The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  Krishna looked untroubled.

  “They are supposed to be motivated by greed. What are we motivated by? I will not fight.”

  I felt like weeping and placed Gandiva on the terrace of the chariot to show I meant it. Krishna sat without moving, the reins in his left hand, the whip slightly raised in his right hand, detached as when Shishupala of the Chedis insulted him.

  “Is there any difference, Krishna, between our defeating them and their defeating us? And when we have killed them, then what? Not even you could remove my anguish.” I wanted Krishna to speak. “Give me your blessing, Krishna, for I have never needed it as I do now, but remember, I will not fight.” I looked at Greatfather.

  “You speak like a coward, Jishnu.” It came like a whiplash, but I did not care. The tears began spilling from my eyes. “Arjuna, you will fight.” The words might have been spoken by any insensitive man. “Are you a coward, to carry on like this? The moment has come for fighting.” Krishna raised his whip arm as though to flick the horses.

  I caught his arm and blurted out: “Murder gurus? What is the matter with you, Krishna? Greatfather and Dronacharya are my gurus, I venerate them. I will not eat blood-stained food for the rest of my life.”

  The tears were streaming down my face. How could Krishna not understand what I said, he who had gone to Hastinapura to save our Dharma in the eyes of the world?

  I was angry. I shook his arm. “Let them have it all. Better a begging bowl than to kill one’s gurus. We must have been mad to think we could do it.”

  Krishna’s features did not move. I threw words against the wind but could not stop. My words came back at me. “What for? What for?” Still Krishna gazed. “Krishna, nothing, nothing, nothing could make me kill Greatfather and my gurus.”

  When Krishna spoke at last his voice was cool and musing. “You mourn, Arjuna. Why do you mourn? Those who have knowledge mourn neither the living nor the dead. Do you really believe that any being is in need of your mourning? Your words have the ring of wisdom, but not the substance.”

  I might have been in the forest listening to the sages except that he was asking me to kill Greatfather and Dronacharya and Ashwatthama. They were not “the living nor the dead”. He might as well be asking me to kill my mother. I did not answer, but I would not fight. There are ways of putting heart into a coward to make him fight. Had I not done it with Uttarakumara? But that was something else.

  I knew the difference between right and wrong, and Dharma would root me to my seat. I saw that Krishna saw it. And thus we sat and thus I would sit until Krishna turned the horses round. What else could he do since he himself had promised not to fight? So it was settled at last, the endless wavering between war and no-war. And then Krishna started speaking again, slowly.

  “Do you think that there ever was a time when I was not or you were not?” The question repeated itself in my mind. “Do you think that there ever was a time when I was not or you were not? Do you think that there ever was a time when all those lords of men for whom you grieve did not exist?” He spoke as though to a child, gently. I felt bewildered. “And do you think that any of us shall ever, ever cease to be for a single moment in eternity?”

  Eternity, eternity, eternity. Krishna was speaking from eternity. His words continued to resonate in me like the overtones of a veena whose strings have stopped vibrating. Through them came sense of what he had always said to me.

  We had come to earth for the great bloodletting, to cleanse the world of her poison. The Supreme wanted it and the earth wanted it, and they met in us.

  And Time wanted it, and it met us here on the battlefield of Kurukshetra in eternity, eternity, eternity. In eternity we were ushering in the Kali Yuga, the Age of Iron. It was time for that, but I could not move. Men would sin and kill, but it was time for that.

  He was saying even now, “Get up and fight, Arjuna.”

  1

  For a moment briefer than an arrow’s flight, I had understood: “Do you think there ever was a time when I was not or you were not?” Krishna repeated the words, perplexed that I still grieved at death. Neither in his embassy for peace nor in preparation for the war had he forgotten for a moment that we were souls that nobody could kill. His words thrummed in me as though we were all dead yet speaking to each other.

  I could not move. Krishna might as well have said, “Get up and fly, fly like Garuda.” I looked into his eyes to find the means to raise me to my feet. What I saw was something I had never seen before. There was a distance in them into which he stepped to measure me. I searched them for the life and love that tore the shields from me when we first met. Instead, I felt myself thrust forward like a wrestler, locked brow to brow against his willing me to fight. I looked out at Dronacharya’s banner. Its water-pot whipped around its mast to greet me. What penalty was terrible enough for one who killed his guru? Panic touched, then invaded me: if I killed my guru the sun would never rise again.

