THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 1 (41 page)

FIVE
 

KRISHNA ARRIVES IN INDRAPRASTHA
 

The Pandavas came to the gates of their city when they heard Krishna had arrived. They brought him into Indraprastha just as he had left, with Yudhishtira taking Daruka’s chariot-reins. Krishna went to his aunt Kunti, who received him like another son; and that is how the Avatara felt when he was here: that he was among his brothers.

Krishna arrived in the late morning and he had traveled all night. He said he needed an hour’s rest before he sat with Yudhishtira to consider the matter that had brought him here. They showed him to the royal apartment, kept just for him. It faced the Mayaa sabha and no other guest ever stayed in these rooms.

“Arjuna, come sit with me. I don’t want to sleep, just to lie down for a while.”

Avatara and bhakta were closeted together for an hour. Arjuna told Krishna about his brother’s state of mind: his keenness to perform the yagna, for Pandu’s sake and his anxiety that it was a task beyond him.

Then Yudhishtira arrived and he was indeed full of conflict. Falteringly, he began, “Narada must have told you my father wants me to perform the Rajasuya. I gave the matter long thought and asked the wise men of Indraprastha for their counsel. They all say I should undertake the yagna and my

brothers agree with them.

I am far from being as confident as they are.

I fear some want to please me and others, who love me, don’t consider our weaknesses, especially mine. Then there are those who want to see me become an emperor for their own ends and they don’t calculate the dangers of embarking on such a venture from selfish reasons. My brothers are as keen as I am to perform the sacrifice. But Nakula and Sahadeva are still young. Bheema and Arjuna are kshatriyas in the purest sense: for them, there is no higher achievement than a Rajasuya yagna.

Krishna, you are beyond all other counselors and I place my faith in you. Attachment and affection do not sway you; your judgement is immaculate. I am torn between what my father wants and a host of doubts that plagues me. Tell me what to do.”

Krishna laid a hand on his cousin’s arm. “Yudhishtira, you have all the qualities an emperor needs and I, too, would be delighted to see you become lord of the earth. But before you become emperor of Bharatavarsha, every kshatriya across the land, north and south, east and west, must submit to you. There is another king who himself aspires to the title of emperor: Jarasandha of Magadha will never acknowledge your sovereignty.

He has imprisoned ninety-eight kshatriyas in his dungeons below Girivraja. When they are a hundred, he means to sacrifice them to Siva on the night of a new moon. Anyone who frees those hundred will have their loyalty; and since he must first kill Jarasandha to do this, he shall qualify to become an emperor.

If the Magadhan dies, none of his friends, Sishupala, Dantavakra, Salva, Rukmi or Paundraka will dare stand against you. As long as Jarasandha lives, Duryodhana and his brothers, Karna and the Kaurava host will be his natural allies; together, they will oppose your Rajasuya. They will perhaps even defeat you in battle. As I see it, the key to our enterprise is Jarasandha. None of the others is the great leader he is.

I think, Yudhishtira, the first step toward your Rajasuya is killing Jarasandha. As long as he lives, you cannot succeed.”

Yudhishtira sat nodding thoughtfully. When Krishna finished, the Pandava gave a sigh of relief. “Nobody else could have given me such sage advice. When you Krishna, my strength, my refuge, are so dubious of our success, I should not dream of going ahead. We would end in a disaster from which we could never recover.

What the ancients say is so true: the greatest kings have all been men of peace. Anyway, in my heart, I was never for the grandiose enterprise and I am pleased to abandon it. Thank you, Krishna, you have cleared my confusion!”

Krishna smiled at the other Pandavas. He shook his head that Yudhishtira had misunderstood him.

Bheema cried, “Any great enterprise must seem difficult at first. What we cannot achieve with armies, perhaps we can with craft. With Krishna and Arjuna beside me, I can kill Jarasandha. I have the strength, my brother has the will to prevail and Krishna shall be our wisdom. You make too much of Jarasandha, I say it will be easy to kill him!”

Krishna shook his head again. “If you really think it will be easy to kill Jarasandha, then you never will. Yama himself has not been able to take the Magadhan out of this world. Jarasandha is a Sivabhakta and he has the Lord’s blessing. Besides, he is a munificent king whose subjects love him.”

Bheema looked rather crushed. Then Krishna added, “Yet, it seems he has lost his mind: to think of sacrificing a hundred kshatriyas to Siva is a mad man’s plan. We shall have the destinies of a hundred kings and their prayers with us. If we go armed with caution, I believe we will succeed.”

