Poverty Is a Person's Death

"When good Sanjaya went back to the Kurus," Janamejaya said, "what did my grandsires, the sons of Pandu, then do? O foremost of Brahmanas, I desire to hear all this. Tell me this, therefore."

And Vaisampayana told him.

The camp at Upaplavya had been full of kings for weeks. Sanjaya had come into it as Dhritarashtra's envoy, had delivered the old king's message, which was a request for peace that did not mention the return of anything, and had gone away again up the road toward Hastinapura. The armies on both sides were already gathering. What was left to decide was whether they would be used.

When the envoy's dust had settled, Yudhishthira the just turned to Krishna of the Dasarha race, that chief of all the Sattwatas, who had been sitting through the whole audience and saying nothing.

"O thou that art devoted to friends," he said, "the time hath come for friends to show their friendship. I do not see any other persons besides thee that can save us in this season of distress. Relying on thee, O Madhava, we have fearlessly asked back our share from Duryodhana, who is filled with immeasurable pride, and from his counsellors. O chastiser of foes, thou protectest the Vrishnis in all their calamities. Do thou now protect the Pandavas also from a great danger, for they deserve thy protection."

"Here am I, O mighty-armed one," said Krishna. "Tell me what thou desirest to say, for I will, O Bharata, accomplish whatever thou wilt tell me."

What followed was the longest speech Yudhishthira made in the whole of that year, and it is not a speech about troops or roads or the numbers of the enemy. It is a man setting out, item by item, before the only person he trusted with it, exactly what had been done to him, exactly what he had become, and exactly why he was still asking for peace anyway.

He began with the envoy who had just left.

"Thou hast heard what the intention is of Dhritarashtra and his own," Yudhishthira said. "All that Sanjaya said unto me hath certainly the assent of Dhritarashtra. Sanjaya is Dhritarashtra's soul, and spoke out his mind. An envoy speaketh according to his instructions, for if he speaketh otherwise he deserveth to be slain."

That is the point he wanted established before anything else. Nothing Sanjaya had said in that tent was Sanjaya's. There was no misunderstanding to be cleared up and no messenger to be blamed. The old king had sent his own mind down the road in another man's mouth.

"Without looking equally on all that are his, moved by avarice and a sinful heart, Dhritarashtra seeketh to make peace with us without giving us back our kingdom. Indeed, at Dhritarashtra's command we spent twelve years in the woods and one additional year in concealment, well-believing, O lord, that Dhritarashtra would abide firmly by that pledge of ours. That we did not deviate from our promise is well-known to the Brahmanas who were with us."

Thirteen years, kept to the day, with witnesses who could be produced. Against that, one sentence: "The covetous king Dhritarashtra is now unwilling to observe kshatriya virtues. Owing to affection for his son, he is listening to the counsels of wicked men."

"What can be more sorrowful, O Janardana, than this, that I am unable to maintain my mother and my friends?"

Then he named what he had asked for, and the naming is the cruellest part of the speech, because a man does not remember the names of villages he never wanted.

"Having the Kasis, the Panchalas, the Chedis and the Matsyas for my allies, and with thee, O slayer of Madhu, for my protector, I prayed for only five villages. Avishthala. Vrikasthala. Makandi. Varanavata. And any other, O Govinda, as the fifth. Grant us five villages or towns, O sire, where we five may dwell in union, for we do not desire the destruction of the Bharatas."

Four armies at his back, and a list of five villages, one of them the town where they had once been meant to burn.

"The wicked-minded son of Dhritarashtra, regarding the lordship of the world to be in him, doth not agree to even that. What can be more sorrowful than this?"

Then Yudhishthira did what he always did when a wrong was in front of him. He took it apart to see how it worked, and what he produced was a chain with a link for every step, running from one man's greed to another man's grave.

"When a man born and brought up in a respectable family coveteth the possessions of others," he said, "that avarice of his destroyeth his intelligence. And intelligence being destroyed, shame is lost. And loss of shame leadeth to diminution of virtue. And loss of virtue bringeth on loss of prosperity. Destruction of prosperity, in its turn, ruineth a person, for poverty is a person's death."

Read the order of it. Avarice does not begin by making a man poor. It begins by making him stupid, and a stupid man is the one who stops feeling ashamed, and a man who has stopped feeling ashamed stops keeping to dharma, and only then does the wealth go. Shame is the second link and not the last, and everything below it falls because that one gave way.

"Kinsmen and friends and Brahmanas shun a poor man," he said, "as birds avoid, O Krishna, a tree that beareth neither flower nor fruit."

The birds are not cruel in that image. They are simply elsewhere. Nothing is being done to the tree at all.

"Even this, O sire, is death to me, that kinsmen shun me as if I were a fallen one, like the breath of life quitting a dead body. Samvara said that no condition of life could be more distressful than that in which one is always racked by the anxiety caused by the thought: I have no meat for today, what will become of me tomorrow?"

Samvara was an asura, and a king, and the saying had come down from him because nobody had improved on it. Yudhishthira had eaten in forests for twelve years, and he quoted it to a friend without any embarrassment at all.

