Mahabharata – 129

by 

Sankar Mukherjee

&

Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
                                   Aadivamsavatarana Parva

Ashtaka said-- Oh foremost personality of the Satyayuga! Capable of assuming any form whatever at will, you  lived for a million years in the gardens of Nandana. For what reason, have you been compelled to leave that region and come on earth?

Yayati answered --As kinsmen, friends and relatives quit one whose wealth disappears in the world, so, in the other world, the celestials with Indra as their chief, quit him who  loses his righteousness.

Ashtaka said -- I am extremely curious to know when virtuous men lose their virtue & fall from heaven how they feel. Tell me also, what regions are achievable by great & virtuous persons.

 Yayati answered-- Oh Ashtaka !On losing virtue one is destined to suffer in the hell. Such persons are thrown upon the earth  & grow, only to become the food for vultures, dogs and jackals. Therefore, Oh king! such highly blameworthy and wicked acts should be avoided.I have now, Oh Ashtaka  told you  all. Tell me what more I shall say.

Ashtaka said ---------- Vultures, peacocks, insects, and worms eat up the human body that falls from the heaven. When life is destroyed, where does a man reside? How does he come back to life? I have never heard of any hell on earth!

Yayati answered -- After the doffing of the body, man, as per his acts, re-enters the womb of his mother. And stays there. There he gradually grows. And soon after he/she reappears in the world and walks on its surface. This is that earth-hell where he falls. And s/he grows old. But s/he is not aware of that. S/he continues to loaf about on the hell of the earth. As a result of pious works some dwell in the heaven for sixty- thousand years or eighty-thousand years. And then they fall due to decrease of their virtues. And as they fall, they are attacked by certain terrible ogres with sharp teeth in the earth.

Ashtaka asks Yayati as to whither go man after his demise. This question arises from the a priory notion that man does not die with his death. Death is a state of man in his journey along the axis of time.In other words death does not mean annihilation.

It appears from the speech of Yayati that this world of ours is the veritable hell. We are very fond of earth. We do not want to die because Nature’s bounty is here. But from Yayati’s stand point who visited different worlds other than the worlds of ours this world is rather a hell. By the by with men like Yayati the world of sense perception is not all in all. There are many other worlds & we live in multiverse. Heaven is real for Yayati because he lived there for centuries together. But life is not perpetual for the common run of men who are righteous. Virtue is the cash money with which one can book a flat in the heaven. But when one’s virtue exhausted one’s right to live in the heaven is lost. One will be turned out from heaven. So heaven cannot be all & end all of a soul in its journey along time.