Snake Sacrifice

नारायणं नमस्कृत्य नरं चैव नरोत्तमम्

 देवीं सरस्वतीं चैव ततो जयम् उदीरयेत्

महाभरत

Mahābharata

As retold by

Michael Dolan, B.V. Mahāyogi

Shaunaka said, “You have recently come from the great snake sacrifice of King Janamejaya. O Best of the twice-born, why was the king determined to destroy the serpents? And what did you learn about the reign of the great king Pariksit.  Please describe this to us in detail.”

Having been thus questioned, Suta Goswami, Ugrasrava Sauti, the son of Lomaharshana, also stood before the assembly with folded hands and addressed them, as follows:

PARIKSIT’S RULE

“At the conclusion of the Mahabharata war or the conflict between the allies of the Kurus and the Pandavas which culminated in the battle of Kurukshetra, the peace was ruled by Pariksit, the grandson of Arjuna who had been protected in the womb of his mother Uttara by Krishna from the great fire weapons of the envious Asvatthama.

“ Pariksit’s rule was just and fair. King Pariksit was a virtuous and great-souled monarch who always protected all classes of people. He was equally disposed toward all creatures. He gave charity to widows and orphans, the crippled and poor. He was tall and well-made; his body was marked with all the auspicious signs of a great ruler.  Brave, truthful and athletic, he ruled Hastinapura with a fair hand and established a long peace which the world had not seen in generations since before the great conflict.  He was expert in the science of arms and dear to Sri Govinda. Popular and loved by all, he was well-versed in the duties of kings and graced with all virtues."

Suta said, "Amongst archers, Maharaja Pariksit was as good as Arjuna. He was as fire in war, unbreachable as the sea, strong as a lion, and as good a refuge as the Himalayas. A great devotee of Krishna, when heard that he was cursed to die by a snake-bite, he took shelter of the Lord. He sought self-realization from  the son of Vyasadeva, Shukadeva Goswami.  His very name "Pariksit" means truth-seeker.

 Sūta Gosvāmī said: "O learned ones, King Pariksit ruled as a great king does by the rules of dharma and with dedication to the Supreme Lord, Krishna.Later, he married the daughter of King Uttara and begot four sons, headed by Janamejaya.

Because of the mercy of the Lord God Himselfwho acts wonderfully, King Pariksit survived the the weapon of Ashvatthama. And since he was always dedicated to Krishna,  he was fearless, in spite of a brahmana's curse.

A BOY'S CURSE

Suta said, “Pariksit's son was Janamejaya. But when Janamejaya was but a child, the fair King Pariksit was murdered by the ruthless Taksaka, son of Nagas, born into the race of serpent men. The Nagas were gifted with certain mystic powers that allowed them to assume the form of serpents or men. Taksaka was one such. Now Pariksit, like his great-grandfather Pandu was mighty of arms, a great archer, and fond of hunting. He was expert in hunting bears, wolves and wild boars and other dangerous beasts. One day, deep in the forest on a hunt, having wounded a deer with a sharp arrow, Parikist slung his bow over his shoulder and penetrated into the deep forest in search of the animal. This deer was a magical deer: Sacrifice personified, a supernatural being. No deer had ever fled before the bow of Pariksit as had this magical beast. And so the deer drew Pariksit deeper into the forest until he was lost.

“Sixty years had slowed his pace. Exhausted by the chase that great king was overtaken with thirst.  He went in search of water, for he could hear a stream gurgling in the woods. After walking for some time, famished and thirsty, he came upon a forest sage beneath a tree. But when he addressed the sage, asking him for water, the sage merely sat in meditation and said nothing, as he had taken a vow of silence. Enraged, the king turned to leave when he came upon a dead serpent. Thinking to teach the sage a lesson, the king picked the serpent up with the tip of his bow and adorned the sages neck with it.

“Upon this, the sage awoke from his meditation and said nothing. But the Rishi had a son, Sringin, who was easily angered, and seeing the humiliation suffered by his father,  he became angry. His eyes turned read as blood and that son of a brahmana touched sacred water and cursed the great king, saying, “That sinful wretch of a despot has insulted my father the best of brahmans, by hanging a snake on his neck. I hereby curse King Pariksit  to die from snake-bite within a fortnight. Let him be taken to the court of Yamaraja by the king of venomous snakes, Taksaka himself.”

“But Sringin’s father was not pleased, saying, “My child. What have you done? Brahmans should never use their mystic power to the destruction of great rulers like Pariksit.  You are rash and foolish, my child. I was not offended by the king’s action. Now you have brought tragedy upon us all.” And so saying, having rebuked the child, the sage sent a messenger to Pariksit to inform him of the great calamity that would befall him within a week’s time.

“Upon these, the wise Pariksit made preparations to die. He engaed in ascetic practices by fasting and purifying himself.  He repented his foolish act. He called upon the wisest of men for their advice. He was told to seek out Sukadeva Goswami, the deepest of wise men. Shukadeva, the son of Vyasa, in turn spent a week instructing the king on the meaning of life and narrated the entire story of the Bhagavat before the king and assembled sages and nobles of the court."

