The Jewel of the Sun

The sages told the Pandavas of the Syamantaka jewel, and of how a false accusation against Krishna was cleared by the patient pursuit of the truth - a tale of greed, suspicion, and a king of bears who remembered the Lord across the ages.

In Dwaraka there lived a Yadava noble named Satrajit, a great devotee of the Sun god, Surya. Pleased with his devotion, the Sun gave Satrajit a wondrous gem called the Syamantaka - a jewel of dazzling brilliance, blazing like a piece of the sun itself. It was no ordinary stone: it produced a great quantity of gold each day, and so long as it was kept by a virtuous owner in a virtuous land, it warded off all calamities, famines, and misfortunes from that place. But it was said that the jewel would bless and protect only a pure and righteous keeper; in unworthy or greedy hands it would bring not blessing but ruin. Satrajit wore the brilliant gem about his neck, and it shone so brightly that when he walked through Dwaraka, people were dazzled and some even mistook him, in his blaze of light, for the Sun god come down to earth.

Krishna, seeing the wondrous jewel and knowing its power to protect a whole land from calamity, suggested to Satrajit that such a treasure ought not to be hoarded by one man for private gain, but should be given to the king, Ugrasena, for the good of all the people, since its blessings would then guard the entire kingdom. It was a wise and public-spirited suggestion.

But Satrajit was greedy, and attached to his jewel and the daily gold it gave him, and he refused. Worse, his greed made him suspicious: he began to imagine that Krishna's suggestion had been a cover for Krishna's own desire to possess the jewel - that the Lord coveted it for himself. So Satrajit clung to his gem the more tightly, and harbored an unjust suspicion of Krishna in his heart, which would soon flower into a public slander.

This was the seed of all the trouble: greed in Satrajit, and the suspicion that greed breeds, which made him think his neighbor as grasping as himself.

One day Satrajit's brother Prasena took the brilliant Syamantaka jewel, hung it about his own neck, and rode out into the forest to hunt. But the jewel, it was said, would not bless an unworthy keeper, and Prasena was not its rightful owner. Deep in the forest a great lion fell upon Prasena and killed him, slaying both the hunter and his horse, and the lion took the gleaming jewel in its mouth and carried it off.

But the lion did not keep it long. As it went through the forest with the shining gem, it was met by Jambavan, the mighty king of the bears - the same immortal Jambavan who had served the Lord Rama in a former age, ages and ages before, and who still lived, vast and powerful, in a cave in the deep forest. Jambavan killed the lion, took the brilliant jewel, and carried it home to his cave, where he gave it to his little child to play with, hanging it over the child's cradle as a glittering toy. And there, in the bear-king's cave, the Syamantaka jewel lay, far from Dwaraka and far from any eye that might guess where it had gone.

When Prasena did not return from the hunt, and the jewel with him, Satrajit's suspicion hardened at once into a cruel certainty. Remembering that Krishna had wanted the jewel given to the king, he leaped to the conclusion that Krishna must have followed Prasena into the forest, murdered him, and stolen the Syamantaka for himself. And Satrajit did not keep this dark suspicion to himself - he spread it abroad, accusing Krishna publicly of having killed Prasena to steal the gem.

The slander spread through Dwaraka and beyond, and it stuck. People who heard it began to believe it, or to half-believe it, and a shadow fell upon Krishna's good name. The Lord, who had only meant well, found himself accused of theft and murder, his reputation stained by a greedy man's unjust suspicion. It was a grievous thing - that one who was innocent, and indeed the very source of all righteousness, should be openly branded a thief and a murderer on no evidence but another man's greed and fear.

Krishna would not let the false accusation stand. He knew that to clear his name he must find out what had truly happened to Prasena and the jewel, and bring the truth to light - not merely deny the charge, but prove it false by discovering the facts. So he gathered some of the people of Dwaraka as witnesses and set out himself into the forest to trace the truth.

Patiently he followed the trail. He found the place where Prasena and his horse had been killed, and saw that it was the work of a lion, not a man. He followed the lion's tracks further, and came upon the lion itself, dead - and saw that it had been killed by some far mightier beast. He followed that mightier trail, the tracks of an enormous bear, deeper and deeper into the wild forest, the witnesses with him seeing each stage of the evidence, until the trail led at last to the mouth of a great cave in the mountainside - the cave of Jambavan, the king of the bears.

Leaving the others outside, for the cave was dark and dreadful, Krishna went in alone to find the jewel and the truth.

