Maha-bharata Part 44

Priests with holy contemplation cooked the horse with pious rite, And the steam of welcome fragrance sanctified the sacred site,

Good Yudhishthir and his brothers, by the rules by _ris.h.i.+s_ spoke, Piously inhaled the fragrance and the sin-destroying smoke,

Severed limbs and sacred fragments of the courser duly dressed, Priests upon the blazing altar as a pious offering placed,

And the ancient bard of Vedas, Vyasa raised his voice in song, Blessed Yudhishthir, Kuru's monarch, and the many-nationed throng!

V

Gifts

Unto Brahmans gave Yudhishthir countless _nishkas_ of bright gold, Unto sage and saintly Vyasa all his realm and wealth untold,

But the bard and ancient _ris.h.i.+_ who the holy Vedas spake, Rendered back the monarch's present, earthly gift he might not take!

"Thine is Kuru's ancient empire, rule the nations of the earth, G.o.ds have destined thee as monarch from the moment of thy birth,

Gold and wealth and rich _daks.h.i.+na_ let the priests and Brahmans h.o.a.rd, Be it thine to rule thy subjects as their father and their lord!"

Krishna too in gentle accents to the doubting monarch said: "Vyasa speaketh word of wisdom and his mandate be obeyed!"

From the _ris.h.i.+_ good Yudhishthir then received the Kuru-land, With a threefold gift of riches gladdened all the priestly band,

Pious priests and grateful nations to their distant regions went, And his share of presents Vyasa to the ancient Pritha sent.

Fame and virtue Kuru's monarch by the _aswa-medha_ wins, And the rite of pure ablution cleanses all Yudhishthir's sins,

And he stands amid his brothers, brightly beaming, pure and high, Even as INDRA stands encircled by the dwellers of the sky,

And the concourse of the monarchs grace Yudhishthir's regal might, As the radiant stars and planets grace the stillness of the night!

Gems and jewels in his bounty, gold and garments rich and rare, Gave Yudhishthir to each monarch, slaves and damsels pa.s.sing fair,

Loving gifts to dear relations gave the king of righteous fame, And the grateful parting monarchs blessed Yudhishthir's hallowed name!

Last of all with many tear-drops Krishna mounts his lofty car, Faithful still in joy or sorrow, faithful still in peace or war,

Arjun's comrade, Bhima's helper, good Yudhishthir's friend of yore, Krishna leaves Hastina's mansions for the sea-girt Dwarka's sh.o.r.e!

CONCLUSION

The real Epic ends with the war and with the funerals of the deceased warriors, as we have stated before, and Yudhishthir's Horse-Sacrifice is rather a crowning ornament than a part of the solid edifice. What follows the sacrifice is in no sense a part of the real Epic; it consists merely of concluding personal narratives of the heroes who have figured in the poem.

Dhrita-rashtra retires into a forest with his queen Gandhari, and Pritha, the mother of the Pandav brothers, accompanies them. In the solitude of the forest the old Dhrita-rashtra sees as in a vision the spirits of all the slain warriors, his sons and grandsons and kinsmen, clad and armed as they were in battle. The spirits disappear in the morning at the bidding of Vyasa, who had called them up. At last Dhrita-rashtra and Gandhari and Pritha are burnt to death in a forest conflagration, death by fire being considered holy.

Krishna at Dwarka meets with strange and tragic adventures. The Vrishnis and the Andhakas become irreligious and addicted to drinking, and fall a prey to internal dissensions. Valadeva and Krishna die shortly after, and the city of the Yadavas is swallowed up by the ocean.

Then follow the two concluding Books of the Epic, the _Great Journey_ and the _Ascent to Heaven_, so beautifully rendered into English by Sir Edwin Arnold. On hearing of the death of their friend Krishna, the Pandav brothers place Praks.h.i.+t, the grandson of Arjun, on the throne, and retire to the Himalayas. Draupadi drops down dead on the way, then Sahadeva, then Nakula, then Arjun, and then Bhima.

Yudhishthir alone proceeds to heaven in person in a celestial car.

There Yudhishthir undergoes some trial, bathes in the celestial Ganges, and rises with a celestial body. He then meets Krishna, now in his heavenly form, blazing in splendour and glory. He meets his brothers whom he had lost on earth, but who are now Immortals in the sky, clad in heavenly forms. INDRA himself appears before Yudhishthir, and introduces him to others who were dear to him on earth, and are dear to him in heaven. Thus speaks INDRA to Yudhishthir:

"This is She, the fair Immortal! Her no human mother bore, Sprung from altar as Draupadi human shape for thee she wore,

By the Wielder of the trident she was waked to form and life, Born in royal Drupad's mansion, righteous man, to be thy wife,

These are bright aerial beings, went for thee to lower earth, Borne by Drupad's stainless daughter as thy children took their birth!

