Righteousness, the Only Friend

Vaisampayana said that the king came to the bed of arrows that morning as he had come on every other morning of that long season, and put his question, and waited.

Bhishma had by then answered him about kings and about gifts, about vows and fasts and fords, about the conduct of householders and the merit of cows. Yudhishthira had grown used to the shape of it. He asked, and the old man on the arrows opened his mouth and the answer came out whole.

"O grandsire," he said, "O thou that art possessed of great wisdom and conversant with all the scriptures, I desire to know those excellent ordinances in consequence of which mortal creatures have to travel through their rounds of rebirth. What is that conduct by following which men succeed in attaining to high heaven, and what is that conduct by which one sinks in Hell?"

Then he asked the part of it that he had really come to ask.

"When, abandoning the dead body that is as inert as a piece of wood or clod of earth, people proceed to the other world, what are those that follow them thither?"

It was not an idle question in that place. The field was two years quiet by then and the man he was asking had been lying on the arrows since the tenth day of the war, waiting for the sun to turn north before he would consent to die. Yudhishthira had buried more of his own than he could count. He wanted to know what, if anything, goes with them.

And Bhishma, for once, did not answer.

"Yonder comes the illustrious Brihaspati of great intelligence," he said. "Do thou ask his blessed self. The subject is an eternal mystery. None else is capable of explaining the matter."

Then he said the thing that settled it, and that no man on that field would have said lightly.

"There is no speaker like Brihaspati."

While the son of Pritha and the son of Ganga were still speaking with each other, there came to that spot from the firmament the illustrious Brihaspati of cleansed soul.

He is the preceptor of the celestials. When the gods have a question they cannot settle among themselves they take it to him, and he is the one being in the three worlds of whom it is said flatly that there is no better speaker. He did not send word ahead. He came down out of the sky onto a plain full of the debris of a war, where an old man lay on a bed made of the arrows of his own grandson.

King Yudhishthira, and all others, with Dhritarashtra at their head, stood up and received Brihaspati with proper honours.

That detail is worth pausing over. Dhritarashtra was there. The blind king who had lost a hundred sons on that ground rose first among the assembly and offered worship to the guest, and Vaisampayana says the worship they offered to the preceptor of the celestials was excellent, which is to say that nothing in it was hurried and nothing was left out.

Then Dharma's royal son approached the illustrious one and asked his question in proper form, desirous of knowing the truth. He had asked it once already and had been sent up the ladder to a higher authority, and he did not soften it on the way.

"O illustrious one, thou art conversant with all duties and all the scriptures. Do thou tell me, what is truly the friend of mortal creatures? Is the father, or mother, or son, or preceptor, or kinsmen, or relatives, or those called friends, that may be said to truly constitute the friend of a mortal creature?"

And then, again, the piece of wood and the clod of earth.

"One goes to the next world, leaving one's dead body that is like a piece of wood or a clod of earth. Who is it that follows him thither?"

"One is born alone, O king," said Brihaspati, "and one dies alone. One crosses alone the difficulties one meets with, and one alone encounters whatever misery falls to one's lot. One has really no companion in these acts."

He then went down the list Yudhishthira had offered him and struck out every name on it.

"The father, the mother, the brother, the son, the preceptor, kinsmen, relatives, and friends, leaving the dead body as if it were a piece of wood or a clod of earth, after having mourned for only a moment, all turn away from it and proceed to their own concerns."

After having mourned for only a moment. He did not accuse them of coldness. He was describing what everyone in that assembly had done that year, over and over, on that very ground: the grief, which is real, and then the turning away, which is also real, because the living have their own concerns and the dead have none.

"Only Righteousness follows the body that is thus abandoned by them all. Hence, it is plain, that Righteousness is the only friend, and that Righteousness only should be sought by all."

Then the consequence, stated without ornament. One endued with righteousness attains to that high end which is constituted by heaven. If endued with unrighteousness, he goes to Hell. Therefore the man of intelligence should always seek to acquire religious merit through wealth won by lawful means, because piety is the one only friend which creatures have in the world hereafter.

And he named the way men lose it, which is not usually by wickedness.

