Brāhmaṇa-Janaka Saṃvāda

The Brāhmaṇa-Janaka Saṃvāda is an itihāsa in the Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapter 32. It is about King Janaka. Janaka banishes a brāhmaṇa for a wrong act. The brāhmaṇa asks him to say exactly where his country ends. The question stops the king for a short time. Then Janaka sees that nothing on earth can truly be called “mine”. The brāhmaṇa then shows that he is Dharmadevatā, who came only to test the king.

Where it is told

This itihāsa is told by a brāhmaṇa to his wife. It is part of the teaching of the Brāhmaṇa and Brāhmaṇī, which is itself an itihāsa that Śrī Kṛshṇa tells to Arjuna in the Anugītā.

The brāhmaṇa tells it straight after the Ambarīsha-gīta. That gīta teaches that lobha (greed) is the last and deepest enemy that binds a being to saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death). The brāhmaṇa gives Janaka’s account as one more dṛshṭānta (example) on this point. The two-syllable word “mama” (“mine”) is itself mṛtyu (death), because the thing that is called “mine” can nowhere really be found.

Janaka banishes the brāhmaṇa

King Janaka Cakravartī once punished a brāhmaṇa who had been caught in some wrong act. He said: “Brāhmaṇa! You may not stay in my country. I banish you from this land. Go wherever you like.”

The brāhmaṇa did not simply leave. He asked the king to say exactly where the borders of “his” country lay. He said he would obey the royal order as the śāstra requires. But he wished to know how much land was truly Janaka’s, so that he could go and live in the land of another king, beyond those borders.

Janaka’s moha and his understanding

The question left Janaka without words. He sat sighing deeply and said nothing. He turned his mind inward in vichāra (inquiry). For a short time moha (confusion) covered his mind, as Rāhu covers the sun in an eclipse. But very soon he came out of that moha and his mind became calm (śānta-citta). He kept silent for one muhūrta and then answered.

Janaka said that he had looked with the eye of viveka (discernment) over the whole earth. Nowhere could he find anything that was truly “his kingdom” or “his country”. Not even Mithilā, which his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had ruled one after another without a break, was his on close study. All conditions, such as wealth and poverty, have a beginning and an end (ādi-anta-sahita). The same passing nature belongs to every claim of “mine”. The Veda asks, “mā gṛdhaḥ kasya svid dhanam”, which means “Do not covet. Whose wealth is it, after all?” By thinking with his buddhi (intellect), Janaka concluded that nothing at all is truly his own.

Then, from another point of view, he reached the opposite and matching truth. Because nothing is his alone, the whole bhūmaṇḍala (circle of the earth) is equally his. Since it is his in that wide sense, it is equally everyone else’s. So Janaka told the brāhmaṇa that he did not need to leave at all. He could live wherever he liked and enjoy that place as much as he wished, since the same shared claim that belonged to the brāhmaṇa belonged to the king.

Conquest of the senses and freedom from attachment

The brāhmaṇa asked more. By what buddhi had Janaka given up mamatva (the sense of “mine”) over Mithilā, the kingdom of his fathers, and at the same time held that the whole earth was his?

Janaka said it was the knowledge that all avasthās (conditions), such as wealth, poverty and the like, do not last and are bounded by a beginning and an end. That knowledge let him give up mamatva. On close study, nothing could be called “mine”.

He then described the holding back of the senses as a conquest of the elements.

• He does not look for fragrance for his own enjoyment, so he has conquered pṛthivī (earth), and it stays always under his control.
• He does not taste flavours for his own pleasure, so he has conquered jala (water).
• He does not look for form (rūpa) or tejas (fire) for his own delight, so he has conquered tejas.
• He does not look for pleasures born of touch (sparśa), so he has conquered vāyu (air).
• He does not look for sounds for his own enjoyment, so śabda (sound) always stays under him.
• He does not look for the objects of the mind for his own ātma-sukha (pleasure of the self), so manas itself stays under his control.

Janaka said that all his acts are done only for the sake of the devas, the pitṛs (ancestors), the bhūtas (beings), other creatures and guests (atithis). He never acts for his own pleasure.

Dharmadevatā shows himself

When he heard this, the brāhmaṇa laughed and showed who he was. He said: “Mahārāja! By now you surely know that I am Dharmadevatā himself. I came here in the form of a brāhmaṇa only to test you.”

He then said that Janaka alone, among all beings, is the one force that turns the wheel of reaching Brahman. The rim of that wheel is sattva-guṇa itself. Jñāna (knowledge) is born from it, and once the wheel is set turning it never turns back. Dharmadevatā said that no one else has the power to stop that wheel. In this way Janaka was confirmed as the one who would carry forward the brahmavidyā-sampradāya (the line of teaching of the knowledge of Brahman) and teach it to others.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhika Parva, Chapter 32 (the Brāhmaṇa-Janaka Saṃvāda, within the teaching of the Brāhmaṇa and Brāhmaṇī in the Anugītā)
• Ambarīsha-gīta, the teaching on lobha that comes just before this itihāsa