Mahabharata – 65

by 

Sankar Mukherjee

&

Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
                                            AdiParva

The fire sacrifice intended by Janamejaya the king of Hastinapur took off in time.Chariot loads of wood, earmarked for the sacrifice were lit by the great Brahamanas chanting mantras. Energised with tons of butter & other combustibles the fire went up & touched the skies.The heat of the great fire raised the temperature of the Hastinapur city & earth as well.Countless flies & smaller insects rushed to the fire to embrace death.The people of the whole city were excited.The sages chanted mantras to invoke gods. Thereafter songs in praise of gods pervaded the environment. And then tons of milk, somarasa, butter & honey were offered to the gods.The whole Hastinapur city reverberated with the chants. The mantras are the words that are capable of doing things that the mortals cannot do with any other kind of effort than chanting.The fire sacrifice was inaugurated to draw the snakes from the caverns measureless to man. Utanka had visited the snake world or the Nagaloka which was decked with countless palaces alighted with the gleams of jewellery,Vast gardens where countless flowers were abloom & numerous lakes diademed with lotuses that out did the rainbow hues in glory & glee embelliushed the Nagaloka.The mantras however started pulling the snakes from the Nagaloka with invisible ropes made of sound. A great number of snakes went to Indra for shelter.The great snake Takshaka was a close friend of Indra. It was him that Janamejaya wanted to kill to avenge himself of his dear fathers demise caused by his poison. Indra assured Takshaka & all other snakes come to him that they were perfectly safe in Indra’s palace.Let Mantras do whatever it can at Janamejaya’s fire sacrifice.But Indra’s hopes seemed to go amiss.

The snake sacrifice continued as per its rules.The priests competent in their respective duties clad in black clothes had their eyes red from the contact of the smoke.They poured butter into the blazing fire chanting mantras & the hearts of the snakes trembled all over the existence.Then the priest summoned the snakes by their names to fall on the fire.And the snakes began to fall into the blazing fire piteously calling one another with heart rending cries.The snakes with hissing sound & breathing heavily embraced each other presently before the impending doom.Their heads & tails mingled & they became circles or looked like rings of meteor falling from the skies.They fell into the fire.The white,the black,the blue, the old,the young all fell alike into the fire,Small snakes were there. At the same time the snakes that measured miles together & that measured hundreds of miles fell continuously with great sound in the fire.It seemed to the people of Hastinapur that there was a never ending thunder clap.And hundreds  thousands & tens of thousands of snakes lost control over their body & perished  on that occasion.And among those that perished sone looked like horses. Others looked like the trunk of an elephant. Others had huge bodies & strength comparable to the strength of a mad elephant or huge whales. Their colours were various. Their poison was virulent. They looked terrible. They fell into the fire because of the fact that their mother had cursed them.The large snakes falling into fire reminds us of Satan the fallen angel in the Paradise Lost Book I

With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove.

In the Mahabharata hordes of such levia than snakes were burnt to death. Must be Nature screamed at the mayhem of the snakes.Their blood & fat & marrow mingled into muddy streams & flowed ceaselessly from the altar & seemed to inundate the whole city of Hasthinapur.Ugly odour choked man & animals & the worms.It was one of the ugliest sites at which gods also trembled.