This is monarch Dhrita-rashtra who doth o'er _gandharvas_ reign, This is brave immortal Karna, erst on earth by Arjun slain,

Like the fire in ruddy splendour, for the Sun inspired his birth, As the son of Chariot-driver he was known upon the earth!

'Midst the _Sadhyas_ and the _Maruts_, 'midst immortals pure and bright, Seek thy friends the faithful Vrishnis matchless in their warlike might.

Seek and find the brave Satyaki who upheld thy cause so well, Seek the Bhojas and Andhakas who in Kuru-kshetra fell!

This is gallant Abhimanyu whom the fair Subhadra bore, Still unconquered in the battle, slain by fraud in yonder sh.o.r.e,

Abhimanyu, son of Arjun, wielding Arjun's peerless might, With the Lord of Night he ranges, beauteous as the Lord of Night!

This, Yudhishthir, is thy father! by thy mother joined in heaven, Oft he comes into my mansions in his flowery chariot driven,

This is Bhishma, stainless warrior, by the _Vasus_ is his place, By the G.o.d of heavenly wisdom teacher Drona sits in grace!

_These and other mighty warriors, in the earthly battle slain, By their valour and their virtue walk the bright ethereal plain!_

_They have cast their mortal bodies, crossed the radiant gate of heaven, For to win celestial mansions unto mortals it is given!_

_Let them strive by kindly action, gentle speech, endurance long, Brighter life and holier future into sons of men belong!"_

TRANSLATOR'S EPILOGUE

Ancient India, like ancient Greece, boasts of two great Epics. One of them, the _Maha-bharata_, relates to a great war in which all the warlike races of Northern India took a share, and may therefore be compared to the Iliad. The other, the _Ramayana_, relates mainly to the adventures of its hero, banished from his country and wandering for long years in the wildernesses of Southern India, and may therefore be compared to the Odyssey. It is the first of these two Epics, the Iliad of Ancient India, which is the subject of tile foregoing pages.

The great war which is the subject of this Epic is believed to have been fought in the thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ.

For generations and centuries after the war its main incidents must have been sung by bards and minstrels in the courts of Northern India. The war thus became the centre of a cycle of legends, songs, and poems in ancient India, even as Charlemagne and Arthur became the centres of legends in mediaeval Europe. And then, probably under the direction of some enlightened king, the vast ma.s.s of legends and poetry, acc.u.mulated during centuries, was cast in a narrative form and formed the Epic of the Great Bharata nation, and therefore called the _Maha-bharata_. The real facts of the war had been obliterated by age, legendary heroes had become the princ.i.p.al actors, and, as is invariably the case in India, the thread of a high moral purpose, of the triumph of virtue and the subjugation of vice, was woven into the fabric of the great Epic.

We should have been thankful if this Epic, as it was thus originally put together some centuries before the Christian era, had been preserved to us. But this was not to be. The Epic became so popular that it went on growing with the growth of centuries. Every generation of poets had something to add; every distant nation in Northern India was anxious to interpolate some account of its deeds in the old record of the international war; every preacher of a new creed desired to have in the old Epic some sanction for the new truths he inculcated. Pa.s.sages from legal and moral codes were incorporated in the work which appealed to the nation much more effectively than dry codes; and rules about the different castes and about the different stages of the human life were included for the same purpose. All the floating ma.s.s of tales, traditions, legends, and myths, for which ancient India was famous, found a shelter under the expanding wings of this wonderful Epic; and as Krishna-wors.h.i.+p became the prevailing religion of India after the decay of Buddhism, the old Epic caught the complexion of the times, and Krishna-cult is its dominating religious idea in its present shape. It is thus that the work went on growing for a thousand years after it was first compiled and put together in the form of an Epic; until the crystal rill of the Epic itself was all but lost in an unending mora.s.s of religious and didactic episodes, legends, tales, and traditions.

When the mischief had been done, and the Epic had nearly a.s.sumed its present proportions, a few centuries after Christ according to the late Dr. Buhler, an attempt was made to prevent the further expansion of the work. The contents of the Epic were described in some prefatory verses, and the number of couplets in each Book was stated. The total number of couplets, according to this metrical preface, is about eighty-five thousand. But the limit so fixed has been exceeded in still later centuries; further additions and interpolations have been made; and the Epic as printed and published in Calcutta in this century contains over ninety thousand couplets, excluding the Supplement about the Race of Hari.