This is the third of the 100 Upa Parvas (Sections), situated in Adi Parva, the first of the 18 Maha Parvas (Books) of Vyasa Mahabharata. This Section is a prelude to the Snake Sacrifice of King Janamejaya where the Mahabharata was narrated. In this is the story of how Janamejaya got cursed by Sarama to experience great anxiety when least expected, and the story of how Rishi Uttanka wanted to destroy Takshaka, the Naga king, through Janamejaya. This Upa Parva also narrates the stories of Aruni Uddalaka and Upananyu, who followed their teacher Ayoda Dhaumya’s instructions to the extremes.
This Upa Parva contains 1 Chapter and 195 Shlokas, mostly in prose. According to the Nilakantha’s Bombay recension, there are 188 Shlokas in this Upa Parva. There are no major differences in the actual Shlokas between the two versions, but they differ in terms of numbering the Shlokas.
Janamejaya, the son of Parikshit,was performing a long sacrifice along with his brothers. The celestial dog Saurameya, who approached the sacrificial grounds, was beaten up by Janamejaya’s brothers. The dog went crying to its mother and told her what had happened. Anguished at the suffering of her son, Saramaapproached Janamejaya and cursed him to face an unexpected anguish. In order to propitiate himself of the curse, Janamejaya engaged Somashrava, the son of sage Srutashrava born out of a she-snake.
Contemporary to Janamejaya was a famous sage named Ayoda Dhaumya, who had 3 disciples: Aruni, Upamanyu and Veda. The teacher used to test his disciples in a hard way and he would bless them if they passed his trials. He tested Aruni by asking him to repair the breached field, and blessed him when the latter accomplished it. He came to be known as Aruni Uddalaka. Dhaumya asked his second disciple Upamanyu to tend the cattle and put some conditions on the latter’s begging of alms. The boy lost his sight while adhering to those rules. Then the teacher graced him by making him invoke the twin gods Ashvins. Veda also passed his master’s tests and was blessed by him.
Later Veda acquired three disciples. He was familiar with the hardships faced by a resident scholar in his preceptor’s abode. His disciple Uttanka received the blessings of teacher by conducting himself in a righteous manner. Having completed his studies, Uttanka expressed his desire of offering Gurudakshina to his teacher. On the latter’s advice, he approached his preceptor’s wife, who commanded him to bring the earrings of the wife of King Paushya. She desired to wear them on the occasion of Punyaka Vrata four days from thence. Uttanka set out for the palace of Paushya. On his way he saw a big man seated on the back of a bull. Acting on his advice, Uttanka ate the excreta of that bull and drank its urine. Upon reaching the king Paushya, Uttanka was directed to the queen’s apartments. But Uttanka did not see her there. So he again went to the king. Paushya told him that an impure person could not see the queen. Then Uttanka, realizing that he had become impure when he urinated while standing, purified himself and hurried to the queen’s quarters. When he begged her to give the ear-rings, she presented them to him and warned him to be careful as the serpent Takshaka coveted them. When Uttanka went to take leave of the king, the latter requested him to be his guest for Shraddha meals as he was a qualified Brahmin. Having found a hair in the food served to him, Uttanka cursed the king to become blind for serving impure food. The king also cursed the Brahmin to become childless, for the sin of accusing the food to be impure while it was indeed pure. And both of them requested the other to lift the curse. But the king expressed his inability to remove his curse as he was of royal blood. Uttankalifted his curse on the king and went his way taking his gift. On the way, Takshakastole the ear-rings. Uttanka followed him to the Nether World, got back the ear-rings and found his way out from there, with the help of a great being, and handed over in time the ear-rings to his preceptor’s wife. The virtuous Uttanka, however, developed animosity towards Takshaka, and to take revenge on him, approached King Janamejaya, and encouraged him to perform the snake sacrifice.
The Upa Parva is possibly the most ‘teasing’ portion of the Adi Parva. It has many intriguing narrations and makes one wonder why these events are narrated here.
