The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata Read online

  “What is it, Urmilla?”

  “Your mother wishes to see you, my Lord.”

  “I have already made my obeisance.”

  “Yes, my Lord!” the girl smiled. There was nothing that went on in the quarters of Satyavati, Ambika, or Ambalika that she did not know. She was the natural confidante of many of the women and some of the men.

  Bheeshma followed her. Satyavati sat straight up on her couch, her hair was coiled and neatly tied back, and her clothes were fresh and clean. Had it not been that she sat too straight, Bheeshma would have been sure that she had solved her problem. But she told him something which, though he never allowed himself to be surprised after the fisher chief’s hut, astonished him. But why not? Was it so unlikely that others had desired her with her perfume and her beauty? If a king, then why not the great Rishi Parashara?

  And Satyavati’s son by him was Vyasa.

  Vyasa, the great sage with the glowing eyes, the most reverend of sages who stopped at the palace when he came down from his mountain.

  Vyasa had deep eyes and his skin was burnt from the sun, his matted hair was piled up in a knot. Vyasa was marked by the penance he practised, and his fasts had eaten away the flesh from his strong frame. When Bheeshma had met Vyasa, he had seen mainly the depth of the sage’s eyes. But now he saw him through the eyes of Amba’s sisters, the wives of the beautiful Vichitraveerya.

  If Vyasa was willing to give Ambika and her sister sons, the old fisherman was not so mad after all. There could be a king of his blood. Satyavati’s blood.

  Vyasa arrived from the Himalayas. Though he had made a vow to have no wives, no more children, his mother’s wish came first.

  The court astrologers had been consulted for auspicious dates within the seasons of Ambika and Ambalika, but since it was to be kept secret, the information was given in symbols and riddles, none of which seemed to disturb the astrologers at all. Unperturbed, they ploughed their way through countless calculations and produced two dates, which Vyasa laughed at. He said he would come when he was ready. So poor Ambika, perfumed and flower-bedecked in all her finery, sat waiting and trembling in her apartment with Urmilla, who always attended the most difficult moments. For four nights Urmilla pressed Ambika’s feet and back and stroked her forehead and sang to her until she slept. On the fifth night Vyasa was announced.

  “Your Lord has come, my Lady.” And with a last caress on Ambika’s head and a smoothing of her clothes, Urmilla slipped out of the room, bowing as she went.

  Ambika with a little strangled cry fell to her knees and took the dust from his feet; what she saw chilled her heart. These thin feet had walked the length and breath of Bharatavarsha and climbed the Himalayan mountains, naked. They were scarred by ice and charred by the sun and were the feet of a mendicant. Ambika remembered the beautiful perfumed and oiled feet of her dear Lord Vichitraveerya. He had lifted her up by the elbows on the first night, but this creature whom she was reluctant to discover left her on the floor. There was a smell of a strange sort of incense about him as of ashes, and the question which had been tormenting her and Ambalika for these last days returned: would the great sage impregnate her by mantra, yantra, or as a husband? She did not know how to behave. At last, when nothing happened, she sat back on her heels cautiously and looked up from behind the veil with which she was trying to hide her confusion. What she saw was a gaunt, dark man with greying top knot and beard, and again she thought of Vichitraveerya’s groomed and perfumed moustache, his soft and shaven cheeks.

  The sage was looking down at her with an inward-turned gaze. So it must be by mantra. She had heard of the gods impregnating women by simply looking at them. It was probably happening even now, and she hung her head and began to pray for a strong and virtuous son as beautiful as Vichitraveerya. But hardly had she finished her prayer than she heard a cavernous voice saying:

  “Come, child.”

  She tried to push herself up, but there was no strength in her legs. A lean hand clasped her forearm, and where she felt a sudden sharpness were the longest fingernails she had ever seen. Again she nearly fainted.

  “Come, child, for what we do, we do not do for ourselves but to call a soul down into this world and house.”

