The Brothers and the Stolen Fruit

The sages told the Pandavas of Shankha and Likhita, two brothers who were sages, and of how the strict keeping of dharma even between loving brothers, and the willing acceptance of a just punishment, became a thing of purification and grace. It is a tale of how justice and love are not opposed, but are perfected together.

Shankha and Likhita were two brothers, both of them sages, who dwelt in hermitages near one another on the bank of a sacred river. Each had his own hermitage and his own grove of fruit trees, tended with care. They were devoted to one another as only brothers can be, and devoted alike to the path of righteousness, holding the keeping of dharma to be above all things. Shankha, the elder, was especially firm and exact in matters of right conduct, a keeper of the law to the last degree; and his younger brother Likhita honored him for it.

One day Likhita came to visit his elder brother Shankha at his hermitage, but found that Shankha was away. While he waited, Likhita walked in his brother's grove, and, being hungry, he picked some of the ripe fruit from Shankha's trees and ate it, thinking nothing of it; for were they not brothers, and was not all that belonged to the one as good as the other's?

When Shankha returned and found his younger brother eating the fruit of his grove, he asked him, 'Where did you get that fruit you are eating?' And Likhita answered easily, 'Why, from your trees here in the grove; I took it as I waited for you.' He had taken it without a thought of wrong, in the easy way of brothers who share all things. But Shankha, strict keeper of dharma that he was, did not see it so lightly; for the fruit had been taken without his leave, without its owner's consent, and that, by the strict letter of the law, was a thing not to be passed over, even between brothers.

Shankha said to his brother gravely, 'You have taken what was mine without asking my leave; you have taken what was not given. This, my brother, is theft - the taking of another's property without his consent - and theft it remains, even though we are brothers and even though it was only fruit. You have done a wrong against dharma, and you must not let it pass unatoned, lest the sin cling to you. Go, therefore, to the king, and tell him plainly what you have done, and ask him to impose upon you the punishment that the law lays down for a thief. Only so will you be cleansed of the wrong.'

Likhita was taken aback, for he had meant no wrong; yet he did not argue, nor make light of his brother's strictness, nor plead their kinship as an excuse. He saw that his brother spoke for dharma, and that by the strict law he had indeed taken what was not given; and being himself a lover of righteousness, he accepted his brother's judgment without complaint. He would go to the king, confess his fault, and submit to whatever punishment the law required.

Likhita went to the king and presented himself before him, and confessed plainly what he had done: that he had taken and eaten fruit from his brother's grove without his brother's leave, and that this was theft, and that he had come to receive the punishment the law laid down for it. The king, astonished that a holy sage should come to accuse himself of so small a thing and demand to be punished, tried at first to dismiss it. 'It is nothing,' he said; 'it was your own brother's fruit, and surely he forgives you; I will not punish a sage for such a trifle. Go in peace.'

But Likhita would not go. He insisted that he had broken the law, that he had taken what was not given, and that the king's duty was to impose the lawful punishment without favor; for if even a small theft went unpunished out of regard for the offender's holiness, then the king failed in his own dharma, and the law itself was made a mockery. He pressed the king to do his duty and impose the penalty the law prescribed for a thief, and not to spare him. And the king, seeing that the sage was in earnest and would not be dissuaded, saw that he must indeed uphold the law.

So the king, at the sage's own insistence, imposed the punishment that the harsh law of that age laid down for theft: the cutting off of the offending hands - the hands that had taken what was not given. And Likhita accepted the sentence without a word of protest or complaint, holding out his hands willingly to receive the penalty he had asked for, untroubled and unresentful, content that the law was being kept and his fault atoned. The punishment was carried out, and Likhita's hands were severed.

He bore it all with perfect calm and acceptance, bearing no anger against the king who punished him, nor against the brother who had sent him, nor any grief for himself; for he had done wrong by the strict law, and he was glad to be cleansed of it, and he honored the law that exacted the price. There was in his willing acceptance no bitterness at all, but only the serene submission of one who loves dharma more than his own comfort, and would rather suffer the law's penalty than see the law set aside on his account.

His punishment received, Likhita returned to his elder brother Shankha, bearing no resentment, his fault atoned. And Shankha received him not with coldness but with love, well pleased that his brother had kept dharma so faithfully and accepted the law's penalty without complaint. For Shankha's strictness had never been want of love; it had been love of a higher kind - the love that will not let a brother carry the stain of an unatoned wrong, but holds him to the path of righteousness for his own soul's sake.

Shankha embraced his brother and blessed him, and bade him go and bathe in the sacred river and perform his devotions, his fault now fully cleansed. There was no breach between them, no bitterness on either side; the elder had done his duty in sending the younger to be punished, and the younger had done his in accepting it, and their love was not lessened by it but proved and deepened. They were brothers still, and lovers of dharma both, united now more closely than before by the very strictness that had passed between them.

Then Likhita went down to the sacred river, as his brother had bidden him, and entered the water to bathe and to offer his devotions and prayers. And as he raised what remained of his arms in the water to perform the rite, a wonder came to pass: by the power of his perfect acceptance of the just punishment, by the purity of his unresentful heart, and by the blessing of his righteous brother, his severed hands were restored to him, whole and sound as before, growing back upon his arms by the grace that his willing submission to dharma had earned.

He came up from the river with both his hands restored, made whole again - not by escaping the law's penalty, but by accepting it fully; for having paid the price of his fault without complaint, and being cleansed of the wrong, the very grace of dharma gave him back what the law had taken. So his willing acceptance of justice became the means of his healing; the punishment borne in a pure and unresentful spirit was turned, by grace, into restoration. What strict justice had exacted, grace returned to the one who had submitted to justice with a perfect heart.

The sages drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas.

'See, first, how dharma is to be kept exactly, even in small things and even between those who love one another. Likhita took only a little fruit, and from his own brother's grove; yet because he took it without leave, it was theft by the strict law, and neither brother would let it pass unatoned. The tale teaches that righteousness is not a matter of great things only, but of the smallest; that the bonds of love and kinship are no excuse for setting the law aside; and that the king must uphold the law without favor, sparing not even a sage. To keep dharma exactly, in the least things as in the greatest, is the mark of the truly righteous.

'And see how justice and love are not enemies but are perfected together. Shankha's strictness was the truest love, that would not let his brother carry an unatoned wrong; and Likhita's willing acceptance of the harsh penalty, without anger or complaint, was the proof of his own love of dharma. And see the grace that crowned it: his hands, taken by strict justice, were restored to him because he had submitted to justice with a perfect heart. Accept, then, the just consequences of your faults without resentment; uphold the law without favor; and know that justice borne in love is not cruelty but cleansing, and that grace meets the one who submits to it with a pure heart.'

And the Pandavas, who would one day have to uphold the law as kings, and to accept hard consequences themselves, took to heart the tale of the brothers in whom justice and love were made one.