  There was silence but for the banners flickering in the breeze, and little bells and discs as horses shifted. You could hear elephants breathing. The conches and the war-drums, the wind instruments waited. The dumdubhies reverberated for a while. The silence lengthened; the armies waited. Only Krishna and I knew why. I forced myself to look around at Dhrishtadyumna. He raised a questioning hand against the sky. Satyaki waved. Soon others would. The men would wonder if the kings had changed their minds. But there was a ringing my ears, a sound of rushing water, like the river far below when you climb icy mountains for celestial weapons. There was movement. Voices sent their questions through our shield of silence. Then a blast cut through it all: the high horripilating note from Greatfather’s conch, insistent, calling us to order just as he called us in from games so long ago. Krishna stood to blow his Panchajanya. I should have sounded Devadatta. I could not stand and had no breath. Bheema called out to me and then in anger blew his Paundra. There was a shifting as of silence at the bottom of an ocean. When the Paundra calls it troubles great sea-monsters in the deep. They open wide their jaws in outrage and rise through endless fathoms to travel swiftly over plain and mountain.

  My skin still crept. Eldest blew five firm notes which Nakula crowed with his deadly honeyed tones. Sahadeva trod on Nakula’s heels with a series of sharp and clear sounds that ended in a shriek. The sky shook all around us.

  The King of Varanasi blew a low and deadly moan. It made the horses’ fetlocks twitch, and here an elephant raised its gold-painted trunk and there another slowly lifted jewel-studded ears. One great cloud-coloured tusker lifted a freshly manicured foot. I caught a flash of henna before it started worrying the ground. The gajaroha shot out a blue silk arm and with the jewels of his fingers stroked and scratched its head, then leaned to murmur something in its ear. Shikhandin and Dhrishtadyumna blew peal after thunderous peal. And Virata who had sheltered us so gently in our exile pierced the lingering notes with eagle cries. And now Satyaki blew as I had taught him, five short sharp calls then long disturbing ones. Drupada blew notes that rose and fell like waves swelling to drown the enemy. Draupadi’s five sons blew all together such a cacophony as to make heaven crash to earth. And then the conch I had been waiting for—Abhimanyu’s with the fierce call Krishna taught him: it stirred my heart to sweetness. Then it turned to sickness.

  “I cannot fight,” I said. My mouth was dry. Krishna fought me with his silence. I tried to raise my voice. It came out like a eunuch’s. “Look at him,” I said, choked. “Greatfather gave his life for peace, for us.” Krishna did not answer. “Dronacharya’s opprobrium was Ekalavya’s thumb. Ashwatthama— he is my brother.” I was looking at Greatfather, still, waiting. His sword sent shafts of light at me, his shield exploded in my eyes.

  “Yes, look,” said Krishna, “but look well. Greatfather waits to shed his body.” I looked. Greatfather, like Eldest, knew how to sit or stand like sculpted stone. We were all trained to it as kings and princes, but Yama stood behind Greatfather’s stillness. Death was his servant and would not co
me until he called. Let him call but I would not be that servant’s servant.

  To kill Greatfather! My mind turned to no purpose like wheels of upturned chariots.

  I looked back at our army. Uttarakumara was watching me from his elephant; he raised his sword and flashed a smile. Abhimanyu brightened, straight and proud, one hand on the golden flagstaff which flew his peacock. It smote the father in me. My hand trembled.

  Krishna was waiting. He saw that my hand trembled. My legs and body trembled.

  “No, I cannot.”

  “You will.”

  “The weight of a hundred elephants prevents me.”

  Krishna’s gaze had never left my eyes. I was jolted by their force.

  “Make me if you can. In Virata when Uttarakumara tried to run away, I found the words to make him drive me into battle. Can you do that…or let me be your charioteer. Kill them with your chakra if you must. At least, let Greatfather leave his body smiling, unbitten by his greatson’s arrows.”

  Krishna was clambering towards me over the driver’s seat. I thought I had convinced him until I saw his eyes.