  Ambika understood the kindness of the words and knew that the cavernous voice was due only to the sage’s habitual silence. But when they reached the couch, the repulsion for his body was too great. She wanted to accept this gift graciously, to make the sage welcome, but involuntarily her hand clenched and her eyes shut tightly.

  When she was alone she wept with shame for she knew she had behaved badly. Urmilla’s fingers were already caressing her hair, soothing her brow, collecting the scattered petals from the bed.

  “Urmilla, I could not. Will it be all right, Urmilla?

  “Of course, my Lady. It will be a fine strong son; with such a father you will surely bear a god, my Lady.”

  “But, Urmilla, I was cowardly. Did you see how frightening he was? What if my son were to look like that?”

  “But, my Lady, he is like that because of his penances. He is a fine beautiful man. We would all be like that, I dare say, if we lived in the Himalayas with nothing but the rocks and ice to pare our nails.” Ambika shuddered and, despite herself, closed her eyes. When she opened them, tears flowed down her cheeks and ran into her hair.

  “My Lady, we must pray that the child will have the wisdom and virtue of his father, and then you will be the most fortunate mother in the world. As for the rest, we will rub oil into his little body every day. Why, of course he will be beautiful like any other little prince.” And with such assurance and more massage, song, and murmured endearments, Urmilla managed to put her mistress to sleep. Then she slipped away to report to Satyavati, who clicked her tongue in irritation and said:

  “Silly girl. I hope she did not anger him.”

  “No, my Lady. I saw him as he came out and he smiled at me.”

  Satyavati sighed with relief. “Poor girl, is she all right?” She felt like a mother again at last.

  “I left her sleeping,” said Urmilla.

  Then it was Ambalika’s turn to receive the sage. Having been warned and primed by both Satyavati and Ambika, Ambalika managed to keep her eyes wide open and staring, but she was pale and faint with fear and a cold dew covered her body.

  Again Urmilla soothed her young princess to sleep and went to report to Satyavati.

  In the morning Vyasa went to take the dust from his mother’s feet and touched his fingers to his eyes. Apologetically he said, “Mother, I did my best, but your daughters were in terror. It is not their fault, but you see, Mother, my austerities have gained for me this: my words come, have results according to their truth, and the actions in which I am involved have somehow to express that truth.”

  Two sons were duly born. To Ambika, Dhritarashtra, fine and strong but blind; and to Ambika, Pandu, beautiful and sweet but paler than the whitest moon. It was said that this was because Ambika had closed her eyes and Ambalika had been pale with terror.

  When Ambika was told by Satyavati that she would be given another chance, she was faint with horror and, as soon as she could without being discourteous, she took the dust from Satyavati’s feet and fled to her room. When Urmilla appeared, she flung herself into her arms and sobbed hysterically. “I cannot, I cannot. This time it will be worse. I will shrivel up; my limbs will draw themselves into my body; and my son will be born shrivelled up and botched. Urmilla, you will have to receive him.”

  It was thus that in Ambika’s stead Urmilla, bathed and scented and adorned with flowers, waited in Ambika’s chamber. She prostrated to Vyasa and then, getting up, led him without explanation to a couch. She washed his feet in a basin of scented water, performed puja before him, and adorned his forehead with rice grains and flower petals. She sprinkled his feet with jasmine and placed garlands on him with calm and deliberate love.

  Vyasa sat still and watched her. At last he smiled slightly and slowly said, “Are you
not afraid of my long nails?”

  “Oh no, my Lord,” she said with her cheerful smile. “I know you have no one to pare them; may I do that for you?”

  “If it pleases you, my child.” So Urmilla paired the nails of Vyasa’s hands and feet. She rubbed oil into his body and lovingly combed out his hair. When she had finished Vyasa was smiling. She knelt down at his feet again and with a smile of her own she said, “I am ready, my Lord.”

  And thus was conceived Vidura, the best of the three brothers, the incarnation of Dharma, the Lord of Righteousness.

  Before taking final leave of his mother, Vyasa said to her, “Mother, because you gave me life and because I promised you, I have been with a woman and given life three times, but do not ask me again, Mother. It would not be fitting, for I have renounced all attachment.” He looked at Urmilla, who stood behind Satyavati’s chair. “Be kind to her, Mother. She bears the best of your sons, and he will guide the House in righteousness.”