But Yudhishtira cried, “Ah no, Krishna! You are like my very heart and Bheema and Arjuna, the eyes on my face. I will not send you three into peril, just because I want to be an emperor. How will a man live without his eyes and his heart?”

He grew more somber than ever. “The thought of the Rajasuya fills me with foreboding. I say we should abandon the whole thing, before it is too late and we are hopelessly snared in this absurd ambition.”

Arjuna had sat quietly. Now he said, “We are kshatriyas; it is our dharma to help the oppressed. Or are we craven, when it comes to facing a powerful enemy?

Truly, Jarasandha is powerful; they say he is as strong as a thousand elephants. Yet, mere strength seldom endures, when it is not founded in dharma. Even Siva will never countenance the blood sacrifice Jarasandha intends. Yudhishtira, nothing will make your kingship seem more impotent and shameful than ignoring the ninety-eight kings’ plea for help.”

He paused a moment, then, said, “Besides, Krishna says to kill Jarasandha; he says to perform the Rajasuya. For me that is enough. I am for going at once to Girivraja.”

Krishna himself seemed plunged in thought. But his thoughts had nothing to do with the demon of Magadha. They reached beyond Girivraja, into the deeper future. He smiled as if Arjuna’s averment of devotion touched him, but was quaint and amused him as well. Krishna said, “That was said like a true kshatriya and a prince of the race of Bharata. And like Kunti’s son; you, too, Bheema.”

He turned to Yudhishtira and he was cheerful again. “Cousin, this life on earth is a very brief one. Death lurks around every corner. It may come today or tomorrow, by bright day or in the pitched night, from within or without. Avoiding a battle of dharma never prolonged anyone’s life, but it always lost a man his honor: which is a fate worse than death.

Life flits by, Yudhishtira and waits for neither you nor me. In life, there is no time for hesitation and too much deliberation. They serve no purpose but to divide the mind against itself. The thing is to act, swiftly, as the time demands.”

The Avatara’s eyes were grave again, frightening if one gazed into them. “Jarasandha is powerful; not the Devas or the Asuras would challenge him easily. But he is tired of his life. He calls his death eagerly, or he would never have imprisoned ninety-eight anointed kings of the earth.

It is also time, Yudhishtira, that you and your brothers became the protectors of the world. Your time to rule all Bharatavarsha is near, the time of the destiny for which you were born.”

Yudhishtira seemed moved. “Krishna, if you say we should fight Jarasandha, of course we will. Let our army prepare to ride to Girivraja.”

“No army. Just Arjuna, Bheema and I will go. Uninvited, we will enter the enemy’s house. Jarasandha is a proud kshatriya; he will not refuse us single combat if we challenge him. I think I know which of us he will fight, if we give him the choice between us three. The one he chooses must kill him, or die in the attempt.”

There was laughter in his black eyes, “And what shame is there in dying a hero? Such a man finds swarga for himself.” A smile tugging at his lips, he said to Yudhishtira, “Well, my lord, do you trust me enough to send your brothers to Girivraja with me?”

“I do, Krishna! But tell me for my curiosity, how is Jarasandha so powerful? What is the secret of his power?”

SIX JARASANDHA
 

Jarasandha’s father, Brihadratha’s, fame was like the light of the sun that falls across the earth. He was a just king and he married a king of Kasi’s twin daughters, whose beauty and virtue were a legend. Brihadratha had everything he wanted, but he did not have a son to continue his royal line. There was no yagna he had not performed to get an heir, but to no avail.

Finally, in despair, he went into the jungle with his queens. They wandered in the wilderness for months, living on fruit and roots, hunting occasionally. One day, they saw the rishi Chandakausika’s asrama.

The distraught king began serving the hermit, like a common sishya. Chandakausika was moved by Brihadratha’s sincerity. The king never told the rishi who he was; he did not ask him for a boon. One sweltering day, Brihadratha sat before the sage in the shade of a mango tree, when a ripe fruit fell into the muni’s lap. Chandakausika gave the mango to Brihadratha and said, “Give this to your queens and they will bear you a son. Return to your kingdom now. Your place is not in the forest but upon the throne of Girivraja.”

Brihadratha prostrated himself at the sage’s feet. Then he ran to his queens with the precious fruit. That king had two wives, like mirror images of each other and he had only one mango. He cut the fruit in two with his sword and gave a half to each of the women.

The three of them spent that night in love and when they returned to Girivraja, both queens were pregnant. Nine months passed; the twins went into labor at the same time and both delivered together. It was midnight of the night of a new moon, when not even the breeze stirred in the trees and the world seemed enveloped in a hush, when each queen gave birth to half a child. He would have been an enormous baby had he been born whole; but, as it was, he was lifeless, cloven by fate.

