The Truth That Killed

The sages told the Pandavas of Kaushika, the ascetic who kept a vow always to speak the truth, and of how his rigid truth-telling, without discernment or compassion, brought death to the innocent and sin upon himself - a hard tale, told to show that truth must serve the welfare of beings, and that dharma is subtle, not a matter of rigid rules blindly followed.

There was an ascetic named Kaushika, a man of sincere devotion who had taken a solemn vow always to speak the truth and never to utter a falsehood. He was proud of this vow, and kept it strictly, becoming known far and wide as one who never lied; and indeed truthfulness is a great virtue, and his fame for it was not undeserved. He dwelt in a hermitage at a place where several roads met, near a forest, and there he lived his devout and truthful life. But Kaushika, for all his sincerity, kept his vow rigidly, as an absolute rule, without considering that the purpose of truth, like all virtue, is the good of beings, and that a truth which serves the wicked and destroys the innocent may not be righteousness at all.