Vidura Niti

Sanjaya came back from the Pandava camp at Upaplavya as the sun went down, went straight to the blind king, and would not give his message. "I will speak your answer from Yudhishthira in open court tomorrow, before all the kings," he said, and there was iron in it, for Sanjaya had seen both camps now and had stopped softening things. "But I will say this much tonight: you have played this with your own hands, king. The Pandavas asked for five villages. You have chosen your son instead." And he went to his rest, being a man with nothing on his conscience.

Dhritarashtra went to his bed and found it made of thorns. The night pressed on him: Yudhishthira's patience, which was ending; Arjuna's bow; Bhima's vows, one for each of his hundred sons; and behind them all the memory of a woman dragged by her hair through his own hall while he sat silent on his throne. He turned and turned, and at last called for a servant. "Go to Vidura," he said. "Tell him the king cannot sleep, and asks for him."

Vidura came through the midnight corridors at once, as he always came, the low-born half-brother whose counsel was the only mirror the king had never been able to break.

"You know why I have sent for you," said the king. "My heart burns and sleep will not come. Tell me what is good for a man in my state, Vidura. You alone speak to me with both wisdom and love."

"Sleep deserts four kinds of men," Vidura said. "The weak man attacked by the strong. The man who has lost everything. The thief. And the man who is devoured by desire for what belongs to others. I hope, king, that none of these is you." The blind man was silent, for the last of the four had sat down on his bed. Then he asked to hear wisdom, any wisdom, and Vidura, who had waited years for a night when the king would actually listen, gave him the whole treasury.

"Hear the marks of the wise man," Vidura said. "He knows himself, he acts to his strength, he holds effort steady and honors dharma, and neither wealth nor anger nor pride drags him off his road. His resolve is known by his deeds, not his announcements. He does not grieve for what is lost beyond recall, he does not lose his purpose in disaster, and he does not stop midway.

"And hear the fool. He is a stranger to knowledge and proud, poor and grandiose, longing for another's goods without lifting a hand. He abandons his own duty to meddle in others'. He desires what should not be desired, forsakes what should be held. He befriends the hostile, hates his well-wishers, serves the wicked, and stays angry at the strong. He trusts no one and trusts the wrong ones instantly, delays everything, does everything by halves. When invited he takes offense, when honored he suspects, and his counsel he takes from flatterers. That, king, is the fool - and the fool with power is the ruin of kingdoms."

Then Vidura gave the king the hardest sum in statecraft. "Abandon one man to save a family. Abandon a family to save a village. Abandon a village to save a country. And abandon the whole earth to save the soul. You know the name I am not saying, king. One man, ungovernable, greedy, and cruel, is dragging your hundred sons, your house, and every kingdom sworn to it toward a fire. The kshatriya code your fathers kept would have cut that knot in a day. You have known since the boy's birth what he is; Vidura told you then, and Vidura tells you now. Cast off the one, or lose the all."

"And the remedy is still in your hand, which is the unbearable part," Vidura went on, quieter. "Return to the sons of Pandu what is theirs. Give back Indraprastha, embrace Yudhishthira, and you end this tonight; you sleep tonight. The Pandavas are your sons too, king. Yudhishthira asks for peace with folded hands while his brothers string their bows; no man on earth gets a second offer like that. Put Duryodhana under restraint if he will not yield - a father may - and let the two houses live. Every future in which your sons see old age runs through that one act. There is no other road out of this night."

The blind king heard it all, and praised it, and wanted more of it, hour after hour, as if wisdom were water and he could soak in it what he would not drink. And at last he made the confession that damns him more gently and more completely than any accusation in the epic:

"Everything you say is true, Vidura. My own heart says it with you. When I listen to you, my mind leans toward the Pandavas, and I resolve everything you have urged. But when Duryodhana comes near me, it turns, and my resolve runs out of me like water from a cracked jar. I cannot abandon my son. I know dharma, and I cannot hold to it. I know adharma, and I cannot let it go. Fate, surely, is stronger than effort. Talk on, Vidura. Your voice comforts me."

So the wisest counsel in the Mahabharata spent itself on a man who agreed with every word. Vidura talked the stars down, on kings and ministers, friendship and greed, forgiveness and time, and the treasury of that night would be studied by rulers for three thousand years; and the one ruler it was spoken to rose from it unchanged. When day came, Sanjaya delivered Yudhishthira's message in open court, the war councils resumed, and the old king let it all happen, comforted and unrepentant.

The night had one more chapter, for before it ended the sleepless king asked Vidura a question even Vidura would not answer - a question about death - and a third voice, older than either of them, was summoned into the dark chamber. But that is its own story.