as in a cloud of happiness. I see the doors opening for sorrow and pain. Sin will absorb the minds of the majority. Your grandson, Dhritarashtra, is not strong enough to withstand it.” Satyavati turned her gaze away from Vyasa. She could not believe that with Bheeshma beside her, they would not continue guiding the destiny of the House of Kuru. Vyasa’s eyes were half closed as he spoke. He was gazing into the future.

  “Annihilation. Complete annihilation.”

  Satyavati’s dream was to see her numerous great-grandchildren growing into valiant warriors who would make the Kuru House the strongest Aryan refuge in the whole of Bharatavarsha. Nobody could fail to recognize the intelligence, grace and genius of Arjuna, the modest wisdom of Yudhishthira, the strength of Bheema, and the irresistible beauty of the twins. They were the grandsons of the greatest of sages, sons of gods, people were beginning to say. She loved the sons of Dhritarashtra, so many that she could not always remember their names; but the enchantment of Pandu’s sons had taken her beyond grandmotherly delight, and it was the vision of an invulnerable kingdom that had begun to form in her dreams.

  But Vyasa said, “They will destroy each other, the sons of Dhritarashtra and the sons of Pandu. Of Dhritarashtra’s sons, not one will be left fighting to support their brother Duryodhana. Will you be able to stand this? Can you bear to live in such a world? Do not let an illusion of happiness enmesh you in these last few years of your life, for then you will no longer want to live. Take the sorrow of the death of Pandu as an excuse and go to a hermitage in the forest. That way lies peace. Here, there is nothing but evil and suffering.”

  The eyes of Vyasa were luminous even as he spoke of evil and suffering. The words resounded in Satyavati’s being. Yes, they had done so much to get Ambika and Ambalika to bear sons; and here was Pandu dead, cursed by a rishi through his own Adharma. If her fearless Pandu could be cursed, why not the sons of Pandu and Dhritarashtra? It was true that there was the blood of Vyasa in Duryodhana, but there was also something in him which, till this moment of Vyasa’s prophecy, she had not wanted to make room for in her mind. And there had been terrible omens at his birth.

  She had shaped and planned and schemed enough. The burden of tragedy must fall on Bheeshma; he was strong and she was tired.

  When she, Ambika, and Ambalika passed through the gates of the city on their way to the forest from which Kunti and her sons had come, it was like a signal for life to start again.

  The children laughed in the courtyards and corridors and their training in the practice of arms and archery under my mother’s brother, Kripacharya, who was the royal instructor in weapons, began in earnest.

  Dhritarashtra was blind and he refused to see. It took him a long time to become aware of what was happening, even when his half-brother Uncle Vidura told him of the difficulty. Vidura and Greatfather Bheeshma each had a hundred times more wisdom than Dhritarashtra had lack of it. But seeing availed little, for what can you do with boys who play and fight? There is always a contest for supremacy among young men.

  Uncle Kripa said it was hard on Duryodhana. He had always been the eldest son of the acting monarch, handsome and strong, with no one to challenge his ascendancy; and now here was Bheema, who was full of laughter and tactlessness, but Yudhishthira, seeing resentment growing in the hearts of Duryodhana and his brothers, tried to speak to him. There was no curbing Bheema. Restraint was foreign to his nature, and his own brothers who loved him had to learn to give as good as they got. Their universe had always been full of Bheema, his practical jokes and his mindless laughter.

  One day when Duryodhana was going to a ceremony, feeling every inch an heir to the throne in the best silk cloth and with garlands around his neck, Bheema tripped him up deliberately in front of his own brothers, cousins, and dozens of Brahmins and servants. At that moment hatred took a deep and abiding place in the heart of Duryodhana. He knew that he wanted to destroy Bheema.

  Bheema, oblivious of this hatred, continued to play on Duryodhana all the tricks that he always played on his brothers. One day Duryodhana was sitting in a sturdy old mango tree with his brothers. Bheema walked up to it, pretending in his ponderous way to be unaware of its occupants.

  “I wonder how many mangoes I can shake out of this fine tree?” And before anybody could climb down, Bheema had caught two of the main branches, one in each hand, and three boys came tumbling down with the fruit. Bruised and seething with venom, Duryodhana ran to his uncle Shakuni.

  A year later, Duryodhana at the age of sixteen made his first attempt on Bheema’s life.

  8

  We had been living with my uncle Kripa in Hastinapura for some weeks before I actually spoke to his pupils, the princes. I was walking with my father when we found them dressed in silken clothes and peering down a well. My father raised his arm in the Brahmin’s blessing and walked up to them.

  “What do you seek in the well, noble princes?” Several voices, some of them piping, others the breaking voices of young men, started speaking all together. Duryodhana was peevish and made his high-pitched voice heard. Their ball had fallen into the well.

  “And it was your fault, you great clot,” he said, turning to Bheema.

