The Sudra Who Gave a Hundred Thousand

Vaisampayana said that when Bhishma had finished telling where the word Rajan came from, and how Prithu the son of Vena was crowned by the gods and made the uneven surface of the earth level with the horn of his bow, Yudhishthira did not rise from where he sat.

The Rishis were still around the bed. The arrows were still under the old man. The king saluted his grandsire, the son of Ganga, and with joined hands and concentrated attention he asked again, and this time the question was not about kings at all. It was about everyone alive.

"What are the general duties of the four orders of men," he said, "and what the special duties of each order? What mode of life should be adopted by which order? What duties are especially called the duties of kings? By what means does a kingdom grow, and what are those means by which the king himself grows? How also, O bull of Bharata's race, do the citizens and the servants of the king grow?"

He was not finished. He went on into the part that a man who has just been given a throne asks about at night.

"What sorts of treasuries, punishments, forts, allies, counsellors, priests, and preceptors should a king avoid? Whom should the king trust in what kinds of distress and danger? From what evils should the king guard himself firmly? Tell me all this, O grandsire."

It is not one question. It is the whole remaining length of the Shanti Parva laid out in a breath, and Bhishma took it in order, and the first thing in the order was the smallest and the largest of it: what a man owes, simply for being a man of one order or another, whether or not he ever comes near a court.

Before he began he made his salutation.

"I bow down to Dharma who is great, and to Krishna who is Brahma. Having bowed down also unto the Brahmanas assembled here, I shall discourse on duties that are eternal."

Then he began with what belongs to all four.

Nine duties, Bhishma said, belong to all the four orders equally. Not to the Brahmana more than the Sudra, and not to the king more than the man who keeps his cattle. Nine, and the same nine, for everyone.

The suppression of wrath.

Truthfulness of speech.

Justice.

Forgiveness.

The begetting of children upon one's own wedded wives.

Purity of conduct.

The avoidance of quarrel.

Simplicity.

And the maintenance of dependants.

It is worth stopping on the list before the elaborate distinctions begin, because everything that comes afterwards in this discourse is a difference, and this is the only place in it where there is none. A Brahmana who studies the Vedas all his life and a servant who has never heard one recited are, in respect of these nine, under exactly the same law. Neither of them may lie. Neither of them may keep his temper unbroken. Neither of them may refuse to feed the people who depend on him.

Notice also what kind of things they are. Not one of the nine requires a fire, a fee, a priest, a text, or permission from anybody. They are things a man does inside his own house and inside his own head, and they cost nothing but the doing of them, and no order of society has an advantage over another in the doing.

Bhishma did not linger on them. He announced them and moved on, the way a man announces the foundation before he begins describing the rooms, and the whole of the rest of the teaching sits on top of those nine.

"Those duties, however, which belong exclusively to Brahmanas," he said, "I shall now tell thee."

Yudhishthira, who was about to be told at some length what other men owed, said nothing, and let his grandsire go down through the four orders one at a time.

"Self-restraint, O king, has been declared to be the first duty of Brahmanas."

Not learning. Not sanctity. Not the right to be fed by other men. Restraint, put at the head of the list, before anything else is said about the order at all.

After it come the study of the Vedas and patience in undergoing austerities, and Bhishma said something precise about those two. By practising these two, all their acts are accomplished. That is the whole account of a Brahmana's working day: he holds himself in, he studies, he endures. There is no fourth item that he must have in order to be complete.

Then a condition, carefully worded, about money.

If while engaged in the observance of his own duties, without doing any improper act, wealth comes to a peaceful Brahmana possessed of knowledge, then he should marry, and seek to beget children, and practise charity, and perform sacrifices.

Read the order of the clauses. The wealth is not sought. It comes, and it comes to a man who was doing his own work and doing nothing improper to get it, and only then does the household open up in front of him. And it has been declared by the wise, Bhishma said, that wealth obtained in that manner should be enjoyed by distributing it, among deserving persons and among his own relatives. Enjoyed by distributing. The pleasure of the thing is in the giving away of it.

And then the sentence that makes the whole order intelligible, and that must have sounded strange in a camp of soldiers.

By his study of the Vedas all the pious acts laid down for the Brahmana are accomplished. Whether he does or does not achieve anything else, if he devotes himself to the study of the Vedas, he becomes by that known as a Brahmana, or the friend of all creatures.

The two names are given as one name. The man who has done nothing in his life but recite, and who has accumulated nothing, and who has built nothing, is called by the same word as the friend of every living thing.

"I shall also tell thee, O Bharata, what the duties are of a Kshatriya."

They came out as a set of matched halves, each one a thing permitted set beside the thing forbidden that stands next to it.

A Kshatriya should give, but not beg. He should himself perform sacrifices, but not officiate as a priest at the sacrifices of others. He should never teach the Vedas, but he should study them with a Brahmana preceptor. Four sentences, and in every one of them he is on the giving side of the transaction and never the receiving side, and never the officiating side. He pays for the rite. He does not conduct it. He learns the text. He does not hand it on.

