Vidura

Vidura, also called Kshattā, was the son of Vyāsa and a dāsī (a maidservant). He was the third of the three sons Vyāsa fathered at the request of Satyavatī, after the sons born for Ambikā and Ambālikā. He was the prime minister (mahāmantri) of Hastināpura and the wisest counsellor of his age. He stood on the side of dharma even when it cost him his place. He is honoured as an aṃśa (a portion) of Dharmarāja, who is Yama.

Because his mother was a dāsī of mixed birth, he could not take the Kuru throne. He was the clearest voice of dharma in the Kuru household. He protected the Pāṇḍavas from the plots of Duryodhana, including the poison given to Bhīma and the fire of the lac house at Vāraṇāvata. The Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa also tells how he went on a pilgrimage, received ātmajñāna (knowledge of the self) from Maitreya Maharshi, and later counselled Dhṛtarāshṭra to give up the world.

Birth

Satyavatī hoped for a better-formed son than the blind Dhṛtarāshṭra and the pale Pāṇḍu. She sent Ambikā to Vyāsa a second time. Ambikā could not bring herself to face him again. She dressed a dāsī in her own clothes and sent her in her place.

The dāsī came to Vyāsa without fear. She received him with calm, respect and true reverence. She saw in him a great ṛshi, not a frightening ascetic.

Vidura was born from this union. His mother was of varṇasaṃkara (mixed varṇa) origin, below the usual lineage birth, so he could not take the throne. In quality he surpassed his brothers. He was born with full knowledge of dharma, free of personal desire and wholly devoted to justice and truth. The inner state of the mother at the moment of conception had shaped the child.

The Mahābhārata names the niyoga (the union arranged to raise sons for a childless line) by which he was born. In the Āśramavāsika Parva, Vyāsa says that Vidura was born in a śūdra womb through Vyāsa’s own niyoga upon a dāsī in Vicitravīrya’s household.

The śāpa of Māṇḍavya: Vidura is Yama

The Ādi Parva gives a further reason for Vidura’s exceptional qualities. He was an aṃśa of Yama, the deva of dharma and death (Dharmarāja). He was born among humans because of a śāpa (a curse) from the ṛshi Māṇḍavya.

Māṇḍavya had once been wrongly arrested and impaled on a stake. He was freed, still alive through his tapas, and he faced Yama. He demanded to know what pāpa (sin) had brought him this suffering. Yama answered that as a child Māṇḍavya had impaled insects on sharp sticks for play.

Māṇḍavya was furious. A child’s act, done in complete innocence before the age of moral understanding, should not bring the result of karma. He declared that from then on no act done before the age of fourteen would count in karma. Then he cursed Yama himself. Yama had judged a child by adult standards, an error of excessive judgment, so Yama would be born in the womb of a śūdra woman.

That birth was Vidura.

Role in the Kuru household

Vidura served as chief minister and counsellor of the Kuru royal house, under the Kuru kings including Dhṛtarāshṭra and Pāṇḍu. He was always the voice of dharma. He was the one person at court who told Dhṛtarāshṭra the truth without softening it. His advice was sound, and personal attachment never clouded his judgment.

He protected the Pāṇḍavas at several critical moments and warned them of Kaurava plots against their lives.

Sabhā Parva: warnings, insult and counsel

The Hitavākya: warnings before the dice game

Before the dice game began, Vidura gave Dhṛtarāshṭra a long and prophetic warning. The Mahābhārata calls it the Hitavākya, the words spoken for another’s good. He used a series of parables and ślokas (verses).

• He compared Duryodhana to a thorny vine that would strangle the whole tree of the Kuru family.
• He compared the Pāṇḍavas to a forest fire that, once roused, would burn everything.
• He named Śakuni as a cheating player whose loaded dice made the game adharma (against dharma) from the start.

He told Dhṛtarāshṭra plainly that this game would destroy the Kauravas. Dhṛtarāshṭra heard it all and allowed the game anyway.

Insulted as dāsīputra

Vidura carried Draupadī’s question about dharma to the assembly and argued on her behalf. He pointed out that she had not been validly staked, and that the assembly broke sabhādharma (the duty of an assembly) by staying silent.

Duryodhana silenced him in public with the worst insult he could find. He called Vidura a dāsīputra, the son of a slave woman. He said that a man of such birth had no standing to lecture kings in their assembly. Vidura was an aṃśa of Dharmarāja and the wisest man in the hall, but the one whose ruin he was trying to prevent turned him away. He could say no more in that court.

