Vidura

Dharma born in a servant's house

The epic explains Vidura through a curse. The sage Mandavya, impaled for a theft he had not committed, confronted Dharma, the god of justice, over a punishment far too heavy for a childhood cruelty to an insect. He cursed Dharma to be born on earth from a woman of low birth.

When Vyasa fathered heirs for the widowed queens of Hastinapura, Ambika sent her maidservant to him in her place. The maid met the sage without fear, and her son Vidura was born healthy and wise. Dhritarashtra was born blind and Pandu pale, but only they could rule. Bhishma raised the three together and later found Vidura a wife, a daughter of King Devaka.

Warnings nobody heeded

When Duryodhana was born amid howling jackals, Vidura told Dhritarashtra to give the child up. When Duryodhana sent the Pandavas to the house of lac at Varanavata, Vidura warned Yudhishthira in a coded tongue and sent a miner to dig their escape tunnel.

He opposed the dice game, yet the king made him carry the invitation to Indraprastha. In the hall he declared that Yudhishthira, having lost himself, had no right to stake Draupadi, and was called a traitor for it. After the exile began he pressed the king again and was ordered out. He went to the Pandavas in the Kamyaka forest until a remorseful Dhritarashtra called him back. Through the thirteen years Kunti lived in his house.

Counsel on the eve of war

On the sleepless night before Sanjaya delivered the Pandavas' answer, Vidura talked to the king until dawn about wisdom, self-control and ruin. That teaching is remembered as Vidura Niti. When Krishna came as envoy, he refused Duryodhana's feast and ate at Vidura's house. Vidura took no part in the fighting; a later tradition says he broke his bow rather than serve the war.

Merging into Yudhishthira

After the war he went with Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti to a hermitage on the Ganga. There he took his austerities further than anyone, living on air and wandering naked. When Yudhishthira came looking for him, Vidura leaned against a tree, fixed his eyes on him and passed his life into him, Dharma returning to Dharma. A voice from the sky forbade the cremation of his body.

Truth without power

Vidura is the epic's clearest case of wisdom kept from authority. The wisest man in the court could not rule because of his mother's birth, and he could only advise a king who would not listen. Readers still ask whether his loyalty to that court was patience or complicity.