"Led by cupidity, or stupefaction, or compassion, or fear, one destitute of much knowledge is seen to do improper acts, for the sake of even another."

Compassion is in that list, standing between greed and fear, because a man will break the rule for someone he loves as readily as for himself.

"Piety, wealth and pleasure, these three constitute the fruit of life. One should acquire these three by means of being free from impropriety and sin."

Yudhishthira had listened, and he had one difficulty with it.

"I have carefully heard the words spoken by thy illustrious self, these words that are fraught with righteousness. I wish now to know of the existence of the body after death. The dead body of man becomes subtil and unmanifest. It becomes invisible. How is it possible for piety to follow it?"

It is a fair objection. If there is nothing left to follow, the friend has nothing to walk beside.

Brihaspati answered it by naming the witnesses.

"Earth, Wind, Ether, Water, Light, Mind, Yama the king of the dead, Understanding, the Soul, as also Day and Night, all together behold as witnesses the merits and demerits of all living creatures. With these, Righteousness follows the creature when dead."

Eleven witnesses, and only one of them is a god with a court and a rod. The rest are the elements a man is made of, the mind he thinks with, the understanding he judges with, the soul, and the two halves of the day in which he did the thing. Nothing has to be reported to anybody. The materials themselves were present.

"When the body becomes bereft of life, skin, bones, flesh, the vital seed, and blood leave it at the same time. Endued with merit and demerit, Jiva attains to another body. After the attainment by Jiva of that body, the presiding deities of the five elements once more behold as witnesses all his acts good and bad."

Once more. The witnesses are not left behind at the grave. They are reassembled in the next body along with everything else, and they begin watching again on the first day.

The king asked how the new body is formed, and was told: the deities that dwell within, Earth, Wind, Ether, Water, Light, with Mind as their sixth, are gratified by food, and from their gratification the vital seed is generated, and at the union of male and female it flows and causes conception. As soon as Jiva enters that seed he is overwhelmed by those elements, and by them he is given a body, and when he is disunited from them he is said to attain to the other end, which is death.

"What else dost thou wish to hear?"

"After birth," said Brihaspati, "the Jiva receives woe and death from the messengers of Yama. Indeed, misery and a painful round of rebirth are his inheritance."

Then he laid out the arithmetic of it, which is stricter than most men expect.

If the Jiva follows righteousness from the day of his birth, according to the best of his power, he enjoys happiness without interruption when he is reborn. If he does not follow it without interruption, but acts sinfully as well, then he reaps happiness first, as the reward of the righteousness he did have, and endures misery after that. The good is not cancelled by the bad. It is paid out first, and then the rest of the account is paid, and a man who has been happy has no assurance from that happiness of what is coming next.

And if he is endued with unrighteousness he goes down to the dominions of Yama, and after suffering great misery there he takes birth in an intermediate order of being, which is to say as an animal.

Brihaspati was careful about that country. It is not one place with one temperature.

"In those regions, O king, there are places that are fraught with every merit and that are worthy on that account of being the abodes of the very deities. There are, again, places in those regions that are worse than those which are inhabited by animals and birds."

The happier part of Yama's kingdom, he said, is equal in merit to the region of Brahman himself. The same king holds both. Creatures, bound by their acts, endure diverse kinds of misery, and which part of that country a man stands in is not decided by the king's temper.

"Listen to me as I tell thee what the different acts are by doing which the Jiva, stupefied by folly, has to take birth in different orders of being, as declared in the Vedas, the scriptures, and the sacred histories."

Then the preceptor of the gods began to count, and he counted for a very long time, and he named the animal and he named the number of years.

He began with the learned, because they fall furthest.

A regenerate person who has studied the four Vedas and then, stupefied by folly, accepts a gift from a fallen man, takes birth in the asinine order and lives as an ass for fifteen years. Casting off that form he is an ox for seven years, and then a Rakshasa of the regenerate order for three months, and then he is a Brahmana again. A Brahmana who officiates at the sacrifice of a fallen person becomes a vile worm for fifteen years, then an ass for five, a hog for five, a cock for five, a jackal for five, and a dog for one, and then he is a man.

