The Price of a Hundred Sons

The sages told the Pandavas of King Somaka, who had a hundred wives and yet for long only a single son, and of the hard rite by which he gained a hundred sons, and the loyalty by which he would not let his priest suffer alone for it. It is a tale of a father's longing, the cost of desire, and the bond between a king and the man who acts at his bidding.

King Somaka was a righteous and prosperous ruler who had a hundred wives, and he longed above all things for sons to continue his line. But for a very long time, though he had so many queens, not one of them bore him a child, until at last, after long waiting, a single son was born to him - a boy named Jantu, his only child among all his hundred wives. And because Jantu was his one and only son, born after such long longing, the king and all his hundred queens doted upon the boy and loved him beyond all measure, lavishing upon that one child all the love that a hundred mothers had to give.

Yet the king was not content, for he wished for many sons, and a single heir seemed to him too frail a hope for his line; one child might be lost, and then all would be ended. And the boy Jantu, doted upon by a hundred mothers at once, was so smothered with anxious love that the whole court was thrown into turmoil over his every cry and scratch, the hundred queens fussing and fretting over the one child without cease.

The king went to his learned family priest and laid his trouble before him. 'I have a hundred wives,' he said, 'and yet only this one son. I long for a hundred sons, that my line may be secure and my house full. Is there no rite, no sacrifice, by which I may gain many sons in place of this one?' He asked whether the priest knew of any means, however hard, by which his desire for a hundred sons might be fulfilled. And the priest, after thought, said that there was indeed such a rite - but that it was a hard and terrible one, and would cost the king dear.

The priest told the king the hard condition of the rite. By a certain sacrifice, he said, the king might indeed gain a hundred sons; but the offering required for that sacrifice was the king's own only son, Jantu - the very child must be given up and offered in the rite. And from the smoke and the power of that offering, the priest said, the hundred queens would all conceive and bear sons; and moreover the boy Jantu himself would be reborn among them, returning to his mother with a mark of gold, so that he would not be lost but restored along with the rest.

It was a dreadful price - to give up the one beloved child in the hope of a hundred, even with the promise that the one would return. The king was torn, and the mothers wept, for it seemed a terrible and cruel thing to offer up the very child they so loved. Yet the king's longing for a hundred sons, and the priest's promise that Jantu himself would be restored among them, at last moved him to consent; and so, with grief and with hope mingled, the hard rite was undertaken, the beloved only son given up in the longing for many.

The rite was performed, and its promise was fulfilled. In due time all the hundred queens of King Somaka conceived and bore him sons - a hundred sons in all, so that the king's longing was answered and his house was filled with heirs at last. And among them, true to the priest's word, the beloved Jantu was reborn to his own mother, marked with gold as had been foretold, restored to her along with the ninety-nine others, so that the one child given up was not lost but returned, the eldest now among a hundred brothers.

So the king gained his heart's desire: a hundred sons where before he had but one, his line made secure and his house full, and his beloved Jantu restored to him besides. For a time it seemed that the hard rite had bought only blessing, that the grief had been repaid with a hundredfold joy, and that the king's longing had been answered without lasting loss. The king rejoiced in his hundred sons, and the cost he had paid seemed, for the while, wholly made good.

But the hard rite was not without its reckoning. In the fullness of time the priest who had performed it died, and after him the king Somaka also died; and in the next world the priest was made to suffer in a hell, in punishment for the cruel rite he had performed - for though it had been done at the king's bidding and for the king's desire, it was the priest who had carried it out, and upon him the penalty for its cruelty fell.

When King Somaka came into the next world after his own death, he found his old priest suffering there in that hell, paying the penalty for the rite that had been done for the king's sake. And the king was stricken to see it: that his priest should suffer alone for a deed undertaken at the king's own desire and command, while the king who had wished it and consented to it went toward the reward of his own merits. It seemed to him a grievous wrong that the man who had acted at his bidding should bear the whole punishment alone, while he who had bidden it went free.

King Somaka would not accept his own happiness at such a price. He went to the powers of the next world and said, 'This priest suffers here for a rite that was done at my command, for my desire, for my sake. It is not just that he should bear the punishment alone while I go free; for the deed was as much mine as his - more mine, for it was my wish and my bidding that set it in motion. Let me, therefore, share his punishment; let me enter this hell and suffer alongside him, taking my due portion of the penalty, until his term and mine are done. I will not go to any heaven while the man who acted for me suffers here alone.'

So the king, out of loyalty and justice, refused the reward of his own merits and chose instead to share the suffering of his priest - to descend into the hell and bear the penalty alongside the man who had acted at his bidding, rather than leave him to suffer alone for a deed that was truly the king's own. He insisted on taking his share of the consequence, holding that the one who commands a deed must bear its burden as much as the one who carries it out, and that loyalty forbade him to abandon his priest to a punishment earned on the king's behalf.

The powers of the next world honored the king's choice. Somaka was allowed to share his priest's punishment, descending to bear the penalty alongside him; and the king did so willingly, taking his due portion of the suffering for the deed that had been done at his command, refusing to be spared while his priest suffered. And because the king took his rightful share of the burden, the penalty was justly divided between the two who had together brought about the deed, the one who bade and the one who acted, each bearing his part.

And when the term of the punishment was complete - the penalty paid and the debt discharged by both together - the king and his priest were released from the hell alike, and went on together to the reward of their good deeds, their account now settled and just. By sharing the burden, the king had made the reckoning right; neither bore alone what both had done, and when the shared penalty was paid, both were freed together. The loyalty that had refused to let the priest suffer alone had, in the end, brought them both through the suffering and out to the reward beyond it.

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

'See, first, the cost of desire, and how the longing for more can lead even a good king into a hard and cruel path. Somaka had a son, and might have been content; but in his longing for a hundred, he was led to a dreadful rite that bought his hundred sons at a terrible price, and brought a reckoning in the world to come. The tale warns that desire, pursued too far, leads us into deeds whose cost we do not foresee; that the longing for more than we have can darken even a righteous heart; and that every such deed brings its own reckoning in time. Be wary, then, of the desire that is never satisfied with what it has.

'And see, above all, the loyalty and justice of the king who would not let another suffer alone for a deed done at his bidding. Somaka refused his own reward and chose to share his priest's punishment, holding that the one who commands a deed must bear its burden as much as the one who carries it out; and by taking his rightful share, he made the reckoning just, and both were released together in the end. Learn from this that responsibility cannot be shifted onto those who act at our command; that the one who bids a deed owns it as truly as the one who does it; and that loyalty and justice require us to share the burden of what is done for our sake, and never to let another bear alone what is rightly our own.'

And the Pandavas, who would command many deeds in war and bear the weight of them, took soberly to heart the tale of the king who would not let his priest suffer alone.