Maharaja Parikit hears the Bhagavat from Shukadeva

And just what is the Bhagavata? The reader might ask. Bhaktivinoda Thakura answers...

  You must read  the whole Bhagavata for its explanation. When  the  great  Vyåsa had  effected  the arrangements of the  Vedas and  the Upanishads, the  completion of the  eighteen Purå∫as  with facts gathered from the recorded and  unrecorded tradition of ages, and the composition of the Vedanta and the large Mahabharata, an epic poem  of great  celebrity,  he began  to ruminate over his own theories and  precepts, and found like Fauste of Goethe that he had up to that time gathered no real truth.

He fell back into  his own self and  searched his own spiritual  nature and  then  it was that  the  above truth was communicated to him for his own good  and  the good  of the  world. The  sage immediately perceived that  his former  works required supercession in as much  as they did not  contain the  whole truth and nothing but the truth. In his new idea he got the development of his former  idea of religion. He commenced the  Bhagavata in pursuance of this change. From this fact, our readers are expected to find out the position  which the Bhagavata

enjoys in the  library  of Hindu theological works.

The  whole of this incomparable work teaches  us, according to our  Great Caitanya,  the  three great  truths  which compose the  absolute  religion of man. Our Nadia  preacher calls them  sambandha, abhidheya and  prayojana, i.e., the relation between  the Creator and the created, the duty of man to God and the prospects of humanity. In these  three words is summed up the  whole ocean  of human knowledge as far as it has been  explored up to this era of human progress. These  are the  cardinal points  of religion and  the  whole Bhågavata is, as we are taught  by Caitanya,  an explanation both  by precepts and  example, of these three great points.

In all its twelve skandhas or divisions the Bhagavata teaches  us that  there is only one  God  without  a second,  Who was full in Himself  and  is and  will

remain the  same. Time  and  space, which prescribe conditions to created objects are  much  below His Supreme Spiritual  nature, which is unconditioned and absolute.  Created objects are subject to the influence of time and  space, which form  the  chief  ingredients of that  principle in creation which passes by the name of Maya. 

Maya is a thing  which is not  easily understood by us who are subject to it, but God explains,  as much  as we can understand in our present constitution, this principle through our  spiritual  perception. The  hasty critic starts like an unbroken horse  at the  name  of maya and  denounces it as a theory identical with that  of Bishop  Berkeley. 

 “Be patient in your inquiry,”  is our immediate reply. In the  mind  of God there were ideas of all that  we perceive  in eternal existence  with him, or else God loses the  epithet of omniscient so learnedly  applied to Him.  The  imperfect part  of nature implying  want proceeded also from certain  of those  ideas, and  what, but a principle of maya eternally  existing  in God subject  to His Omnipotence, could  have a hand in the creation of the  world as it is? 

This is styled as the  maya-shakti of the  omnipresent God. Cavil as much  as you can. This is a truth in relation to the  created universe.

This maya intervenes between  us and  God as long  as we are not  spiritual, and when  we are able to break  off her  bonds,  we, even in this mortal  frame, learn  to commune in our  spiritual  nature with the  unconditioned and  the absolute.  No, maya does not  mean  a false thing  only, but  it means  concealment of eternal truth as well. 

The creation is not maya itself but is subject to that principle. Certainly,  the  theory  is idealistic  but  it has been  degraded into foolishness  by wrong  explanations. 

The  materialist laughs  at the  ideal  theory saying, "how could  his body, water, air and  earth  be mere  ideas  without  entity," and  he  laughs  rightly  when  he  takes  Shankaracharya’s book  in his hand at the butt  end  of his ridicule.  

The  true  idealist must be a dualist  also. 

He must believe all that  he perceives  as nature created by God full of spiritual  essence  and relations, but he must not believe that the outward  appearance is the truth. 

The Bhagavata teaches  that  all that  we healthily  perceive  is true,  but its material appearance is transient and  illusory. The  scandal  of the  ideal  theory  consists in its tendency to falsify nature, but the  theory  as explained in the  Bhagavata makes nature true,  if not  eternally  true  as God and  His ideas. What harm  there can  be if man  believes in nature as spiritually  true  and  that  the  physical relations and  phases  of society are  purely  spiritual?

No, it is not  merely  changing a name  but  it is a change in nature also. Nature  is eternally  spiritual  but  the  intervention of maya makes her  gross and material. Man, in his progress  attempts to shake  off this gross idea,  childish  and foolish  in its nature and  by subduing the  intervening principle of maya, lives in continual union with God in his spiritual  nature. 

The  shaking  off this bond  is salvation  of the  human nature. The  man  who has got salvation  will freely tell his brother that  “If you want to see God, see me, and  if you want to be one  with God, you must  follow me.” The  Bhagavata teaches  us this relation between  man and  God, and  we must  all attain  this knowledge. This sublime  truth is the  point where  the  materialist and  the  idealist  must  meet  like brothers of the  same school  and  this is the  point  to which all philosophy tends.