Then the part that Yudhishthira, who had been made a king a few days earlier over a field of his own dead, had to hear lying down.

He should protect the people. Always exerting himself for the destruction of robbers and wicked people, he should put forth his prowess in battle. Those among Kshatriya rulers who perform great sacrifices, who are possessed of a knowledge of the Vedas, and who gain victories in battle, become foremost of those that acquire many blessed regions hereafter.

And then, flatly: persons conversant with the old scriptures do not applaud that Kshatriya who returns unwounded from battle. This has been declared to be the conduct of a wretched Kshatriya.

There is no higher duty for him, Bhishma said, than the suppression of robbers. Gifts, study and sacrifices bring prosperity to kings, and therefore a king who desires to acquire religious merit should engage in battle.

Establishing all his subjects in the observance of their own duties, a king should cause every one of them to act according to the dictates of righteousness. And then the same kind of sentence that had closed the Brahmana's portion, with the term changed.

Whether he does or does not do any other act, if only he protects his subjects, he is regarded as accomplishing all religious acts, and he is called a Kshatriya, and the foremost of men.

One thing done, and the whole account is settled. For the Brahmana it was study. For the king it is protection.

"I shall now tell thee, O Yudhishthira, what the eternal duties of the Vaisya are."

They begin like the others. A Vaisya should make gifts, study the Vedas, perform sacrifices, and acquire wealth by fair means. Then the duty that is his alone. With proper attention he should also protect and rear all domestic animals, as a sire protects his sons.

Bhishma put the reason behind it in a single stroke of cosmology. The Creator, having created the domestic animals, bestowed their care upon the Vaisya. Upon the Brahmana and the Kshatriya he conferred the care of all creatures. The herdsman's charge is narrower than the priest's and the king's, and it is a charge all the same, given directly, and Bhishma said that anything else the Vaisya does will be regarded as improper for him, and that by protecting the animals he would obtain great happiness.

And then, without any change of tone, the discourse on eternal duty turns into a schedule of fees, and it is worth having exactly as it stands, because it is the only place in this teaching where a man is told in figures what his work is worth.

If he keeps six kine for others, he may take the milk of one cow as his remuneration.

If he keeps a hundred kine for others, he may take a single pair as his fee.

If he trades with another man's wealth, he may take a seventh part of the profits as his share.

A seventh also is his share of the profits arising from trade in horns, but he should take a sixteenth if the trade is in hoofs.

If he engages in cultivation with seeds supplied by others, he may take a seventh part of the yield. This is his annual remuneration.

Six cows and one cow's milk. A hundred cows and two of them. Nothing is left vague, and nothing is left to bargaining, and a man working with another man's herd, another man's money or another man's seed knows before he starts what will be his at the end.

Then the last line of the Vaisya's portion, and it is not about money.

A Vaisya should never desire that he should not tend cattle. If a Vaisya desires to tend cattle, no one else should be employed in that task.

"I should tell thee, O Bharata, what the duties of a Sudra are."

The Creator intended the Sudra to become the servant of the other three orders, Bhishma said, and for this the service of the three other classes is his duty, and by such service he may obtain great happiness. He should wait upon them according to their order of seniority.

Then the restriction that the rest of this story exists to test.

A Sudra should never amass wealth, lest by his wealth he make the members of the three superior classes obedient to him. By this he would incur sin.

And immediately after it, in the same breath, the exception.

With the king's permission, however, a Sudra, for performing religious acts, may earn wealth.

Hold on to that clause. Bhishma is going to come back to it with a name attached.

What follows is the plainest passage in the discourse, and the hardest. Sudras should certainly be maintained by the three other orders. Worn out umbrellas, turbans, beds and seats, shoes and fans should be given to the Sudra servants. Torn clothes which are no longer fit for wear should be given away by the regenerate classes unto the Sudra. These, Bhishma said, are the latter's lawful acquisitions.

Then the obligations that run the other way, and they are not small ones. If a Sudra approaches any one of the three orders from a desire to do menial service, that man should assign him proper work. To the Sudra who dies sonless, his master should offer the funeral cake, which is to say the master stands in the place of the son and does for him the one office that nobody can do for himself. The weak and the old among them should be maintained.

And the demand made of the servant in return is total. The Sudra should never abandon his master, whatever the nature or degree of the distress into which the master may fall. If the master loses his wealth, he should with excessive zeal be supported by the Sudra servant. A Sudra cannot have any wealth that is his own. Whatever he possesses belongs lawfully to his master.

That is the ceiling. Bhishma set it there deliberately, and then went straight to the fire.

"Sacrifice has been laid down as a duty of the three other orders. It has been ordained for the Sudra also, O Bharata."

That sentence is dropped into the discourse without any softening, immediately after the sentence saying that a servant owns nothing. The man who may not amass wealth is nevertheless under the obligation to sacrifice. It is not offered to him as a privilege he may take up if he can afford it. It is laid on him as a duty.