Firstly, one wonders why this Upa Parva is named Paushya Parva. Because, the word Paushya is only casually mentioned midway in the Upa Parva as having appointed Veda his preceptor, as did Janamejaya (Shloka 85); and it is Veda’s disciple Uttanka who is asked to fetch the ear-rings of Paushya’s wife. The Parva could, as well, have been named after Uttanka, who is the subject of 109 of the 195 Shlokas in this Section. Paushya is mentioned barely a dozen times.
Then, again, why the peculiar narrative of a dog being beaten up by Janamejaya’s brothers, with which this Parva opens? The Sacrifice that Janamejaya is engaged in when the Parva opens is not the great holocaust of snakes but a sacrifice he was conducting at Kurukshetra. The Shatapatha Brahmana (13.5.41) refers to such a horse-sacrifice by the king and his three brothers. He starts thinking of the Snake Sacrifice only at the very end of the Parva after Uttanka has urged him to avenge his father’s killing by Takshaka.
A little textual analysis reveals that a master storyteller is at work. Sauti has started weaving his incredibly involved web of narrative, where an apparently irrelevant episode turns up hundreds of Shlokas later as the seed of a crucial event. At times, the intricacy is so great that Sauti himself forgets to link up the loose thread finally. An example of this is the opening section of the Parva. The curse of Sarama leads Janamejaya to seek out Somashrava, born of a snake that drank Shrutashrava’s semen, and make him his priest. Somashrava observes a special principle: he will immediately grant whatever a Brahmin asks. Then, Janamejaya leaves on a campaign to annex Takshashila and the narrative abruptly shifts to Ayoda Dhaumya and his disciples. The intention appears to have been to link Somashrava to Astika, both snake-born. Astika would ask for the Snake Sacrifice to be stopped and Somashrava, bound by his principle, would have to agree. Unfortunately, by the time Sauti comes to this point in the 56th chapter of the Astika Parva, he has forgotten all about Somashrava—who thus loses his only claim to memorability—and has Janamejaya persuaded by all the Brahmins present to give in to Astika. And so, the first 18 Shlokas of the Paushya Parva remain in limbo. It is interesting to note that Takshaka is known to have lived in Takshashila, after his abode Khandava forest was burnt down by Arjuna. Some sources also tell us that Shrutashrava, the father of Somashrava, was the brother of Takshaka, whom Janamejaya defeated!
We now have what seems to be a digression about the virtues of blind and punctilious obedience to the Guru’s commands: the stories of Aruni, Upamanyuand Veda, the three disciples of Ayoda Dhaumya. Ayoda Dhaumya seems to be different from Dhaumya, who became the Purohit of the the Pandava household (Chaitraratha Parva in Adi Parva). Here is a story of a teacher and the taught, wherein Aruni applies himself as a plug for a breach in a field canal and Upamanyu is driven blind through starvation. Veda is made to take care of the household chores. Veda, in turn, has a disciple named Uttanka who is cheated by Takshaka and, in revenge, persuades Janamejaya to hold the snake-sacrifice. Thus we find the cunning artificer at work as Vyasa the “arranger” finally brings his epic to its starting point, answering the unasked question present in the mind of every reader right from the beginning: why did the Snake Sacrifice take place, which became the venue for the recital of the Mahabharata?
The episodes concerning these three disciples cast fascinating light on the teacher-taught relationship in ancient India in which utter dedication and unquestioning faith in the teacher’s commands were required of the pupil. This attitude built up a state of receptivity in the student and the various experiences he underwent acted as stepping-stones to the achievement of the final goal (Shlokas 29-30), wherein the disciple is blessed with the ability to "see" all the Vedas and the Dharma Shastras. Aruni achieves this and, in the process, is metamorphosed into Uddalaka, using not his entire body to plug a breach in the canal. Aruni-Uddalaka is the famous originator of the doctrine tat tvam asi (“you are that”) in the Chhandogya Upanishad, and the father of Shvetaketu who laid down the law regarding monogamy for Brahmins (Adi Parva Chapter 121). Uddalaka Aruni later came to be known as Vajashravasa, because of his community feeding programmes, and his son was Nachiketa of the Katha Upanishad.
