Yudhishṭhira’s Lament and Rebuke of Agni
Nārada told the Pāṇḍavas that Dhṛtarāshṭra, Gāndhārī and Kuntī had died together in a forest fire at Gaṅgādvāra. This is how Yudhishṭhira answered. He wept at length, grieving most of all for his mother Kuntī. In his pain he blamed Agni for being ungrateful. Arjuna, he said, had once satisfied Agni fully at the Khāṇḍava forest, and now Agni had burned the mother of the Pāṇḍavas as his payment.
Yudhishṭhira’s grief for Dhṛtarāshṭra
Yudhishṭhira heard Nārada’s report of the dāvāgni (forest fire) that had consumed Dhṛtarāshṭra. He spoke his grief in front of Nārada, who was among the gathered brāhmaṇas.
“That mahātma, engaged in the most severe tapas, died like one without refuge, though we, his kinsmen, were all living. Brāhmaṇottama! Nārada! It now seems to me that the gati (course) of men is entirely beyond knowing, for that son of Vicitravīrya, of such power, met death in this manner, by a dāvāgni.”
Yudhishṭhira remembered Dhṛtarāshṭra’s greatness. He had a hundred sons of great strength, and his own body had the strength of ten thousand elephants. Now he had been burned to ash by a forest fire. Vultures fanned his body, where once noble women had fanned him with fine cāmaras (fly-whisks). He had once been woken by the songs of bards, and now he had fallen because of Yudhishṭhira’s own past deeds.
Of Gāndhārī, who had gone to the world of her husband and stayed true to her vow as a devoted wife to the end, Yudhishṭhira said he would not grieve greatly. Hers was a fulfilled and honoured death.
The lament for Kuntī
Yudhishṭhira’s grief was sharpest for Kuntī, his own mother.
“For our mother Pṛthā, who gave up the great wealth and power of her flourishing sons and chose to live in the forest of her own will, for her alone do I grieve.”
He cried out against the very base of the life he had built.
“Cī! What use to us is this rājya (kingdom)? Cī! What use this strength? Cī! What use this valour? How terrible is this kshatra-dharma (the duty of a warrior), by which we live even now as though already dead!”
He spoke of the extreme subtlety of kāla-gati, the course of time. This very mother had held not the least attachment even to the kingdom and had chosen the forest freely. Yet she had burned to death as though she had no refuge at all.
The rebuke of Agni
Yudhishṭhira then turned his grief into a bitter accusation against Agni, recalling the debt Agni owed to the Pāṇḍava house.
“At the Khāṇḍava forest, Savyasācī satisfied Agnideva, and that deva, forgetting the upakāra (help) done to him, has become kṛtaghna (ungrateful), it seems to me. That very Agni, who once came disguised as a brāhmaṇa seeking bhikshā (alms), has today burned to death the mother of Savyasācī himself! Cī! What is this, O Agnideva! Cī! What has become of the celebrated satya-sandhatā (steadfast truthfulness) of Pārtha! O Bhagavān Agni! This seems to me harder to bear than all the rest.”
“Alas, that great king, that tapasvin, that rājarshi, foremost of the Kuru line, was seized by a useless, purposeless fire! My father, who ruled the whole earth, whose sacred fires, made holy by mantra, stood present in that very forest, met his death instead by a worthless, wandering flame. How did such a death come to him?”
He then pictured Kuntī in her last moment. She was thin, with her veins showing under her skin, and she was trembling. In terror she cried out, “Ayyo, my son! Dharmarāja!” She called for Bhīma to save her as the forest fire closed around her. Yudhishṭhira said it hurt him most that, of all her sons, Kuntī had held Sahadeva dearest, even above her own sons. And yet that brave son of Mādrī had not been able to free her from the fire.
Hearing Yudhishṭhira’s words, all the Pāṇḍavas embraced one another and wept aloud. They cried out like beings at the time of pralaya (the dissolution of the world). Their cry was so great that it seemed to shake the space between earth and sky.
What Nārada said next
In the following chapter, Nārada answers Yudhishṭhira’s charge. He says that Dhṛtarāshṭra was not in fact consumed by an ordinary, useless fire. He was consumed by the very agnihotra fires that he himself had kept and finally released into the forest. His own sacred fire received him back at the end. This answers the main complaint of Yudhishṭhira’s lament. Nārada’s words and the śrāddha rites that follow are told in the account of the death of Dhṛtarāshṭra, Gāndhārī and Kuntī.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapter 38