Farewell counsel to Yudhishṭhira

As the Pāṇḍavas prepared to leave for exile, Vidura came to Yudhishṭhira for a last private talk. He gave no false comfort. He said that the victory of dharma would come, that suffering has its uses, and that the forest would temper them further. He gave specific advice on how to conduct oneself during the exile.

The Anudyūta Parva records this farewell. It is one of the closest exchanges between the two. Dharmarāja in his cosmic form counsels Dharmarāja in his human form.

Housing Kuntī

Kuntī did not go into exile with her sons. She stayed at Hastināpura, and Vidura took her into his own house. He could not undo what Dhṛtarāshṭra had done, but he would not leave the mother of the Pāṇḍavas without protection in a court that had just dishonoured her sons.

Strī Parva: teachings to Dhṛtarāshṭra

The Strī Parva opens just after the war. Dhṛtarāshṭra was crushed by grief. In Chapter 1 Sañjaya held him back from hurting himself. Vidura then took up the long work of comfort through philosophy, in Chapters 2–7 and 9–10.

His teachings are among the most systematic philosophical talks in the Mahābhārata. He spoke to Dhṛtarāshṭra about these themes:

• karma and the fact that no one escapes it
• the impermanence of all worldly gains
• grief as the product of attachment (moha)
• the futility of grief for those who died with honour
• the right use of the life that remains
• the path to moksha (liberation) as the only lasting goal

He used the well-known allegory of the man in the forest. A man hangs from a vine in a well. The serpent of time waits below. The rats of day and night gnaw the vine above. Still the man drinks drops of honey from a nearby comb. This is a picture of the human condition in saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death).

Vidura argued that the dead sons were warriors who lived and died as kshatriyas should. Grief is natural, but long grief for those who have fulfilled their dharma serves no purpose. A king who stays sunk in grief cannot rule, cannot protect dharma and cannot prepare for his own last journey. Dhṛtarāshṭra slowly grew calm. He became able to go to the battlefield and take part in the jalapradāna (offering of water) rite on the Gaṅgā. This came from Vidura’s patient work in these chapters.

At Bhīshma’s death and funeral rites

Bhīshma lay on his bed of arrows (śaraśayyā) for fifty-eight nights, until Uttarāyaṇa (the sun’s northward course) arrived. Vidura went with Yudhishṭhira and the whole Kuru household from Hastināpura to Kurukshetra.

After Bhīshma left his body, Vidura, together with the Pāṇḍavas and Yuyutsu, brought sandalwood and built the funeral pyre. Vidura and Yudhishṭhira together covered Bhīshma’s body with silk and garlands before the pitṛmedha (funeral rites for the departed) was performed. His quiet and practical devotion at this last rite matched the part he had played all through Bhīshma’s life. He did the needed work of the household without being asked.

After the war: the Aśvamedhika Parva

At the start of the Aśvamedhika Parva, Dhṛtarāshṭra counselled the grieving Yudhishṭhira to rise and take up the kingdom. In the same breath he admitted that, through his own corrupted judgment, he had not heeded the good counsel of Vidura. He called him “mahātmā, hitam-korubadu”.

mahātmā, hitam-korubadu

This means “great-souled, well-wishing.” Dhṛtarāshṭra said that by ignoring this counsel the whole Kuru family had perished. This looks back to Vidura’s warnings before the dice game. It is not a new episode.

Departure from Hastināpura and meeting Uddhava

After the Pāṇḍavas had settled their rule at Hastināpura, Vidura went on a great tīrthayātrā (pilgrimage) through all the sacred places of Bhārata. The third Skanda of the Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa begins with Vidura on the banks of the Yamunā. There he met Uddhava, the foremost devotee and confidant of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. Uddhava was walking in deep grief.

Vidura asked Uddhava about Bhagavān Kṛshṇa and the Yādavas. “Are all well? Is Dvārakā still standing? How is Bhagavān Kṛshṇa?”

Uddhava could hardly speak for sorrow. He told Vidura that Bhagavān Kṛshṇa had left the world. The Yādavas had destroyed each other at Prabhāsa-kshetra. The ocean had swallowed Dvārakā. Arjuna had cremated the departed and lost his powers. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa had completed his mission and left the mortal world.

Uddhava told Vidura to go to Gaṅgādvāra (Haridvār) on the Gaṅgā and seek out Maitreya Maharshi. Maitreya had received the full teachings of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa and would answer all his questions about cosmology, creation and the nature of existence. Uddhava himself then left for Badarikā to continue his own practice in solitude.