His compatriot Upamanyu also masters Vedas easily, as blessed by the Asvins and his teacher. His story continues in the Anushasana Parva, where Krishna seeks guidance from him concerning the glory of Shiva, and learns the cause for his craving for cow's milk. His parents, like Ashvatthama’s, were too poor to afford a cow and the craving led to his tapasya for Shiva’s darshana. Upamanyu’s Guru relentlessly prevents him from concentrating on his stomach by prohibiting him, in stages, from partaking of alms, milk and even the froth spat out by suckling calves until, driven by hunger, he chews Arka (Calotropis Gigantea) leaves and goes blind. That is when he turns his sight inwards to invoke a vision of dazzling beauty with numerous Rigvedic echoes, particularly of the Ashvins rescuing Vandana from a pit to the light (Rig Veda X. 39) and restoring sight to Rijarashva (I.116). The passage of Upamanyu's invocation to Ashvins in Paushya Parva (Shlokas 60-70) is a complex one to translate.
The Paushya Parva is remarkable for a passage that is possibly unique in Puranik lore: the exchange of curses between Paushya and Uttanka. Uttanka revokes his curse when Paushya admits his mistake, but the king cannot because the Kshatriya’s heart is not forgiving (Shlokas 132-133). Uttanka tells Paushya that the curse is futile being based on misapprehension (Shloka 134). This is the only instance of a curse failing and that too on extremely logical grounds. This incident raises certain basic questions about the very nature of a curse: is it pre-cognition or some type of induced mental-block or enforced emotional impulse?
The reference to standing and urinating as a source of impurity is interesting, as even today, in many parts of India, Brahmins following the scriptures, do not stand while urinating.
The story of Uttanka is retold in Chapters 53-58 of the Ashvamedhika Parva, with Indra disguised as an untouchable instead of a cowherd, along with a fascinating confrontation with Krishna. In this version, Uttanka’s preceptor is Gautama who does not give him permission to leave and become a householder although he has grown old serving him. Finally, Uttanka, collapsing under a load of firewood, complains to Gautama who marries him to his daughter. On approaching Ahalya, Gautama’s wife, when he insists on giving Guru Dakshina, she wants him to bring the earrings of King Saudasa’s wife. Saudasa was King Kalmashpada, turned into a Rakshasa by Vasishtha’s curse (Adi Parva, Chapters 175-176). Uttanka obtains the earrings, escapes being eaten-up, loses them to a snake of Airavata’s family and recovers them with the help of Indra and Agni . Some details about the earrings are described by queen Madayanti: they produce gold and their wearer is free from the pangs of hunger and thirst and is safe from poison, fire and wild animals. The gold-producing quality links them up with the earrings of Aditi, mother of the gods, that were stolen by Narakasura and had to be recovered by Krishna (Harivamsha). The encounter with Indra-as-bull is changed into a separate episode where Indra as an untouchable Chandala offers thirsty Uttankahis urine to drink. Uttanka refuses, (as in the Adi Parva he initially rejects the order to eat the bull’s dung) and later learns that this was Amrita. Furious with Takshaka who stole the earrings from him disguised as a Kshapanaka (naked mendicant), Uttanka reproaches Janamejaya for not taking revenge for his father being stung to death and urges that he destroy Takshaka in a holocaust of snakes. Thus the stage is set for the recitation of the epic during the Snake Sacrifice.
There also is a mention of Rishi Uttanka, later in the Vanaparva, in the context of the killing of Rakshasa Dundhu, the son of Madhu and Kaitabha. Click to See...
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