  “My chakra is you,” he said to me with steely calm, his face thrust out at me. “You are my sword-arm. You are the chakra I must cast at them. Have you forgotten? Have you really forgotten who we are? Have you lost it all?” He put an arm around my shoulder and pointed at the enemy. “They are dead. Each and every one of them.” He spaced his words. “It is presumptious to think that we can kill them now. They died when they won the dice game.” After a separation Krishna had often grappled with me to make our hearts unite. Now I felt his mind grappling with mine. It brought confusion. “You chose to come. You chose to do this work with me. You have forgotten.” He withdrew his arm and with it went its comfort. I was on my own. The mystifying horror of it: to have chosen to take all knowledge and a father’s love from Dronacharya and from Greatfather, then to take their lives. That was murder and not war.

  The emblem standards blurred against the sky, and the sky itself began to whirl. I could not hold Gandiva. I turned to the great God Indra and prayed for understanding. A child spurned by his father, I turned to Indra’s mother, Aditi: “Unlock my heart.”

  “This is an age for heroes,” Krishna said. “It is a time of changing Dharma. That is what we came to do. Why do you think I drive your chariot?” I could not answer. Krishna said, “The universe rests on love. And now it waits for our love to accomplish what we came for.” He waited. “We are sitting in this chariot. All the rest was preparation. We have been riding in this chariot all our lives to meet our destiny; and it has come to meet us.” Something of this I understood, but when I bent to pick Gandiva up, my hand hung limply. I said: “When a Kshatriya hears a drumbeat or sees a spirited horse or hears a strong man’s laughter, a welcoming shout or challenge, something rises in response. These things are in our blood. Today I heard the conches and the drums. My blood surged after them, but fell back. Today I was no more a Kshatriya.”

  “It is false Dharma.”

  “I do not thrive on Dharma. Not since the dice game.”

  “Action was needed at the dice game. Action is needed now. Only a fool repeats the same mistake.” Though we were in the middle of an argument in full view of both the armies, Krishna might have been discussing vyuhas. No one was near enough to see his eyes.

  “Since the dice game I know only one Dharma: to avoid what my heart says is evil, to do what it says I must. You were right. We should have killed Shakuni when he was rolling dice. But we were yoked like oxen to our Dharma. Now my body and my mind and heart all say the same: do not attack your gurus and your kinsmen.”

  “May I remind you there are eighteen akshauhinis waiting?”

  “This archer cannot kill his Guru, not even for the love he bears his cousin.” These last words came out with a great throbbing ache that almost wrenched a sob from me. To refuse Krishna! I started peeling off my finger-guards and threw one to the terrace of my chariot. Krishna had to see I would not fight. Without a look Krishna climbed back onto his seat. “To die,” I blurted out, “is a thousand times better than eating blood-stained food forever after.” He would not look at me. I sent more words like nooses so that he might understand. They all fell short. I was battering against a wall. I battered with my words and I battered with my silence. Krishna was listening but not answering. Our horses were still, with ears pricked up. The universe was listening, but it would not answer.

  And yet, I felt the truth of Krishna’s words. Our lives were in this chariot from the very start, a preparation for what bore down on us.

  Animals must feel like this before a cyclone. I began to lose my clarity. Was our chariot standing still or streaming through another world? Our horses were not moving but we spun in loops through time and space. Krishna began to speak. It was he who pulled us through. What did Krishna say? After the war, when we were walking arm in arm in Indraprastha, I asked him to repeat what he had said before the battle.

  “What I said?” Krishna asked. He shook his head.

  I stared at him. “Everything…the vision…”

  “You do not remember?”

  “No,” I said, half-laughing, half in shame, though shame was not something I often felt with Krishna. He was too great to let you feel such things. I went on nagging him. At last he laughed and said, “I had four horses to control as well as deal with you.” “Drive me here, Krishna, drive me there, just let me have a peep at the enemy. Oh, there is Greatfather. Look at my gurus. I am not going to fight.” I have an excuse for not remembering. What excuse have you?” I left his arm and took a step back to see if he was joking. “Yes, I really could not repeat now what I said then. There is a time and place for discoursing on the universe. That time and place drew words from me. This is not the time to summon them. It is not a thing you can call up at will.” He cocked his head and looked at me. “Arjuna, in the chariot before the battle, the destiny of nations and the world hung in the balance. The words I spoke to you were fire from the sun. They did not scorch. They came to fuse. The earth had prayed for them, yearned, cried for release. It was She. The answer came to you; you had to fight. Your anguish was a prayer that called forth what you saw and heard. There was a reason for your penetrating that which to others is mysterious. Intensity calls forth intensity. Power, power. If it were to manifest itself while we stroll arm in arm like this, do you know what would happen?”

