Why Gold Is the Highest Gift

On the field at Kurukshetra, where the bed of arrows held him through the long dying, Bhishma had been speaking of gifts: the gift of land, the gift of cattle, the cows King Nriga gave, the teaching of the sage Nachiketa. Yudhishthira, who would soon have a whole kingdom's giving to answer for, put the question that lay under all of them.

"Grandfather, the Vedas say that in every rite the fee to the priests should be land, or cattle, or gold, and the sacred texts say that gold is the highest of the three. Why? What is gold? Where did it come from, and when? Why does it purify more than land or cattle do?"

"Listen," said Bhishma. "To understand gold you have to hear where it came from, because it did not come out of the ground first. It came out of a fire."

In the old age of the world, he said, repeating what the sage Vasishtha once told Rama, the son of Jamadagni, when that fierce warrior asked how a man of violent deeds could be made clean, the Great God had just been wedded to Uma on the slopes of the Himavat, and the gods were afraid. A son born of two such energies, they reasoned, would leave nothing standing in the three worlds. So the celestials went up into the Himavat, where Mahadeva was with Uma his consort, and they went the way petitioners go who know they are interrupting: quietly, and at the worst possible moment.

They bowed before Shiva and Uma together and begged him to hold back his seed for the sake of the worlds. The Great God agreed and drew it up into himself. Uma, robbed of a son, cursed the gods that they too would have none, and only Agni, who was not there, escaped the curse. But a little of the seed of Mahadeva had already slipped from him. It fell to the earth and dropped into a blazing fire, and there it began to grow. Soon after, the asura Taraka, whom a boon of Brahma had made unslayable by the gods, drove them from their heavens, and Indra, who is not easily frightened, was frightened.

There was one of them who could carry it, and only one. Agni is himself a mouth that consumes without being consumed, and what burns everything else was, to him, simply something to be borne. Brahma told the gods that Agni, untouched by the curse, would father the son who would kill Taraka. Agni had hidden himself, and they found him only after a frog, an elephant and a parrot gave away his hiding places. At their asking the Fire agreed, and carried that energy to the Ganga.

Even for the Ganga it was too much. Agni placed it in her, and the tale says she trembled and lost her senses under it, that the thing she carried was heavier than the sacrifices of the whole world laid together. She cast it out on the slope of Meru because she could carry it no further, and it came to rest in a thicket of reeds, white with their flowering.

In that reed bed the child grew, blazing like the young sun. The six Krittikas saw him there, and their hearts were stirred, and they nursed him at their breasts, which is why he is called Kartikeya. He was Skanda the war god, who would in time lead the celestial host against Taraka.

But fire, when it has finished, always leaves something. Fire is a sorting: what cannot stand it goes up as smoke and is gone, and what can stand it stays behind in the ash. Ganga herself told Agni that everything the child's radiance touched, on the mountain and below it, turned to gold. What was born with the war god was a bright substance, molten and then cooling, that had passed through the whole of that heat and had not been consumed by any part of it.

That is gold. It is not merely a metal that Agni is fond of. It is Agni's own highest energy, born together with the war god, and so Fire came to be called Hiranyareta, he whose seed is gold, and gold is called jatarupa. All the gods are fire, the sages say, and gold is the essence of fire, the body of Fire itself walking about in the world in a hard and portable form.

"Now you see why gold stands where it stands," Bhishma said. "Every other gift is a thing you happen to own. Gold is the offspring of Fire, and Fire was born of Brahma, and Fire is supreme among the gods. Where no fire can be had, gold may stand in its place: set it on the kusha grass and pour the oblation there, and the god accepts it as if the flames had taken it. That is why those who understand dharma give gold. To give it is like giving all the gods at once."

Gold, he said, is the most sacred of all sacred things and the most auspicious of all auspicious things, the best jewel among jewels and the ornament of the gods. The giver of gold leaves the world of darkness behind him and goes to the highest end, and in heaven he is crowned a king among kings.

Yudhishthira had one more question, for something had been left hanging. "You said that Taraka could not be slain by the gods," he said. "Tell me how he died. I want to hear all of it."

So Bhishma told him how the gods came to look at the child lying in the reeds, six-faced, twelve-eyed, twelve-armed, radiant as fire and sun; how they brought him playthings because he was still a child at play, a peacock from Suparna, a cock the colour of fire from Varuna, a goat from Agni; how Taraka tried every means to kill him as he grew, and failed; how the gods made him their general, and he killed the danava with his invincible spear as lightly as a child at a game, and set Indra back on the throne of heaven.

"And gold," said Bhishma, "is Agni's supreme energy, born together with Kartikeya. That is why it is auspicious, and a jewel that does not decay."

"There is a manner to it as well," said Bhishma, "and the sages set it down."

"Let a man keep his vows and say the proper mantras at dawn, and then give gold, and his bad dreams are destroyed. Let him give it as soon as the sun has risen, and his sins are washed away. Let him give it at midday, and the sins that were still to come are destroyed before they arrive. Let him give it at the evening twilight, firm in his vows, and he wins the worlds of Brahma and Vayu, of Agni and Soma, and a bright place beside Indra, and in this world peace and fame."

"And if at sunrise he kindles a fire and gives, having kept every vow that is laid down, he obtains every object of his desire. Gold is like Agni himself, and giving it brings happiness."

"This is what Vasishtha told Rama. And Rama, who had cleared the earth of kshatriyas thrice seven times and had not found peace of heart even after a horse sacrifice, gave gold to the brahmanas, and was freed from all his sins, and won a place in heaven that is very hard for a man to reach."

"I did not learn this only from old stories," Bhishma said. "When my father Shantanu died, I went to Gangadvara to perform his funeral rites, and my mother Ganga came and helped me. I seated the sages who had won success through their austerities, I finished the first offerings of water, and I set myself to offer the funeral cake.

"Then an arm came up through the darbha grass I had spread on the ground. It was a handsome arm, with bright armlets on it. My father had come himself, I thought, to take the cake from my hand.

"But the ordinance of the Vedas is that the cake is not put into a hand. The ancestors do not come in visible form to take it. It is laid on the kusha grass and they receive it there. So I let the hand be, and laid the whole cake on the grass as the rule says, and the arm vanished.

"That night my ancestors came to me in a dream. They said they were pleased with me, because I had not been confused about dharma. Then they said: 'What will land and cattle do? Give gold. It is the great cleanser. By it we and all our fathers will be purified, and the one who gives it saves ten generations.' I woke in wonder, and from that day I set my heart on giving gold."

Yudhishthira sat with it a while. He would be a giver on a scale few kings ever reach: whole herds, whole villages, gold by the cartload at the great sacrifice that lay ahead of him. He understood what he had been handed. His grandfather had kept the rule first, even with his own father's hand held out before him, and only then had the gold been asked of him.

"Therefore give much gold to the brahmanas," said Bhishma. "If you give gold, you will be freed from your sins."