"It is said that wealth is the highest virtue, and everything depends on wealth. They that have wealth are said to live, whereas those that are without wealth are more dead than alive. They that by violence rob a man of his wealth not only kill the robbed, but destroy also his virtue, his profit and his pleasure."

Three things taken, and the man left standing to notice it.

He had watched it happen to other people on the roads and in the forest settlements, and he gave Krishna the whole list of what a man does when the money is gone.

Some, when overtaken by poverty, choose death. Others remove from the cities to the hamlets. Others retire into the wood. Others again become religious mendicants in order to destroy their lives, which is a bleak thing to say about the mendicant's robe and he said it anyway. Some for the sake of wealth are driven to madness. Others for wealth live under subjection to their foes. And many others, for the sake of wealth, betake themselves to the servitude of others.

Seven roads out of one condition, and not one of them goes anywhere good.

"A man's poverty is even more distressful to him than death," he said, "for wealth is the sole cause of virtue and of pleasure. The natural death of a person is not much regarded, for that is the eternal path of all creatures. Indeed, none among created beings can transgress it."

Death is common ground. Everyone is going. Ruin is not common ground, and that is what makes it unbearable.

Then he came to the case he knew from the inside.

"O Krishna, a man who is poor from birth is not so much distressed as one who, having once possessed great prosperity and having been brought up in luxury, is deprived of that prosperity. Having through his own fault fallen into distress, such a person blameth the very gods with Indra, and blameth his own self. Indeed, knowledge of even the entire scriptures faileth to mitigate his pains."

Through his own fault. He had thrown the kingdom away at dice with his own hand, and thirteen years later he could still say the sentence out loud without softening it.

"Sometimes he getteth angry with his servants, and sometimes he cherisheth malice towards even his well-wishers. Subject to constant anger, he loseth his very senses, and his senses being clouded he practiseth evil deeds. Through sinfulness such a person contributeth to a fusion of castes. A fusion of castes leadeth to hell, and is the foremost of all sinful acts. If he is not awakened in time, he goeth, certainly, O Krishna, to hell."

Awakened. He had chosen the word deliberately, because he was about to describe the waking.

"Wisdom is the only thing that can awaken him," Yudhishthira said, "for if he obtaineth back the eye of wisdom, he is saved."

And then he climbed the ladder back up, link by link, in the exact reverse of the order in which it had fallen.

When wisdom is regained, such a man turneth his attention to the scriptures. Attention to the scriptures aideth his virtue. Then shame becometh his best ornament. He that hath shame hath an aversion against sin, and his prosperity also increaseth. And he that hath prosperity truly becometh a man.

So the whole apparatus turns on that middle rung. Not on wealth, which is at the top and arrives last, and not on wisdom, which is only the thing that gets a man moving. On shame. On the capacity to be unable to bear the sight of what one has done.

"He that is ever devoted to virtue, and hath his mind under control, and always acteth after deliberation, never inclineth towards unrighteousness, and never engageth in any act that is sinful."

And then the hardest line in the speech, which Yudhishthira did not soften either.

"He that is without shame and sense is neither man nor woman. He is incapable of earning religious merit, and is like a Sudra. He that hath shame gratifieth the gods, the Pitris, and even his own self, and by this he obtaineth emancipation, which indeed is the highest aim of all righteous persons."

He was describing his cousin, and both men in that tent knew it. Duryodhana had been censured in open court by every king present, and had felt nothing. That was the whole diagnosis. Not that he was cruel, not that he was strong, not that he had allies. That the second link of the chain had gone in him, and everything below it had come down after it, and he could no longer be reached by disgrace because disgrace no longer touched him.

"Thou hast, O slayer of Madhu, seen all this in me with thy own eyes," Yudhishthira said. "It is not unknown to thee how, deprived of kingdom, we have lived these years. We cannot lawfully abandon that prosperity which had been ours."

He had just spent an hour explaining why a poor man is a dead man. He was not going to pretend the kingdom did not matter.

"Our first efforts will be such that, O Madhava, both ourselves and the Kauravas, united in peace, will quietly enjoy our prosperity. Otherwise we shall, after slaying the worst of the Kauravas, regain those provinces. Yet success through bloodshed, by destruction of even despicable foes that are related to us so dearly, is the worst of all fierce deeds. We have numerous kinsmen, and numerous also are the revered seniors that have taken this or that other side. The slaughter of these would be highly sinful. What good, therefore, can there be in battle?"

Then he turned on his own order, and he did it without any of the usual consolations.

"Alas, such sinful practices are the duties of the kshatriya order. Ourselves have taken our births in that wretched order. Whether those practices be sinful or virtuous, any other than the profession of arms would be censurable for us. A Sudra serveth. A Vaisya liveth by trade. The Brahmanas have chosen the wooden bowl for begging. And we are to live by slaughter."

Four orders, four trades, and his own named last and named plainly.