No one thought of the rishi’s boon; or how wisely he had blessed the king and his wives: there would never be jealousy between them, since both would be the natural mothers of the same son. Instead, the queens wailed, the midwives wept. And without showing the bisected child to his father, the palace maids swaddled the two halves of a prince in silk and left them at the edge of the jungle, in the dark night.

When he heard what had happened, Brihadratha thought this was as a lesson to him: a warning that he would never have a son; it was not written.

In the jungle outside his city, a miracle was unfolding. Jara, the rakshasi, had woken from a deep slumber to the howling of wolves and she was ravenous. In her slouching, creeping shamble, she set out on her nightly hunt. She sniffed the air; there was not a breath of wind tonight, to carry the scent of any warm-blooded animal. Her eyes were keened for the slightest glimmer from other eyes in the darkness. But all she caught were some mice, which she gobbled; they only whetted her appetite.

Moaning softly, the rakshasi stalked on through the black forest, down the hill-slope and she saw Girivraja before her. Usually, she never came this far; she was terrified of Brihadratha’s guards. Suddenly, the sweetest, most unlikely scent invaded her flared nostrils. She stood hunched, sniffing hard and she was sure the delicious aroma came not from within the city, but from outside its gates. It was the scent of human flesh.

Drooling, Jara crept forward. The smell of flesh mingled with that of fresh fetal blood was driving her wild. Soon, she scrabbled in frenzy through the undergrowth and found the two parcels of swaddling. A human woman had miscarried and abandoned her abortion in the night. Quickly scooping up the two warm wet parcels, the rakshasi scurried back into the deeper forest, whimpering in anticipation of a feast.

Her eyes alight, Jara undid the bloody swaddling of the first parcel. She gave an amazed chuckle: in it, lay half a huge human child. She mumbled to herself, “He would have a made a fine rakshasa, but there is only half of him. I wonder whose child he is.”

She untied the other parcel. She wanted to lay out her banquet and feast her eyes, before she tore at it with claw and fang. She hissed in surprise when she had uncovered the second parcel. She began to laugh. As she gazed at the contents of the two parcels by starlight, she felt a wave of pity for the cloven infant. Crooning to the lifeless baby instead of devouring it, she held the halves, one by one, to her breast.

Jara whispered, “How handsome you would have been if only you were born in one piece! My, you would have been a great kshatriya, little one.”

Tenderly, she placed the divided infant in her lap, both pieces together. “Let me see how handsome you would have been if you had been born whole.”

The rakshasi joined the two pieces together in her lap. There was a flash of light. A powerful charge surged through her hands, as if she had clasped a streak of lightning. She sprang up with a cry, ready to run from the eerie sorcery. But the light had vanished and Jara saw that the two halves had joined miraculously and a lusty human baby lay at her feet. He stared up at her with shining eyes and she saw he breathed. He was alive!

Now the rakshasi had a vision: she saw who the child was and how he had been born. Poor Jara, all her hunger vanished. She did not have the heart to eat the child to which she had given life. She picked him up and slouched toward the gates of Girivraja, as dawn reached its fingers over the horizon.

Brihadratha’s guards were astonished to see the apparition at their gates in the early dawn: a rakshasi carried a strapping infant in her arms and she claimed the child was the king’s son. The guards sent word in to the palace. Just then, a holy man appeared there; it was Chandakausika. The rishi and the rakshasi clutching a child in her arms were shown into the king’s presence. Chandakausika confirmed Jara’s story and said the prince should be named Jarasandha—‘joined by Jara’—since but for her he would have rotted in the wild.

When the king rewarded Jara, fed her a bloody meal of raw goat’s meat and gave her freedom of Girivraja to visit Jarasandha whenever she wanted, she shambled back into the jungle.

Chandakausika said to Brihadratha, “Your son is no common child. He will have many strange powers as he grows. He will be awesomely strong and a great king of the earth. He will be invincible: not the Devas or the Asuras will be able to kill him in battle. He will be the greatest Sivabhakta of his times and the Lord will bless him.”

In Indraprastha, Krishna said to Yudhishtira, “It won’t be easy to kill him even now, when he has

turned away from dharma. I have heard Jarasandha has seen Siva with his own eyes.”

Yudhishtira asked in a whisper, “How will we kill him?”

The Dark One smiled. “No man, even the most gifted, may live beyond the time given him. I know how he can be killed.”

Arjuna, Krishna and Bheema set out for Girivraja. Yudhishtira was anxious, but he did not let doubt prevail over his faith in the Blue God.