  5

  I, Ashwatthama, am the son of the Acharya, Drona. He was born in the water pot of Bharadwaja when the sage lost his virtue looking at an Apsara. My mother Kripi, Kripacharya’s twin, was born from the seed of an ascetic who beheld a beautiful young woman. Thus the story came to me, filtered through the smiles, the tears, and the gentle voices of two women—my mother and Kunti. I could never get my father to talk about anything except weapons and the Vedas; but my mother Kripi, who with her twin brother had been found and adopted by King Shantanu, was a sweet pious woman, always ready to recount stories of births, ancestors, and antecedents, and of who had married whom. She, Kripi of the short hair, as she was known, was a merry, kind person who would have been well content with the simple pleasures of life if her destiny had not taken her, both in infancy and after her marriage, to the palace in Hastinapura. As a child I had asked again and again for the story of how I got my name and my protective birth gem. She always replied in exactly the same words so that I would become lulled and content as I sat by her cooking fire, correcting her if she changed a word.

  “In the birth room I was recovering from the effort and wondering why I could not hear your voice and whether you were alive, and I was calling on the women when I hear a horse entering the room!” At this point we always fell about with laughter, and I would do my horse imitations till she hushed me with her finger on my head gem so that the story could go on. “Not even the sages know, but they say it is your energy and life and health; and as for the horse, of course it was you, my tiny son with such a big voice, the same one you have to this day. In no time it seemed the whole forest had heard you, and the Brahmins decreed you be called Ashwatthama, because of that first horse like neigh you had let out. We all loved to hear you laugh, especially your father. ‘Oh,’ he would say, when I was admiring the dainty perfection of your soft fingers, ‘he is made for arms and for fighting, as you will see in the fullness of time,’” and she would imitate his prophetic tone. “‘We are Brahmins, my Lord,’ I would remind him. But he would move your limbs to make you laugh and then, as if by chance, pull your right hand back to meet your ear as though a bow string were ready between your fingers.” I remembered that.

  Satisfied, I would wheedle and charm a tidbit from her and run to play at war, leaving my mother with her memories. While I was playing at warriors with my father and listening to my mother’s court stories which came to her through her brother Kripa, Arjuna and his brothers, the sons of the pale Pandu, were growing up in another forest and this part of the story my mother later got from her great friend Kunti, King Pandu’s widowed queen.

  When Amba stepped into the fire, Arjuna and his brothers and their cousins who would start the great war were yet unborn. All these cousins were the grandsons of Vyasa. Even their fathers were still children whose education was in the hands of their uncle Bheeshma; there was nothing that a Kshatriya should know that he did not teach them.

  Vyasa’s son by Ambika, Dhritarashtra, was enormously strong and only his blindness prevented him from being monarch and becoming skilled in most of the martial arts; Pandu, the pale son of Ambalika, was an archer of great skill and grew more handsome and sweet by the day. It was Vidura, the son of Urmilla the handmaid, who stored the wisdom for the three brothers; yet even if his mother had been an empress he could not have been king, for he was the youngest. It was he who later shaped Yudhisthira’s finest qualities. Pandu, because of Dhritarashtra’s blindness, reigned with the assistance of Vidura.

  Once again Bheeshma had to put his mind to finding brides. Sometimes we student warriors used to say, “What use is to learn archery when all our years will be spent at swayamvaras and in begetting heirs!” Certainly in Hastinapura a large part of Bheeshma’s life was determined by these matters.

  The question of a bride for Dhritarashtra was a delicate one because of his blindness and Bheeshma, who spoke to Vidura about everything, asked him how they should go about arranging a marriage for one who could not see his bride. There were certain areas where all Bheeshma’s training failed him and, after his blunder with Amba, he suspected that he knew nothing about women and indeed, sometimes, when the sense of my own guilt lifted, it looked to me as though all the calamities might have come from Bheeshma’s inability to judge them. In any case he was to understand Draupadi as little as he had understood Amba—but that was waiting curled up within our generation.