Meeting Maitreya at Gaṅgādvāra

Vidura followed Uddhava’s direction and went to Gaṅgādvāra (Haridvār), where the Gaṅgā comes down from the Himālaya to the plains. There he found Maitreya Maharshi seated in contemplation. Vidura came near with reverence and asked the great questions.

• Why does Parameśvara create this world of suffering?
• What is the nature of Prakṛti (nature) and Purusha (the person, the spirit)?
• How did creation begin?
• How does the jīva (the living being) reach liberation?

These questions open the Maitreya–Vidura saṃvāda (conversation) that fills the whole third Skanda. Maitreya’s answers cover cosmology, the Varāha avatāra, the Jaya and Vijaya episode, the story of Kardama and Devahūti, and the full philosophical teaching of Kapila. Together they form one of the most complete expositions of Bhāgavata darśana (view).

Return from the pilgrimage

After the Kurukshetra war, Vidura made a long pilgrimage to the sacred tīrthas of Bhārata. On this journey he met Maitreya Maharshi. He received from him the deep teaching of ātmajñāna, the knowledge of the self, of Parameśvara and of the nature of existence. This is the core of the third Skanda. His mind was purified and lit by this knowledge, and he returned to Hastināpura.

Welcome at Hastināpura

Yudhishṭhira went out himself to welcome Vidura with every honour and deep affection. He thanked Vidura for protecting the Pāṇḍavas all their lives. He said, “You protected us from the poison given to Bhīma, from the lac house fire at Vāraṇāvata, from Duryodhana’s many schemes, when even the elders in our own father’s house were acting against us. You were a deva to us.”

The whole family gathered, and Vidura was honoured as a revered elder.

Counsel to Dhṛtarāshṭra

After meeting the Pāṇḍavas, Vidura went to Dhṛtarāshṭra in private. He spoke with the sharp clarity of a man who had seen through the unreal nature of worldly life. He urged his elder brother to renounce.

He said, “Arise. Do not delay. Terrible fear lies ahead. Kāla is at your door. Your body is decaying. Your digestion fails, your limbs weaken, your teeth loosen, and your eyes, which were never of use even for sight, now grow dimmer. How long will you sit here eating the food of men whose fathers you wronged, in the house of those you tried to destroy? Even dogs that eat at another’s table give something in return. What do you give? Renounce now. Go to the forest, take Gāndhārī, cross to the north, enter the Himālaya, and practise prāṇāyāma (breath control) until the inner fire does its work.”

Vidura spoke these words in the dark hours before dawn. They broke through Dhṛtarāshṭra’s inertia and moved him to decide.

Departure to the Himālaya

In the early hours before dawn, Dhṛtarāshṭra rose without waking Yudhishṭhira or anyone else. He took Gāndhārī’s hand and walked out, with Vidura leading. The three went north toward the āśramas of the Himālaya. They reached the āśrama at Saptasrotas on the bank of the Gaṅgā.

There Vidura guided Dhṛtarāshṭra through the stages of vānaprastha sādhanā (the practice of the forest-dweller). These were fasting, prāṇāyāma, step-by-step withdrawal from outer objects, and deep samādhi (absorption). He served his brother and his sister-in-law with complete devotion through this last stage.

Witnessing the final liberation

Vidura was present when Dhṛtarāshṭra, by long prāṇāyāma, drew the inner fire through his body and was consumed in the fire of yoga, merging into Brahman. He saw Gāndhārī enter the same fire in anugamana (following her husband in death) and follow him into liberation.

After this, Nārada went to tell Yudhishṭhira and the Pāṇḍavas at Hastināpura, so that they could perform the śrāddha (rites for the departed).

Vidura had finished his duties to his elder brother, and he went on wandering. He reached moksha at Prabhāsa-kshetra.

Messenger of the śrāddha and the mahādāna

Vidura served Dhṛtarāshṭra without break through the fifteen years that the old king lived at Hastināpura after the war. When Dhṛtarāshṭra returned home, having received the permission of Yudhishṭhira and Vyāsa to leave for the forest, Vidura walked with him, along with Sañjaya and Kṛpācārya.

Dhṛtarāshṭra wished to perform śrāddha for Bhīshma, Droṇa, Somadatta, Bāhlīka and Jayadratha the Saindhava. He sent Vidura to carry the request to Yudhishṭhira. Vidura brought back Yudhishṭhira’s full consent, that Dhṛtarāshṭra might draw without limit on the treasury. He also brought word that Bhīma’s grudging manner should not be held against Dhṛtarāshṭra.