Then the limit on how he may do it, stated exactly.

A Sudra is not competent to utter swaha or swadha, or any other Vedic mantra. Those two words are the calls that send an offering to the gods and to the ancestors, and they are the hinge of every Vedic rite, and they are closed to him.

For this reason, Bhishma said, the Sudra, without observing the vows laid down in the Vedas, should worship the gods in the minor sacrifices called Paka-yajnas. These are the domestic rites, the cooked offerings made at a household fire rather than at the three fires of the great ritual, and they require no mantra that he is forbidden to speak.

And the fee for such a sacrifice is named as well. The gift called Purna-patra is declared to be the Dakshina of these rites.

A Purna-patra is a full vessel. Not a measured weight of gold, not a herd, not a village. A dish filled to its brim with grain, given to the officiating priest as the fee for the rite. It is the smallest respectable payment in the whole apparatus of sacrifice, and it is the one that a household with a cooking fire and no treasury can actually produce.

So the position Bhishma has arrived at is this. The servant must sacrifice. He may not speak the words. He is left with the small rite and the full dish. It is the narrowest opening left to any of the four orders, and everything a Sudra is going to do with the sacrificial fire has to be done through it.

"It has been heard by us," Bhishma said, "that in days of old there was a Sudra of the name of Paijavana."

Paijavana gave, in one of his sacrifices, a Dakshina consisting of a hundred thousand Purnapatras, according to the ordinance called Aindragni.

That is the whole of the account. One sentence, no scene, no dialogue, no year, no kingdom named, and it has kept a servant's name alive for as long as the epic has been recited, which is longer than most dynasties last.

Take the sentence apart and see what has been done in it.

The unit is the Purna-patra, the full dish of grain, the fee of the poor man's domestic rite, the one payment a Sudra is permitted to make. Paijavana did not step outside the rule to become famous. He did not utter swaha. He did not claim the great sacrifice of a king. He stayed inside the narrow opening that had been left him, and he took the smallest lawful gift in the ritual world, and he gave a hundred thousand of them.

Consider what that looks like on the ground. Vessels being filled and carried and set down, and counted, and set down again, in rows, until the counting itself becomes the ceremony. A quantity of grain that would feed a district. Given away by a man who, by the letter of the teaching Bhishma had just finished reciting, was not supposed to have accumulated anything at all, and who could only have come by it lawfully in the one way the teaching allows: with the king's permission, for the performance of religious acts.

And the ordinance is named. Aindragni, the rite belonging to Indra and to Agni, to the king of the gods and to the fire that carries what is offered. Paijavana's sacrifice was not an improvisation. It had a form, and the form had a name, and it was performed correctly.

Bhishma cited him without comment, in the middle of a passage on the limits of a servant's life, and then said again what he had said before the name was mentioned: sacrifice is as much laid down for the Sudra as for the three other classes.

He had answered the objection that the whole discourse invites, and he had answered it with a man rather than an argument.

"Of all sacrifices," Bhishma said, "devotion has been laid down to be the foremost."

Devotion is a high deity. It cleanses all sacrificers. That is put down as a fact of the ritual order, not as a consolation for people who can afford nothing better.

He kept the ranks in place while he said it. The Brahmana conversant with the Richs, the Yajuses and the Samans should always be worshipped as a god, and Brahmanas are the gods of the very gods, and they perform the sacrifices of the three other orders. The Sudra who is without Richs and Yajuses and Samans has Prajapati, the lord of creatures, for his god. All the orders bear towards one another the relation of consanguinity through the intermediate classes, and the Brahmana was created first.

And then, inside that structure, the opening.

Mental sacrifice is laid down for all the orders. And it is not true, Bhishma said, that the gods and other superior persons do not manifest a desire to share the offerings in such sacrifices of even the Sudra. For this reason the sacrifice that consists in devotion is laid down for all the classes, and all kinds of sacrifice naturally appertain to all four orders, and the obligation is not one whose discharge is optional.

He finished with a verse that persons conversant with ancient histories cite, sung in praise of sacrifice by the Vaikhanasa Munis, forest ascetics, at a sacrifice of theirs. Before or after sunrise a person of subdued senses, with heart filled with devotion, poureth libations on the sacrificial fire according to the ordinance. Devotion is a mighty agent.

Of the two kinds of homa, the one called skanna is the initial one, and the one called askanna is the last, and it is the foremost in point of merit.

Then the last words, and they go further than anything else in the section.

"That person who desires to perform a sacrifice is regarded as righteous even if he happens to be a thief, a sinner, or the worst of sinners. The Rishis applaud such a man, and without doubt they are right. This then is the conclusion, that all the orders should always and by every means in their power perform sacrifices. There is nothing in the three worlds equal to sacrifice. Therefore it has been said that every one, with heart free from malice, should perform sacrifices, aided by devotion which is sacred, to the best of his power and according as he pleases."

To the best of his power. Which in one case, once, was a hundred thousand full dishes of grain, and in another may be a single one.