Cāṇḍāla-Rājanya Saṃvāda

This is an itihāsa that Bhīshma tells Yudhishṭhira in the Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101. Yudhishṭhira has asked where those go who take a brāhmaṇa’s wealth. The answer is a dialogue between an old Cāṇḍāla and a young Rājanya (a prince of a kshatriya house), who is not named.

The Rājanya mocks an old man doing tapas, covered in the dust and froth of cow’s milk. The old man explains that in an earlier age a king seized a brāhmaṇa’s cows. The milk that spilled fell on a soma creeper, and everyone who later drank that soma fell into naraka. The old man says that in a former birth he had unknowingly eaten alms-food touched by the same milk, and for that alone he became a Cāṇḍāla. He now remembers his former birth and begs the Rājanya for a way to be freed. The Rājanya tells him the only way, and the Cāṇḍāla follows it.

The setting of the dialogue

Yudhishṭhira asks Bhīshma: where do foolish and deluded men go who take the wealth of brāhmaṇas? Bhīshma answers with an ancient itihāsa, a saṃvāda (dialogue) between a Cāṇḍāla and a Kshatra-bandhu (a son of a kshatriya house). This is the Cāṇḍāla-Rājanya Saṃvāda. It belongs inside the wider Agastya-Bhṛgu Saṃvāda, whose opening part comes earlier in the Dāna Dharma Parva. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101)

The Rājanya’s mockery

The Rājanya comes upon an aged ascetic covered in dust and the froth of cow’s milk, doing hard tapas. He mocks him: “O Cāṇḍāla! You are old, yet you behave like a child. Why do you smear yourself with the dust of cow hooves and trouble the cows? Soaking a body caked with the milk-froth of cows in a water-pot is conduct that good people condemn.” He takes the ascetic for a fallen and foolish Cāṇḍāla who is dirtying himself for no reason. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101)

The Cāṇḍāla’s account of the spilled soma

The old man answers with the true history behind how he looks. In a past age a certain king seized and drove off the cows of a brāhmaṇa. As the cows were driven away, their milk streamed out and fell on a soma creeper growing by the road and soaked it. The brāhmaṇas who later drank that soma fell at once into naraka. So did the king, together with all the āyājakas (ritual dependents) who lived on his wealth. All the people of that town who drank the milk, ghee or curds that came from that tainted source, brāhmaṇas and kshatriyas alike, sank into naraka. The cows themselves, wretched at being parted from their calves and their owners, struck down with their gaze the sons, grandsons, cattle and wives of those who had drunk their stolen milk, and so doomed them to short lives.

The Cāṇḍāla says that he himself was then living as a brahmacārī with his senses under control. His bhikshānna (food got by begging) happened to be sprinkled with the froth of that same stolen milk. He ate it without knowing, and he became a Cāṇḍāla. The king who had stolen the brāhmaṇa’s wealth met an end with no honour at all.

From this the Cāṇḍāla draws a teaching: no man should ever take even the smallest part of a brāhmaṇa’s wealth, for even unknowingly eating what is left of it was enough to bring him down to this low birth. He adds that the wise never sell soma, because the learned condemn the sale of soma. Both buyer and seller of soma that has been touched by a brāhmaṇa’s wealth go to Yama’s Raurava naraka and stay there, not for a short time but for a very long time. A śrotriya brāhmaṇa who buys such tainted soma and then lives on usury (lending at interest) dies quickly and spends three hundred years in naraka, eating his own filth. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101)

Three faults and false pride

The Cāṇḍāla says that nīca-sevā (serving the base), durabhimāna (false pride) and violating a friend’s wife are three pāpas. Weighed together, he says, they show durabhimāna to be graver than the other two. He points to a wretched, mangy, thin dog nearby as an example of the terrible state to which false pride (abhimāna) alone can bring a being. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101)

His former birth and his plea to be freed

The Cāṇḍāla then tells that in an earlier birth he had been a man of great wealth and noble family, learned in jñāna and vijñāna. Even though he knew these dangers, he lived in constant anger toward other beings and ate forbidden meat. Through that conduct and that food he came to his present low state. He is caked with dust and runs about in torment as if stung by fierce mountain bees, and the hem of his garment seems to blaze with fire. He says that even a brāhmaṇa who has done pāpa, bound as he is by his deeds, is in the end saved by the Vedas, if he stays firm in his āśrama and keeps up svādhyāya (study of the scriptures) and dāna (giving). But he himself was born in a pāpa womb (pāpa-yoni) and has found no such sure path.

Through the puṇya (merit) of some earlier good deed he has been given jāti-smaraṇa, the memory of his past birth. He now knows the Rājanya as his refuge and begs him for the means to be freed from being a Cāṇḍāla. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101)

The Rājanya’s answer and the Cāṇḍāla’s release

The Rājanya answers that there is only one way: to give up one’s life for a brāhmaṇa’s wealth, either as prey given to fierce beasts or as an offering thrown into the fire of battle in defence of that wealth. There is no other path. Bhīshma ends by saying that on hearing this the Cāṇḍāla went out and defended a brāhmaṇa’s property in battle. He gave his life as an offering and reached the destiny he had longed for.

Bhīshma then states the lesson plainly to Yudhishṭhira. A brāhmaṇa’s wealth is to be protected and never consumed. A man who wants an eternal destiny for himself must guard it at all costs. (Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 101)

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva (Dāna Dharma Parva), Chapter 101: the Cāṇḍāla-Rājanya Saṃvāda
• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, the Agastya-Bhṛgu Saṃvāda: the wider dialogue named as the frame, with its opening part in an earlier section of the Dāna Dharma Parva