Yudhishṭhira further asked Vidura to arrange, on his own initiative, the rest houses, food and water-troughs needed for the great dāna-yajña (the great giving) that followed.

The śāpa of Māṇḍavya in the Padma Mahā Purāṇa

The Uttara Khaṇḍa of the Padma Mahā Purāṇa gives a cause for Vidura’s birth through a śūdra woman. The great ṛshi Māṇḍavya was doing tapas at Gaṅgādvāra. Soldiers of Somacandra, the son of King Viśvamohana, wrongly accused him of horse theft. They condemned him while he was in samādhi and put him to death by impaling him on a stake.

After long suffering on the stake, he demanded an account from Dharma, the deva of the law of karma. Dharma admitted that as a child Māṇḍavya had impaled a moth on a blade of grass, and that this act had ripened into his unjust punishment. Māṇḍavya was outraged at how out of proportion this accounting was. He cursed Dharma to be born on earth as a śūdra.

Dharma came down and was born as Vidura, the son of Vyāsa and a śūdra maidservant. So Vidura is Dharma himself, born in a low birth as the fruit of Māṇḍavya’s śāpa.

The same account says that Vidura bathed at the meeting of the Dharmāvatī and the Śābhramatī and lost his state of a śūdra through contact with that sacred river. The Śābhramatī bore the name Dharmāvatī at this meeting of the streams. It became the place where Dharma’s own earthly birth was freed from the śāpa that had brought him into a low birth.

The Devī Bhāgavata account: the merging of tejas and Vyāsa’s stotra

The Devī Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa gives its own account of Vidura’s passing and of the great event that followed.

Dhṛtarāshṭra performed the śrāddha of his sons with funds given by Yudhishṭhira. Then he left for the forest with Gāndhārī, Kuntī and Vidura. They settled at the āśrama of Śatayūpa on the Gaṅgā. Six years passed. Yudhishṭhira dreamed of Kuntī in distress and decided to visit her. The Pāṇḍavas, Draupadī, Subhadrā and Uttarā all travelled to the āśrama and met the elders. Vidura was nowhere to be seen. Yudhishṭhira asked Dhṛtarāshṭra about him. The blind king said only that Vidura had become wholly detached and must be meditating somewhere alone.

The next morning Yudhishṭhira went to the bank of the Gaṅgā and found Vidura. He was thin from extreme tapas and stood in deep, silent samādhi. Yudhishṭhira came near and said, “I am Dharmarāja. I bow before you.” Vidura did not move or speak. He stood as still as the trunk of a tree.

Then, in an instant, a bright divine tejas (radiance) came out of Vidura’s form and entered Yudhishṭhira. Yudhishṭhira was an aṃśa of Dharmarāja himself, and Vidura was Dharmarāja come down in the form of a mortal only because of Māṇḍavya’s śāpa. The tejas returned to its source. Vidura’s body, now empty of the divine spark that had moved it, fell still.

Yudhishṭhira moved to perform the funeral rites for the body. A voice from the sky came down.

O Dharmarāja! This one is free from all bondage, steeped in vairāgya, bound by nothing. He is not fit to be cremated. Depart.

(Vairāgya means detachment.) The Pāṇḍavas bathed in the sacred Gaṅgā and went back to tell Dhṛtarāshṭra what had happened.

Soon after, Vyāsa came to the āśrama with Nārada and other ṛshis. Kuntī, Gāndhārī, Subhadrā and Uttarā were each overcome with grief for those they had lost. They came to Vyāsa and appealed to him. Kuntī asked to see Karṇa again. Gāndhārī asked to see Duryodhana and her sons. Subhadrā asked to see Abhimanyu. Vyāsa heard them all in silence.

Then he went to the Gaṅgā at sandhyā (twilight), practised prāṇāyāma, and in his heart meditated on the supreme Devī, the eternal Sanātanī, Devī Bhuvaneśvarī herself. He praised her in a deep stotra (hymn of praise).