  “Yours, I thought, Lady Butterfingers.” Bheema took a step back at the same time Duryodhana took a step forward, hand on sword. It was a little dance I was to see often performed. A tall pleasant-faced boy with a long nose stepped in and put his hand on that of the insulted prince. “Take no notice,” he said. “Bheema means no harm.” He stretched his arms to keep the two apart. He was more slender than the other two and I guessed he was the eldest.

  I stood rock still, removed as far as I could be from the aridity of my ashram life into a palace garden with artificial pools and creepers of all kinds trained over trellises. Peacocks flew into a tree as these handsome bejewelled princes with swords at the waist confronted each other.

  Something in me said, “Now at last your life has begun,” and my head pulsated where my life-gem grew.

  “Noble Prince,” said my father, who seemed as delighted as I was, “in your haste to place the blame you forget about the ball.” Then he started reciting a proverb to give point to his argument. Most of the young men listened with the respectful silence due to elders, but Duryodhana cut rudely into the last beautifully modulated syllables, “Forget about the ball? You can forget about anything when Bheema is around. It is certain to get smashed or lost.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” said my father, his eyes twinkling in anticipation. Duryodhana, probabl
y fearing another pedagogic outburst, turned his head aside and my father, who did not brook impertinence, called me forward smartly.

  We had not been in Hastinapura long and I was still dressed in my deerskin. My hair was unoiled and my feet were bare. I hesitated to step into this legendary world of the Kuru princes which my mother and my uncle Kripa had told me about. I had enjoyed standing behind my father and looking in as through a window: that was what I wanted to continue doing, for I could not help seeing my father as a dark, emaciated, junglylooking creature in contrast to all this magnificence. I forgot everything but the mantra which welled up inside me. I was sure that he was going to ask me to retrieve the ball, but he suddenly bent to pluck a stalk of grass. He took the ring from his little finger and dropped it over the side of the well. Then he shot the stalk of grass from his bow. It passed through the ring and found the ball. He sent an arrow into the tail of the stalk and then another until a chain formed and stood up against the edge of the well.

  There was a profound silence.

  I had never forgotten my mother’s grief at never having more than three days’ provisions in the house, but now in the silence I understood the eyes of the princes gazing at my father and I knew we would never lack for anything again.

  A warning voice inside me said, “But it is his, not yours.” Then a peacock broke the silence, and all the boys were shouting, “Sadhu, well done.” They pushed forward to peer as my father pulled out the chain with the ring and ball hanging from it. He placed the ring on his finger and holding the ball out said, “Who is the eldest?” Duryodhana had already stepped forward to take the ball, but all the Pandava brothers and some of the others pointed at Yudhishthira. “Yudhishthira, he is the eldest.” Yudhishthira, the tall, wellpoised boy, hung back, but the huge one gave him a great shove towards my father. Despite himself he jostled Duryodhana. Duryodhana turned away abruptly. I saw a flash of hatred in his eyes. His gaze swept over me, and although the hatred was not for me, I felt the lash of its tail.

  My father could easily have gained a recommendation to Bheeshma through my mother’s brother Kripa who had until then been the preceptor to the young princes. Not only the Pandavas and the sons of the blind king Dhritarashtra, but the princes of the Houses of Vrishni, Bhoja, and Andhaka attended the Hastinapura martial arts school. Nonetheless, my father did not want to risk another rebuff at court. This very graphic demonstration of what he could do was immediately reported to Bheeshma, and my father was asked to teach the more advanced students archery and the other martial arts.

  He soon became the undisputed head of the school and although he did everything to conceal it, I was his most privileged and best-loved pupil… at first.

  For the first time there was plenty in our lives. I was glad once again to have been born a son of Drona the Brahmin. It was even better than being the son of a king: the hatred of Duryodhana for his cousins, particularly for Bheema, permanently filled the air with the sort of tension that precedes a cyclone.

  It would have been worse had my father not kept us all hard at work. Indeed, there was little time to rest in the fine mansion we had been given. We boys were made to get up before dawn, go down to the shining river with our brass water pots for our ablutions with sleep still in our eyes, and then there was the chanting of prayers. I, who had heard these prayers from my infancy, now in the company of these young princes, heard and repeated them as though for the first time. Life was renewed. It was not simply about living at the palace, nor even that my father had regained his dignity, nor that I could drink milk and curds as much as I liked. For me it was about being with the Pandavas, with Arjuna.

  As the great Guru’s son, I was courted by Duryodhana who gave me a gold-encrusted bow and a ruby ring, but it was the sons of Pandu who made my world. First of all, there was the bond between them. They spoke to each other without words. Once when I was about to ask the twins which of them had been first, Yudhishthira said to me, “Sahadeva is the younger of the two,” and another time when I had been going to ask Yudhishthira how he had liked it in the forest, Bheema said, “There is much to be said for life without Duryodhana.” I took another look at Bheema, for I had not credited him with thought-reading.

