The Sage in the Well

At Udapana, a sacred bathing place on the Sarasvati that Balarama visited on his pilgrimage, the epic tells of Trita, the sage who was abandoned in a well by his own brothers and yet, by his wit and his devotion, performed a sacrifice from the depths of the earth and won his way out - a tale of resourcefulness in misfortune, of the betrayal of kin, and of the spirit that will not be defeated even at the bottom of a pit.

There were three brothers, sages all, named Ekata, Dvita, and Trita - the First, the Second, and the Third. Of the three, Trita, the youngest, was by far the most gifted: the most learned, the most accomplished in sacrifice and sacred lore, the most honored among men for his wisdom and his power. And because of this, the two elder brothers, Ekata and Dvita, though they should have rejoiced in him, were instead consumed with envy of their younger brother, whose gifts so outshone their own; and their envy festered into a readiness to do him wrong.

The three brothers went together on a journey, driving before them a herd of cattle that they had received as gifts for their priestly services, a rich reward of cows that the three were taking home. Trita, the youngest and the most skilled, went ahead, leading the way; and his two elder brothers followed behind with the herd, their envy of him still rankling, and a greedy thought now stirring in them concerning the cattle.

For the elder brothers, looking on the fine herd of cows, conceived a wicked plan: to be rid of their gifted younger brother and to keep all the cattle for themselves, dividing his share between them. As they journeyed, the chance to do it came. Night fell, and a wolf appeared upon the road; and Trita, walking in front, ran from it in fright and fell into a deep pit on the bank of the Sarasvati. The elder brothers heard his cries and saw their moment. They had only to leave him there, trapped, and go on with the cattle, and their envy and their greed would both be satisfied at a stroke.

So it was that Trita came to be at the bottom of a deep, dry, and abandoned well, overgrown with creepers and herbs, and could not climb out, for its sides were sheer and far too high to scale. And his two elder brothers, when they saw him trapped helpless in the depths of the well, did not lift a hand to save him. Instead, afraid of the wolf and greedy for the animals, they abandoned him there and drove off with the whole herd of cattle, content to leave their gifted younger brother to die forgotten at the bottom of the pit.

So Trita, the most learned and honored of the three, was betrayed and abandoned by his own brothers, left to perish in a dark and waterless well in the wilderness, with no food, no water, no way out, and no hope of any human help, for none knew where he was and none would come. It was a cruel betrayal: that his own kin, who should have loved and protected him, should leave him to die out of envy of his gifts and greed for his share of cattle. And there, at the bottom of the well, the abandoned sage was left alone with his plight.

But Trita was not a man to give way to despair, even at the bottom of a well. He was a master of sacrifice and sacred lore; and there in the depths, with none of the materials that a sacrifice requires - no fire, no altar, no offerings, no sacred implements, nothing of all that the rites demand - he resolved nonetheless to perform a great sacrifice, by the only means left to him: by the power of his mind and his sacred knowledge alone.

So the abandoned sage, in the darkness of the pit, performed a sacrifice in his imagination and by the force of his learning - conceiving in his mind the whole apparatus of the rite, the fire and the altar and the offerings and the holy chants, and performing the entire great sacrifice mentally, with perfect knowledge and perfect devotion, supplying by the power of his spirit all that his circumstances denied him. Where he had nothing, he made of his own knowledge and will a complete and faultless sacrifice; and from the bottom of a dry well, by sheer resourcefulness and spiritual power, he sent up to the gods an offering as real and as potent as any made upon a proper altar above.

The sacrifice that Trita performed in the depths of the well, by the power of his mind alone, did not go unregarded; for so great was his learning and his devotion that the rite he conducted mentally reached up to the very gods, and the deities of the sacrifice were drawn and disturbed by this strange and potent offering rising from the bottom of a pit. Heaven was shaken and no one knew why, until Brihaspati heard the sound of the rite and warned the gods that so great an ascetic, if angered, could create other gods; and so the gods came down to the pit to claim their shares.

For it was a wonder indeed: that a man left to die in a waterless well, stripped of every means, should yet by the sheer force of his knowledge and his will perform a sacrifice complete and powerful enough to summon the attention of heaven. The gods, perceiving the greatness of the sage and the injustice that had been done him, and honoring the devotion that could conduct so perfect a rite in so hopeless a place, were ready to answer him; and the very power of the sacrifice he had raised from the depths became the means of his deliverance, drawing down the divine aid that would lift him from the pit.

By the power of the sacrifice he had performed and the favor of the gods it had won, Trita was delivered from the well. He gave the gods their shares with the proper mantras, and, pleased, they granted him a boon; he asked to be freed from the pit, and that whoever bathed in that well should win the reward of drinking soma. Then the river Sarasvati rose with her waves into the well, and the waters his own spiritual power had summoned raised the abandoned sage up from the depths and set him free upon the earth once more, alive and unharmed, his rite accomplished and its reward granted.

So the sage who had been left to die at the bottom of a pit by his own brothers came up out of it alive, saved not by any human hand but by the gods, whom his own resourcefulness and devotion had moved to rescue him. The betrayal of his brothers had not destroyed him; the pit that was meant to be his grave had become instead the place of a marvelous sacrifice and a marvelous deliverance. He had refused to despair, had turned his very helplessness into an offering, and had won his way out by the strength of his spirit when every other way was closed.

There is in the tale a teaching worth drawing out: the power of resourcefulness and an undefeated spirit in the face of misfortune. For Trita, abandoned in the well with nothing, did not lie down and despair, nor curse his fate, nor wait helplessly for death; he looked at what little he had - only his own knowledge and will - and made of that a complete sacrifice, and so summoned his own deliverance. The pit that should have defeated him became the scene of his triumph, because he refused to be defeated.

The sage's greatness, the tale taught, lay not only in his learning but in his refusal to be broken by his plight, and in his ability to find, even in the most hopeless circumstances and with the barest means, a way to act, to offer, to strive. When all the outward materials of the sacrifice were denied him, he supplied them from within; when every outward way was shut, he opened an inward one. So the tale held him up as a model of the spirit that meets disaster not with despair but with resourcefulness, that uses whatever remains, however little, and so wins through where a weaker spirit would have perished.

The lessons of the tale can be drawn out plainly.

'See, first, the resourcefulness and the undefeated spirit of the sage abandoned in the well. Left by his own brothers to die in a dry pit, with none of the means a sacrifice requires, Trita did not despair but performed the whole great rite by the power of his mind alone, and so summoned the gods and won his deliverance. The tale teaches that misfortune, however deep, need not defeat the strong of spirit; that even when stripped of every outward means, one may yet act by the power within; and that the one who refuses to despair, and makes use of whatever little remains to him, can find a way out where every way seems closed. Meet your own disasters, then, not with despair but with this undefeated resourcefulness.

'And see, too, the bitterness of betrayal by one's own kin, and how envy and greed can turn brothers into enemies. Trita's own brothers, envying his gifts and coveting his cattle, left him to die; and yet their betrayal did not destroy him, but became the occasion of his greatest triumph. The tale warns against the envy and greed that can poison even the bonds of blood; and it comforts the betrayed with the assurance that injustice need not have the last word, and that the spirit which will not be broken may rise even from the pit its enemies dug for it. Be not as the envious brothers; and if you are wronged as Trita was, be as Trita, and rise.'

And when Trita came home, he cursed his two brothers to roam the forest as fierce wolves with sharp teeth, and they were at once changed into that shape; the sage who would not be defeated even at the bottom of a well had the last word.