  Everybody knew of Gandhari, daughter of Subala, King of Gandhara, the north-west mountain kingdom. She was beautiful, as so many princesses are; her piety was legendary, and the elders thought that such a one might not be disturbed by Dhritarashtra’s blindness.

  It was her father who came with a horoscope indicating that she would become a widow in a very short time. Gandhari, who never lacked for initiative once she had made up her mind, managed, much to the annoyance of her father, to get a Purohita to celebrate the marriage rites between herself and a little grey donkey that carried the laundry to the river. A few hours later the donkey died. By which time Subala her father thought, I suppose, that it might be well to marry her off as soon as possible. Gandhari not only insisted on marrying the blind prince but also, from the day of her decision, bound up her eyes with silk, not only so as not to see anything which her husband could not see but in order not to see her husband’s flaws—and that, we were to say, was the only way she could ever have borne him. At the time, however, all agreed it was more than a noble gesture. Subala himself did not come to Hastinapura but sent her with her brother, Shakuni.

  I, of course, was not of that generation and did not see the marriage; but I was never tired of hearing of the impression Gandhari and Shakuni made. They were both most unusual, Gandhari not only by reason of having tied the silk over her eyes, but because of an alertness in her whole being. She was of course beautiful, and it was her best feature not her worst that she had hidden from the world: her great luminous grey eyes glowing with the knowledge and the power which came from her devotions to her chosen deity, Shankara Shiva. By the time I met her you could see from the attentive way in which she sat, that if she could not see with her eyes, she saw with her whole body.

  Though I was but a boy when I came to the court, I felt this myself. It was she who led Dhritarashtra everywhere, for she had the power of inner sight. It was always her arm he looked for. He trusted her more than a hundred pairs of eyes, and through the years they seemed to have grown together as though she were his left side; but, all too often, on her own left side was this same brother Shakuni who had accompanied her to the wedding. Physically, they were obviously of one stock, both straight and beautifully shaped. Shakuni had large grey mountain eyes; but while Gandhari did not seem to care whether she pleased or not—yet she impressed everybody as being extraordinary—Shakuni tried to please all the time and while he charmed many, it was a fascination that left a bad taste in the mouth. The first time I saw him in Hastinapura, I disliked him and felt ashamed to be fighting on the same side as him.

  He went back to his mou
ntains for a time after his sister’s marriage, but not for long enough.

  He was back in Hastinapura to celebrate the marriage of Pandu to the noble Kunti and then later to Madri, Kunti’s beautiful co-wife. And inbetween and afterwards he was always there sticking his hooked nose in palace affairs, scanning faces and events with all his sharp senses.

  It was said that even Bheeshma, who knew how to hold his tongue, was heard to wish him back in his mountainous regions.

  With the deaths of Chitrangada and Vichitraveerya, Bheeshma had not only to manage the kingdom but to bring up three boys as warrior princes. So much did he give himself to this task that there was no thought of military campaigns. The result was that the Kuru House was no longer regarded as supreme. Pandu changed this. He was a great general and lost no time in increasing his territory and re-establishing the might of the Kuru House.

  He was no less a hunter than a soldier and he would take his two queens, Kunti and Madri, with him on hunting holidays.

  Once, when they were in the forest, Pandu saw two deer and moved without thinking. As the arrow left his bow he realized that he had shot at two creatures in the act of love and was stunned to see the male fall to the ground. It was not only that this was against the hunter’s code, it hurt something in his heart. Even as he stood lost in the pain of his wrong action, he heard a voice speak to him from the male deer’s body.

  “You will pay for this sin, Pandu. You, who pride yourself on being honourable, could not uphold Dharma even to the extent of leaving alone two deer lost in love. If you cannot uphold the hunting code, how can you hope to uphold the Kshatriya code when fighting with a man? You caught my wife and me in the midst of our happiness and delight, and so have shaped your own death. Even so will you be struck down in the midst of the pleasures of love.”