"A kshatriya slayeth a kshatriya. Fishes live on fish. A dog preyeth upon a dog. Behold, O thou of the Dasarha race, how each of these followeth his peculiar virtue."

He was not exempting himself. He was saying that the thing he was about to do for a living was of the same order as what happens in a pond.

"O Krishna, Kali is ever present in battlefields. Lives are lost all around. It is true that force regulated by policy is invoked, yet success and defeat are independent of the will of the combatants. The lives also of creatures are independent of their own wishes, and neither weal nor woe can be one's when the time is not come for it."

Then the arithmetic of a battlefield, which he laid out as coldly as a man counting grain.

Sometimes one man killeth many. Sometimes many, united together, kill one. A coward may slay a hero, and one unknown to fame may slay a hero of celebrity. Both parties cannot win success, nor can both be defeated. The loss, however, on both sides may be equal. And if one flieth away, loss of both life and fame is his.

"Under all circumstances, however, war is a sin. Who in striking another is not himself struck?"

"As regards the person who is struck, victory and defeat, O Hrishikesa, are the same. It is true that defeat is not much removed from death. But his loss also is not less who winneth victory. He himself may not be killed, but his adversaries will kill at least someone that is dear to him, and thus the man, deprived of strength and not seeing before him his sons and his brothers, becometh indifferent to life itself."

And then a line that was hard to say in a camp full of allies who had come a long way to fight for him.

"Those that are quiet, modest, virtuous and compassionate are generally slain in battle, while they that are wicked escape. Even after slaying one's foes, repentance possesseth the heart. He that surviveth among the foes giveth trouble, for the survivor, collecting a force, seeketh to destroy the victor. Thus victory createth animosity, and he that is defeated liveth in sorrow."

"He that is peaceful sleepeth in happiness, giving up all thoughts of victory and defeat, whereas he that hath provoked hostility always sleepeth in misery, with an anxious heart, as if sleeping with a snake in the same room. He that exterminates seldom winneth fame, and reapeth eternal infamy in the estimation of all. Hostilities, waged ever so long, cease not, for if there is even one alive in the enemy's family, narrators are never wanted to remind him of the past. Enmity is never neutralised by enmity. On the other hand, it is fomented by enmity, like fire fed by clarified butter."

There can be no peace, he said, without the annihilation of one party, for flaws may always be detected of which advantage may be taken by one side or the other. And exterminating the foe by the roots may indeed lead to great prosperity, and it is the most cruel act there is.

"The peace that may be brought about by our renouncing the kingdom is hardly different from death. We do not wish to give up the kingdom, nor do we wish to see the extinction of our race. Under these circumstances, the peace that is obtained through even humiliation is the best."

Then he described how these things actually go, and he chose a street for his illustration.

"The learned have noticed all this in a canine contest. First there comes the wagging of tails. Then the bark. Then the bark in reply. Then the circumambulation. Then the showing of teeth. Then repeated roars. And then at last the fight. In such a contest the dog that is stronger, vanquishing his antagonist, taketh the latter's meat. The same is exactly the case with men."

"The father, the king, and he that is venerable in years always deserve regard," Yudhishthira said. "Dhritarashtra, therefore, is worthy of our respect and worship. But his affection for his son is great. Obedient to his son, he will reject our submission. What dost thou think best at this juncture? How may we preserve both our interest and our virtue? What other friend have we who is so well acquainted with truth?"

Krishna gave him an answer of three sentences.

"I will go to the court of the Kurus for the sake of both of you. If without sacrificing your interests I can obtain peace, O king, an act of great religious merit will be mine. I shall then also save from the meshes of death the Kurus and the Srinjayas inflamed with wrath, the Pandavas and the sons of Dhritarashtra, and, in fact, this entire earth."

And Yudhishthira, who had just spent the afternoon proving that war was a sin and that peace was worth a humiliation, immediately refused the offer.

"It is not my wish, O Krishna, that thou shouldst go to the Kurus, for Suyodhana will never act according to thy words, even if thou advisest him well. All the kshatriyas of the world, obedient to Duryodhana's command, are assembled there. If any mischief be done to thee, then let alone happiness, nothing, not even the sovereignty over all the gods, will delight us."

"I know the sinfulness of Dhritarashtra's son," Krishna said. "But by going there we will escape the blame of all the kings of the earth. Like other animals before the lion, all the kings of the earth united together are not competent to stand still before me in battle when I am enraged. If, after all, they do me any injury, then I will consume all the Kurus. Even this is my intention. My going thither, O Partha, will not be fruitless, for if our object be not fulfilled, we shall at least escape all blame."

"Do, O Krishna, as it pleaseth thee. Blessed be thou. Go then to the Kurus. Going unto them, make thou such a peace that all the sons of Bharata may live together with cheerful hearts and contentedly. Thou art our brother and our friend, dear to me as much as to Vibhatsu."

And then, from the man who had said that war is a sin under all circumstances, the last instruction he gave before the embassy left.

"Whether peace is to be established by apparent sin or by any other means, O Kesava, speak such words as may prove beneficial to us."