Mahabharata – 187
by
Sankar Mukherjee
&
Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
    Aadivamsavatarana Parva

A note on laments of Pandu                              

The laments of Pandu is very significant.He wept at the demise of the deer sage as if the latter was his own kin.In fact Pandu was half in love with forests.That is why he left the urban pleasures of the palace and gave up the glories of a conquerer.He left his kingdom in the charge of his elder brother Dhritarastra and his uncle the great Bhisma.He opted for a life in the forest.He went there with his two wives Kunti and Madri,and led a life of abundance and abandon as it were in Arcadia.He was also accompanied by his pages who looked after him and his wives.He was however fond of hunting and hunting came upon him as Nemesis.But unlike the Nemesis in  Greek tragedies it is not altogether unalloyed evil.When Dasharatha erringly killed the son of a sage he was cursed.It was decreed that Dashratha would also die pining for his son.Was it a curse or a blessing?Because Dasharatha had no son.The king Dasharatha could ride his chariot in ten directions unimpeded.Glory and grandeur and gold rained upon him.The only lack he had was that he did not have any son.But the curse of the sage was a blessing in disguise.If he does not have any son how can he lament for the absence of his son.The curse of a sage never fails.In the Mahabhartata and the Puranas there have been countless curses of the sages that bring about significant peripeteia along the course of the narrative.In our every day life accidents take place in the shape of calamities of Nature war life chances good or bad and so on.They cannot be predicted beforehand. The curse of the rishis are also accidents along with the same line.Once we accept them as blessings in disguise no calamity in our life could be unmixed evil.There is silver lining around every cloud.Here Pandu  killed a sage who was in the disguise of a deer.And the sage cursed him.Pandu would henceforth be bereft of the power to procreate.In other words Pandu would have no son.That way the gates of heaven would be closed for him.During the Mahabharata age sensuous pleasure was not enough.One married only to beget sons so that the ancestors are propitiated.And to beget a son was the duty for every one to get at the well being in the life hereafter.On the surface the curse of the sage debarred Pandu from having pleasures from begetting a child.But Pandu did not cry for the loss he had incurred.He lamented for the death of the sage deer.Why did not Pandu blame the deer sage for cursing upon him?Pandu pinned his faith on his activities or ‘karma’.The legimation is that one must not kill anyone while engaged in making love.For this he apparently blames his heritage.Because his father born to a very pious man was engrossed with amour and sex.That is why he died before Pandu was born.But the field that his father ploughed lingered.And it was there that the great saint Vedavyasa sowed the seed.And Pandu called Vedavyasa his father as well.And one wonders whether the gene coming from his mother was in conflict with the gene coming from his defacto father Vedavyasa.This conflict seemed to animate the character of Pandu.The gene of  the ksatrya woman led Pandu to conquest and hunting.But the gene of Vedavyasa prevailed.He did not blame the deer sage for cursing him.Instead he had soul searching.He blamed his previous karma and decided to give up worldly life for the life of an ascetic following the foot steps of the great Vedavyasa.  Every death underlines the transitoriness of worldly life.Sceptre and crown must tumble down with scythe and spade and nothing is permanent here.This realisation of the impermanence of worldly life goaded Pandu to take the vow of leading a life of an ascetic.Since he would have no children there was no utility of wives apparently.So Pandu requested his wives to go back to the palace.But wives could  be friends and discples as well.Kunti and Madri would not forsake Pandu.They would also follow the chosen path of Pandu.They would also live as hermits.Thus they set a role model for ideal wives.Pandu as we have learned now opted for the life of an ascetic.With great skill Vedavyasa through the portrayal of Pandu narrates how an individual could learn from life and become an ascetic stage by stage.While  the like of the Buddha realised suddenly the futility of worldly life and stole away from the palace to adopt a life of an ascetic,Pandu shared his point of view with his wives and told them that he would forsake them for the sake of observing asceticism.When the wives said that they would help him in his ascetic life Pandu did not refuse them.The lamentation of Pandu is however very significant on  another  count .It is in fact a manifesto of what constitutes the life of an ascetic.He says that he would wound his one hand with an axe and add sandal wood paste to another hand and remain with equanimity of mind.This reminds us of the sage king Janaka.He put one of his hands on his wife caressing her.His other hand was aburning in fire.The life of a sage as delineated by Pandu living under a tree and begging only in limited number of households stand in sharp contrast to the sages whom we meet daily.Are they not given to a life of luxury?Their monastraries have air conditioned rooms.They can be now and then found in costly air conditioned cars.Are they all of them sage kings like Janaka?