  Yudhishthira blinked as if he himself had unwittingly spoken, though of course it was just the sort of remark he would never have made. Each of the five brothers was remarkable each in his own way, yet there was no doubt as to who was the most radiant and whom I wanted for a friend: Arjuna. He was the most intelligent and the bravest too, I thought—until I got to know Yudhishthira and Sahadeva. Sahadeva seldom spoke, but when he did his words were luminous. He was a scholar and a seer. Both he and Nakula were physicians. They seemed to bestow good health upon those around them.

  I know my father felt the same about Arjuna as I did, and had I not been his son, all of his secret mantras would have gone to him. As it was, Arjuna charmed several astras out of him before he knew what Arjuna was doing, as he afterwards confided, smiling at his own fondness.

  None of us wanted to be late for my father’s classes. As the sun came up we joined our hands and, standing on one leg, chanted to the Creator of Day.

  OM!

  We meditate upon the glorious splendour

  of the divine life-giver.

  May He Himself illumine our minds!

  OM!

  There was no time to let the “OM” finish vibrating in us before we snatched at the water pots waiting to be filled for my father. Whoever got back first got extra tuition. My father had given me the vessel with the widest neck. But Arjuna must have learnt a mantra, for the water gurgled into his pot as quickly as into mine and we would race back to find my father smiling slyly at the door. He seemed happy whichever of us arrived first, and I know there were times he forgot that Arjuna was not his son. I forgot it myself and was glad when Arjuna was there beside me to start the class. He was my only rival, and I always did better when he was with me. I still wonder that I was not jealous of him in those days. It was a good thing that I was not, for he soon outstripped me in grace and agility as well as accuracy. He could shoot an arrow as well with the bow string pulled to his left ear as to his right. It was the same with the mace and the sword or any other weapon. We called him “Two hands”, and soon his agility earned him the name of “Four hands”.

  These were the happiest days of my life. I never again met any man I loved as much as Arjuna, except of course his cousin Krishna. But Krishna belonged to another world.

  I soon learnt not to show my love and admiration for Arjuna in front of Duryodhana, whose jealousy outdid that of anyone I knew. Since his cousins had arrived in Hastinapura, he must have been the most frustrated prince in Bharatavarsha. It was difficult for him to have been the oldest, the most handsome, petted and spoiled, and suddenly to have his more gifted and admired cousins thrust upon him. During the brief moments that Duryodhana forgot his jealousy, he could still charm us, but increasingly he was devoured by malice. He resented all five cousins, but Bheema was a perpetual offence to him. They were alike in their rash and unthinking movements, but Bheema was like a child, a great innocent, quick to forgive and also to ask forgiveness when he realized that he had half crippled us with his pranks.

  Duryodhana did not excel at my father’s archery classes though he had skill and determination. He watched Arjuna and me with a baleful eye. His championing me was embarrassing. Like Bheema, he was good with the mace and often, when they were practising, I thought they would kill each other. My father and Uncle Kripa had to pull them apart. But in the new school of fighting, maces were outdated. My father wanted us to be able to kill from a distance beyond the enemy’s reach. We had to aim from a speeding chariot, a galloping horse or a floundering elephant, and Arjuna practised so hard that he even learnt to find his target by sound in the dead of night.

  One day Duryodhana complained to Greatfather Bheeshma that my father was teaching Arjuna archery skills which he taught nobody else. Bheesma called my father.<
br />
  “Duryodhana complains,” said Greatfather Bheeshma with a comfortable smile to which my father responded with his own smile. This was at the beginning of Duryodhana’s complaints, and neither Bheeshma nor my father had yet realized that there would always be more.

  “It is not quite like that, Best of Rulers,” my father said to Bheeshma. “As you very well know.”

  “All too well. But do something. He ruins his father’s peace of mind and threatens suicide if, as he says, we continue to favour the Pandava brothers. Dhritarashtra summons me frequently.”

  My father shrugged his shoulders. “Tell him and his father that I will teach Duryodhana an incantation that will help him shoot every leaf from a tree with a single arrow. I will give it only to him. The rest is his responsibility.” Bheeshma smiled. He knew that this Acharya did not give archery mantras for the asking. One either earned them, or earned a hard lesson.

  What Duryodhana got was the latter. My father rose particularly early and stole out with him and Arjuna. They went down to the river to bathe, and when they got there my father asked Arjuna to run back for his towel. Arjuna, who had heard that Duryodhana was to be given a special mantra, had hoped to share in it, but down river, with a great show of secrecy, my father was whispering in Duryodhana’s ear. Then with a sly smile he told him to keep it secret if he wanted to retain its power.

  Duryodhana went straight to a big neem tree, drew the yantra beside its roots, and shot his arrow. The tree shed all its leaves as though traversed by a great wind. As soon as Duryodhana ran home to boast, Arjuna went up to the tree. He memorized the yantra, rubbed it out, and drew it beside another tree, then shot his arrow into it. Leaves fell like the enemies he would later slay with a single arrow.