Deep within the cave Krishna found what he sought: the brilliant Syamantaka jewel, hanging as a glittering plaything over the cradle of Jambavan's child. He took the jewel - and at once the bear-king Jambavan, roused and not recognizing this man who had entered his cave and seized the gem, fell upon him in fury to defend his home and his child's toy.

And then began a battle the like of which few have ever seen. Jambavan was no ordinary bear but the immortal king of bears, of tremendous and ancient strength, who had served the Lord Rama in a former age. He and Krishna fought in the cave and before it, hand to hand, with a power and a fury that shook the mountain, and the combat did not end in an hour or a day. For many days - some say twenty-one, some twenty-eight - the two great beings fought without pause, neither yielding, locked in a struggle of titanic strength.

But as the long days of battle wore on, Jambavan found his strength, for the first time in all his immortal life, beginning to fail him. Blow by blow he grew weaker, while his opponent did not tire at all. And slowly a wonder dawned upon the bear-king: that no ordinary being, no man, no god even, had ever been able to withstand him, let alone overpower him - and that the one who was now wearing down his ancient strength could be no other than the Lord himself.

Then recognition broke fully upon Jambavan. He remembered - across the vast gulf of ages - the Lord he had served long ago: Rama, in whose army of bears and monkeys he had fought against the demon Ravana, the Lord to whom he had given his whole devotion in that former age. And he understood that this mighty being who was overpowering him now was that same Lord, come again in a new form, as Krishna.

The bear-king's fury melted into devotion and awe. He fell back, ceased the fight, and bowed before Krishna in worship, his heart overflowing. "My Lord!" he cried. "Now I know you - you are the supreme Lord, the same who was Rama in the age that is gone, whom I served and worshipped. Forgive me, that I did not know you and dared to fight you, raising my hand against the very Lord I love. Take the jewel; it was never truly mine. And take, too, my daughter."

For Jambavan, in his joy and reverence, gave to Krishna not only the Syamantaka jewel that had caused so much trouble, but also his own daughter, the bear-princess Jambavati, to be Krishna's wife - honored to give his child to the Lord he had served across the ages. And Krishna accepted both with grace, and the long battle ended not in enmity but in worship and a marriage.

Krishna emerged from the cave at last - after the others had nearly given him up for lost during the long days - bearing the recovered Syamantaka jewel and accompanied by his new wife Jambavati. He returned in triumph to Dwaraka, and there, before the assembled people and the king, he publicly told the whole true story - how Prasena had been killed by a lion, the lion by Jambavan, and how he had recovered the jewel from the bear-king's cave - and he produced the jewel itself as proof, and returned it openly to Satrajit before all.

The false accusation was undone. Everyone now saw that Krishna had been innocent all along, that he had neither killed Prasena nor stolen the jewel, but had patiently sought out the truth and brought it to light to clear his name. And Satrajit was overcome with shame and remorse at having so wrongly and so publicly accused the innocent Lord out of his own greed and suspicion. To make amends for the wrong he had done, Satrajit gave to Krishna both the Syamantaka jewel and his own beautiful daughter, Satyabhama, in marriage, begging his forgiveness. Krishna graciously accepted Satyabhama as his wife - she who would become one of his most beloved queens - but he would not keep the jewel that had caused so much trouble and suspicion; he returned the Syamantaka to Satrajit, wanting nothing of it for himself, so that all could see his hands and his heart were clean.

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

"See first the troubles that greed brings, son of Pandu. Satrajit's greed for his jewel bred suspicion, and his suspicion bred a cruel and false accusation against the innocent, and from that one greedy clinging flowed murder suspected, a good name stained, a great battle fought, and much sorrow - and the jewel that he would not share for the public good brought him, in the end, only trouble. The grasping heart poisons everything it touches, and suspects in others the very greed it harbors itself.

"See, too, how a false accusation against the innocent is best answered: not by mere denial and indignation, but by the patient pursuit of the truth. Krishna, though he was the Lord and could have simply asserted his innocence, instead went and traced the facts step by step, with witnesses, and brought the whole truth to light, so that his name was cleared not by his word alone but by plain proof that none could deny. When you are wronged by slander, the tale teaches, seek out the truth and let it speak; the truth patiently uncovered is the surest answer to a lie.

"And see the constancy of devotion across the ages: the bear-king Jambavan, who had served the Lord in a former age, knew him again when his own strength failed before him, and his enmity turned in a moment to worship. The Lord is recognized, in the end, by those who have truly loved him, however long the ages between."

And the Pandavas, who had themselves been slandered and falsely dealt with, took to heart that the patient truth is the answer to every lie.