The disciple who injures his preceptor undergoes three transformations: first a dog, then a beast of prey, then an ass, and after the ass he wanders for some time in great affliction as a spirit before he is born a Brahmana. The disciple who so much as in thought commits adultery with the wife of his preceptor is born in the canine order for three years, and then as a worm for a year, and then he is a man again. And the preceptor who kills, without reason, the disciple who is even as a son to him, takes birth as a beast of prey.

Then he came to parents, and here the sentences are short and the animals are ordinary.

The son who disregards his father and mother becomes an ass for ten years, then a crocodile for a year, and then a man. The son with whom his parents become angry, on account of his evil thoughts towards them, is an ass for ten months, a dog for fourteen months, a cat for seven months, and then a man. Having spoken ill of parents, one takes birth as a Sarika. Striking them, one becomes a tortoise for ten years, then a porcupine, then a snake for six months, and then a man.

He who disregards his eldest brother, who is even like a sire, is born among cranes and lives two years in that form.

The servant who eats his master's food and then acts against his master's interests becomes an ape for ten years, a mouse for five, a dog for six months, and then a man. He who misappropriates what was deposited with him in trustfulness undergoes a hundred transformations and comes at last to a vile worm, in which order he lives fifteen years until the demerit is exhausted. He who harbours malice becomes a Sarngaka. He who is guilty of breach of trust becomes a fish for eight years, a deer for four months, a goat for a year, then a worm, then a man.

Then Brihaspati came to theft, and the list he gave is the strangest passage in the whole discourse, because every stolen thing has its own creature waiting for it.

The man who steals paddy, barley, sesame, Masha, Kulattha, oil-seeds, oats, Kalaya, Mudga, wheat, Atasi and other corn becomes a mouse, then a hog that dies of disease as soon as it is born, then a dog for five years. He who steals curds becomes a crane. Raw fish, a monkey. Honey, a gadfly. Fruits or roots or cakes, an ant. Payasa, a Tittiri bird. Cakes, a screech-owl. Food, a bee, and he lives among the other bees for many months until it is paid. Paddy, a cat. Ghee, a gallinule. Fish, a crow. Salt, a mimicking bird. Milk, a crane. Oil, an animal that subsists upon oil.

Iron makes a cow of the thief. White brass, a bird of the Harita species. A vessel of silver, a pigeon. A vessel of gold, a vile vermin.

The cloth is counted thread by thread. Silk, a Krikara. Red silk, a Vartaka. Muslin, a parrot. Cloth of fine texture, a duck. Cotton, a crane. Jute, a sheep. Linen, a hare. Colouring matter, a peacock. A piece of red cloth, a bird of the Jivajivaka species. And the man who steals unguents and perfumes becomes a mole and lives in the dark for fifteen years.

Adultery with the spouse of another man makes a wolf, and after the wolf a dog, and a jackal, and a vulture, and a snake, and a Kanka, and a crane. Congress with the wife of a brother makes a male Kokila for a whole year. He who through lust goes to the wife of a friend, or of his preceptor, or of his king, becomes a hog for five years, a wolf for ten, a cat for five, a cock for ten, an ant for three months, a worm for a month, and then a vile worm for fourteen years, and when all of that is exhausted he is a man again.

The man who offers obstruction when a wedding is about to take place, or a sacrifice, or an act of gifts, becomes a vile worm for fifteen years. He who bestows his daughter on one husband and then seeks to bestow her on a second becomes a vile worm for thirteen. He who eats without having performed the rites in honour of the deities and the Pitris becomes a crow for a hundred years, then a cock, then a snake for a month.

Then the killers.

"That wretch who, himself well armed, slays another while that other is unarmed, from motives of obtaining his victim's wealth or from feelings of hostility, has, after casting off his human body, to take birth as an ass."

And the ass, after two years, meets with death at the edge of a weapon. Then he is a deer, always filled with anxiety at the thought of foes that may kill him, and at the end of a year he yields up his life at the point of a weapon. Then a fish, dragged up in a net in the fourth month. Then a beast of prey for ten years, and a pard for five, and then he is a man. Five lives, and in three of them he is killed by something he cannot see coming, which is what he did.

