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.
