Indra Questions Shambara

The winter sun crossed slowly over Kurukshetra, and beneath it, on his bed of arrows, Bhishma lay as he had lain for many days, waiting for the solstice that would release him into death. Physicians came and went, kings came and went, and still the old regent held court from that terrible bed, teaching what he had learned across two lifetimes of duty. Yudhishthira came again that morning, dust of the ravaged field still on his sandals, and sat at the grandsire's side with a question he had carried since the war ended and could no longer keep unspoken.

"Grandfather," he said, "you have told me that the brahmanas are the gods of the gods, and that no king can rule the earth without their goodwill. I believe you, and yet I want to see it with my own eyes. Soon the whole weight of this kingdom will rest on me. Tell me of someone who rose above his own people by honouring them. Does reverence for the learned truly lift a ruler above his kin, or is that only what the priests tell kings?"

Bhishma's eyes, sunk deep with pain and age, brightened faintly at the question, as they always did when a true one was asked of him. "You ask what kings have wondered since the first kingdom was founded," he said. "I will not answer you with a sermon, Yudhishthira, but with an ancient history, a conversation between Shakra himself, the lord of the gods, and an asura named Shambara, who stood at the head of all his race. Listen, and you will learn where his greatness came from."

"There was an age," Bhishma began, "when the asura Shambara, a prince of the danavas, stood first among all his kin. His people looked to him as the one above them all, and every member of his race counted him their superior. Indra, seated on his own throne amid his own splendor, heard of this and wondered at it. Many asuras were strong. Many were rich. Why was this one, above all the rest, held so high?

"So Indra set aside the thunderbolt and the splendor of his godhood, and took on the shape of an ascetic with matted hair, his whole body smeared with dust, and rode in an ugly, battered car into Shambara's presence. No one who saw that strange, dusty figure would have guessed that the king of heaven sat inside it.

"Shambara received the stranger, and Indra, still hidden in his disguise, asked the question he had truly come to ask.

"'O Shambara,' he said, 'through what conduct have you come to stand at the head of all your race? For what reason do all your people regard you as superior to themselves? I am asking you. Tell me truly, and in full.'"

"Shambara considered the question seriously, and he answered it as a man answers when he has genuinely examined his own life. 'Stranger,' he said, 'I will tell you plainly. I never bear ill will toward the brahmanas, and I never speak against them or against Brahma, the grandsire. When they recite and explain the sacred texts, I listen with a glad heart. What I have heard from them I never ignore, and I never find fault with it.

"'I grasp the feet of the wise among them, worship them, and then I ask them questions. Because I always give them reason to trust me, they speak to me openly and with affection. If they are careless, I stay careful. If they sleep, I stay awake. As bees fill the cells of the comb with honey, the brahmanas fill me with the nectar of their knowledge, and I take what they say with memory and understanding and hold on to it. In my own mind I always count myself below them.

"'It is by this, and by nothing else, that I stand among my kin as the moon stands among the stars. The words that fall from the lips of the brahmanas are nectar on this earth. Whoever lives by them gains the highest good.

"'I did not find this path alone. Long ago my father watched a battle between the gods and the asuras, and saw with delight and wonder what power the brahmanas' words carried. He asked Soma, the moon, how the brahmanas succeed. Soma told him: "They succeed through their austerities. A king's strength lies in his arms, but a brahmana's strength lies in speech; words are his weapons. Let him leave home to study, put away anger and pride, and look on all things with an equal eye. The earth swallows two kinds of men, as a snake swallows what lives in holes: a king who will not fight, and a brahmana who will not leave home to learn. Pride destroys the prosperity of those of little understanding." My father heard this from Soma and took up the vow of worshipping the brahmanas. I have followed him in it. That is the whole of my secret.'"

"Indra sat with that answer for a long moment. He had come to an asura's hall in a borrowed shape, expecting perhaps to find some sorcery or some hidden trick behind Shambara's greatness. Instead he had been given something so plain that any household in the three worlds could practice it: reverence for the learned, attention to their words, humility before them.

"And Indra, to his credit, did not turn from it because it came from the mouth of an enemy. He took the teaching of that prince of the danavas back with him. From that time he worshipped the brahmanas as Shambara did, and because of it he rose to become the great Indra, chief among all the gods.

"Mark this, Yudhishthira. The lord of heaven learned the root of greatness from an asura, and was not too proud to learn it. Wisdom does not ask whose house it is found in."

Bhishma paused then, and the effort of the long telling showed briefly in the tightening of his jaw before he pressed on, unwilling to let the lesson rest unfinished while breath remained to him.

"You asked me whether honouring the learned truly lifts a ruler above his kin, Yudhishthira. Now you have your answer from two mouths, an asura's and a god's. Shambara stood first among the danavas by it, and Indra became the great Indra by it. Neither of them won that place by the strength of his arm alone.

"Soon you will sit on the throne of the Kurus. Do not think that armies and treasuries are enough to hold it. A king cannot rule the earth without the goodwill of the brahmanas. Worship them with gifts and with willing service, listen when they speak, and never let pride persuade you that you have nothing left to learn. Keep that vow as Shambara's father kept it, as Shambara kept it, as the king of the gods himself kept it, and your reign will stand.