The Disciple in the Field

The sages told the Pandavas of Aruni of Panchala, the disciple who lay all night in the breach of a field to hold back the water for his teacher's sake, and so won his teacher's highest blessing - a tale of the devotion a student owes his guru, and of how that devotion is the door to all knowledge.

There was a great sage and teacher named Ayoda-Dhaumya, who had a hermitage and a number of disciples whom he taught and tested in the old way, by hard service as much as by instruction. Among his disciples were three in particular whom he tried with difficult tasks, that their devotion and obedience might be proved. For in those days the bond between teacher and disciple was sacred above almost all things, and a student showed his worth not only by learning his lessons but by serving his teacher with perfect obedience and self-forgetful devotion, holding the teacher's word and the teacher's good above his own comfort and even his own safety. And the first of these disciples to be tried was a young man named Aruni, who came from the land of Panchala.