  I did. I saw the ashes of our chariot and our horses in his eyes. Each evening of the eighteen days of war Krishna had helped me, worn and bleeding, from my chariot, but on the eighteenth day he had said with urgency, “Step down, Arjuna. Now stroke the horses and give your thanks to them.” I put my arms around each horse. Each one nuzzled his cheek against my heart. When I was done, Krishna called out from the driver’s seat, “Stand back, stand back.” Then Krishna jumped. As soon as he had touched the ground a flame shot up. There was a crack. I thought it Krishna’s whip, but it was fire splitting wood. The wheels were blazing. It was no mortal fire. Before you could say Bheema, a heap of shining ashes lay below what should have been the axle but was now only air. The mound of ashes was no larger than Kaustubha, the jewel on Krishna’s breast.

  I answered then, “I would fall into ashes like the horses.”

  “We both would.”

  “Not you. You are the fire, Krishna.”

  “Yes, Krishna too,” he said. “This arm is made like yours.” He pinched his arm, then held it out to me. “Just pinch,” he said. “Ouch! To be made of something different would be to play Shakuni’s game of dice. Besides,” he said, “we have to wind things up one day—and how would the funeral fire devour it?” He laughed. Then seeing my distress, he took my arm and we began to walk again.

  So what Krishna actually said before the battle, I cannot say. But I do know he said all that a human tongue can utter when it beats against the palate of a human mouth. It was as if Mother Earth had put forth tongues to beat against the palate of the sky a
nd force down knowledge in cascades of searing grace.

  Krishna gave me yoga in that chariot. I had lived twelve summers and as many winters in the forest listening to sages and had never understood what yoga was. I knew I wanted it then as I had never wanted Sindhu horses or, yes, even Shiva’s weapons. And if I have forgotten almost all that Krishna uttered, I recall my question, “What happens to a man like me, when he aspires? Does he not soar only to plummet like a tattered eagle?” He showed me how even a little effort is never wasted, like seeds that sprout after millennia. Then it happened. I saw the battlefield behind my eyes. The battlefield was going. The last thing that I saw was Eldest peeling off a finger-guard. Had he changed his mind? Eldest, Bheema, Nakula, Sahadeva, akshauhinis, elephants, chariots, flags melted into a firmament where worlds hung like pearls around the sky that had become the neck of Krishna, deeply blue. I knew at last who Krishna was. My very self. The Self, the Charioteer. He was the colour and the taste of me, my fibre, and my grain. Not of me alone. He wove the worlds.

  With love He wove and held them close. Before all things He stood.

  He was what stood behind.

  He was my breath’s breath. The beating of my heart. He was the heart that pounded for us all. Everywhere and always.

  I could see only Krishna’s throat, the blueness behind blue, a shade that eyes of flesh can never know. He stretched beyond where the human mind or heart might dare. And even as I blinked, he shrank and disappeared. A blazing mystery free of space and all the veils of Maya. At last, he stole my mind and flung me through the universe beyond death and beyond birth where all else flows through eternity.

  How to say it? What is the Life of Life, the saltness of the sea’s salt, the light of the sun’s Om in which worlds come to be, the core of being, its very notion, the leaping flame of heart’s desire? It was He. It was He. It was He.

  No human mind contains the All.

  When you awake within a dream not knowing where you are, you have to look around. I could no longer look or search. My being, no longer mine, straddled universes and beheld them being born, rising every moment and ebbing once again in Brahma’s indrawn breath. And then I saw before me Krishna. Only Krishna. All the world had taken form in Krishna. He was on every side. Everything was Krishna. The cosmic tree, the rites, the mystery of giving, the word that the tongue utters, the food it tastes, the universal fire that is and changes all, the sacred offering, the nurturer of the world, the knowledge of the Vedas, the unseen Witness and the Friend, the first beginning and the end, the storehouse and the seed within the realm where nothing cannot be. Everything looked out from Krishna’s eyes. Then there appeared the multitudes offering their fruits, their flowers, their leaves, water oblations—Krishna offering unto himself, accepting all into himself.