The man who kills a woman goes to Yama's regions, passes through twenty-one transformations, and lives twenty years as vermin.

And for ingratitude Brihaspati named the instruments: clubs with heavy hammers and mallets, sharp-pointed lances, heated jars, frightful forests of sword-blades, heated sands, thorny Salmalis. After all of it the ungrateful man comes back to the world as vile vermin for fifteen years, enters the womb and dies before birth, and enters the womb a hundred times more.

"I heard all this, O king, in days of old, from Brahman himself."

"Thou hast told me what the end is of unrighteousness," said Yudhishthira. "I desire now to hear of what the end is of Righteousness. Having committed diverse acts of sin, by what acts do people succeed in attaining to an auspicious end?"

It is the question of a man who has been listening to that catalogue and doing sums about himself.

"That man who, having perpetrated sinful acts through stupefaction of mind, feels the pangs of repentance and sets his heart on contemplation," said Brihaspati, "has not to endure the consequences of his sins. One becomes freed from one's sins in proportion as one repents for them."

And there is a second door beside repentance, which is speech. If one who has committed a sin proclaims it in the presence of Brahmanas conversant with duties, he is quickly cleansed of the obloquy arising from it, and comes out of it like a snake freed from his diseased slough.

Then the third door, and the one Brihaspati spent the rest of the discourse on.

"Of all kinds of gifts, that of food is regarded as the best. One desirous of attaining to merit should, with a sincere heart, make gifts of food. Food is the life-breath of men. From it all creatures are born. All the worlds of living creatures are established upon food."

King Rantideva, he said, proceeded to Heaven in days of old by making gifts of food, and that is the whole of the account given of that king here.

He divided the duty by station, and he made it possible for everyone. The Kshatriya who takes nothing that belongs to a Brahmana, protects his subjects lawfully, and gives food won by the exercise of his own strength, is cleansed of his sinful acts. The Vaisya who divides the produce of his fields into six shares and gives one of them away is cleansed. The Sudra who earns food by hard labour and at the risk of life itself and gives it away is cleansed. A Brahmana who gives away food he received as alms attains happiness here.

"They that make gifts of food are regarded as givers of life. The merit they acquire by such gifts is eternal. Every man should make the day fruitful by making gifts of food."

There was one question left, and Yudhishthira put it as a choice among six good things.

"Abstention from injury, the observance of the Vedic ritual, meditation, subjugation of the senses, penances, and obedient services rendered to the preceptors. Which amongst these is fraught with the greatest merit?"

"All these six are fraught with merit," said Brihaspati. "They are different doors of piety."

Then he told him what stands behind all six doors.

"That man who practises the religion of universal compassion achieves his highest good. That man who keeps under control the three faults, lust, wrath, and cupidity, by throwing them upon all creatures, attains to success. He who, from motives of his own happiness, slays other harmless creatures with the rod of chastisement, never attains to happiness in the next world."

The man who regards all creatures as his own self, and behaves towards them as towards his own self, laying aside the rod and completely subjugating his wrath, succeeds in attaining to happiness. And of such a man Brihaspati said a strange and beautiful thing: that the very deities, who are desirous of a fixed abode, become stupefied when they try to ascertain his track, because a person who has made himself the soul of all creatures leaves no track behind.

Then he gave the rule, and it took him one sentence.

"One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one's own self. This, in brief, is the rule of Righteousness."

In refusals and gifts, he said, in happiness and misery, in the agreeable and the disagreeable, one should judge of their effects by a reference to one's own self. When one injures another, the injured turns round and injures the injurer. When one cherishes another, that other cherishes the cherisher. One should frame one's rule of conduct according to this.

"I have told thee what Righteousness is, even by this subtile way."

He had begun with a corpse abandoned like a clod of earth and had walked the king through the whole machinery of consequence, the witnesses in the body, the country of Yama, the asses and the moles and the fourteen years of vermin, and at the end of it he put all of it into a single line that a child could carry.

And then, said Vaisampayana, the preceptor of the deities, possessed of great intelligence, having said this unto king Yudhishthira the just, ascended upwards for proceeding to Heaven, before our eyes.