O Śrī Divya-mūla-prakṛti! O Purushārāmā! O Saguṇa-nirguṇākṛti! O Devadevi! O Brahmarūpiṇī, Maṇidvīpanivāsinī! O Mātṛdevī, who shone before Brahmā, Vishṇu, Maheśvara, Indra, Agni, Yama, Varuṇa and Kubera themselves! O Ādi-parāśakti, I offer flowers at your lotus feet! O Paripūrṇā! O Bhavānī! When this whole world of the five elements, their qualities, manas, buddhi, ahaṃkāra, all the karaṇas, Sūrya and Candra, all vanish in the great night of mahākāla, you alone remain, the one great jyotir-mūrti lighting the deep darkness. You alone know all. O Devī, show these dead heroes to those who grieve for them.

Devī Bhuvaneśvarī was pleased with Vyāsa’s stotra. She caused the dead warriors to appear from their divine realms. Karṇa, Abhimanyu, Duryodhana and all the fallen heroes stood before their families in their familiar forms, radiant and at peace. Kuntī, Gāndhārī, Subhadrā, Uttarā and the Pāṇḍavas looked at them with tears of joy and grief mixed. They offered flowers and tribute (śraddhāñjali) and were content. Then, by Vyāsa’s power, all the departed were sent back to their own lokas. Those who were present called it an indrajāla, a wonder worked by the grace of Parādevī.

Mahābhārata: Vidura and Dharma in the Āśramavāsika Parva

In his last years Vidura withdrew from all worldly contact into the most severe tapas. He took no food and lived on air alone. His body wasted until only the veins showed under the skin. He held a vīṭāmukha clenched in his mouth. He appeared only rarely to wandering brāhmaṇas.

Yudhishṭhira came upon him by chance during the Pāṇḍavas’ visit to Dhṛtarāshṭra’s forest āśrama. He chased him through the pathless forest. At last Vidura stood still against a tree and fixed his unblinking gaze on Yudhishṭhira’s eyes. By the strength of yoga he joined limb to limb, prāṇa (life breath) to prāṇa, and indriya (sense) to indriya. He merged his whole being into Yudhishṭhira, as one pours the water of one vessel into another, and gave up his body. Yudhishṭhira, filled with Vidura’s tejas and guṇas (qualities), remembered in that moment the yogadharma that explains their shared origin.

Yudhishṭhira wished to cremate the emptied body. A voice without a body forbade it. Vidura had reached yatidharma (the dharma of the renunciant) and was bound for the sāntānika lokas. He needed no funeral rites, because he was sanātana dharma itself.

The next day Bhagavān Vyāsa came to the āśrama and told Dhṛtarāshṭra and the whole company the full truth. Vidura had been Dharma-devatā himself, the eternal Dharma nourished by satya (truth), dama (self-control), śama (calm), ahiṃsā (non-harm) and dāna (giving). He was born in a śūdra womb, through Vyāsa’s own niyoga upon a dāsī in Vicitravīrya’s household. This came from a śāpa that Dharma received from Maharshi Māṇḍavya. Dharma had once judged Māṇḍavya with too much severity for an act of his childhood, done before the age of moral understanding.

Vyāsa said further that this same Dharma, by the strength of yoga, had taken a second avatāra as Yudhishṭhira himself. So “he who is Dharma is none other than Vidura, and he who was Vidura is none other than this son of Pāṇḍu.” Vyāsa said that neither Bṛhaspati among the devas nor Śukra among the asuras had intelligence equal to Vidura’s, because he was Dharma made visible.

Vyāsa repeated this revelation to Gāndhārī in Chapter 31, as part of his roll call of the true divine identity of every warrior.

Svargārohaṇa Parva: return into Dharma

In the last chapter of the Mahābhārata, Sauti tells to whom each of the great ones returned. It declares that Vidura and King Yudhishṭhira both entered Dharma himself. Vidura was Dharmarāja come down, brought to a low birth by Māṇḍavya’s śāpa. Yudhishṭhira was Dharma’s own son and portion. When their deeds on earth were spent, both were taken back into the deva of righteousness from whom they had come.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Ādi Parva, Sambhava Parva, Chapters 103–108
• Mahābhārata, Sabhā Parva, Dyūta Parva and Anudyūta Parva, Chapters 47–81
• Mahābhārata, Strī Parva, Chapters 1–15
• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Bhīshma Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapters 167–168
• Mahābhārata, Āśramavāsika Parva, Chapters 1, 4–5, 11–13, 26, 28, 31
• Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapter 1
• Mahābhārata, Svargārohaṇa Parva, Chapter 5
• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 1st Skanda, Chapters 13, 15
• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 3rd Skanda, Chapters 1–5
• Padma Mahā Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 141
• Devī Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, Skanda 2, Chapter 7